As Predicted, DNC Lights Up Romney's 'Not Concerned About the Very Poor' Remark (Update)

Here it is.

Here’s what I said about the remark yesterday.

The quote about the very poor is sure to show up in Democrat ads if Romney is the nominee, and it will be followed by a bunch of stats and clips depicting his policies as hostile to the poor, or something, to make him and by extension the party that nominated him look heartless, miserly, and out of touch. It won’t be fair, but it will be done. And that sentence, which Romney didn’t have to say, provides the lead for those ads.

For another dose of reality, head over to YouTube and run a search on Romney and “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” The quote is all over the place, being used and abused with glee and abandon. And it’s not just liberals misusing it — Mr. I’m The Real Conservative, Newt Gingrich, is misusing it too.

The man that Jen Rubin and pretty much everyone over at NRO has tried to convince us is the most electable candidate has scored a massive own goal. This remark will haunt Mitt Romney pretty much forever. It will be particularly useful after the RNC convention, as a way of blunting whatever moment he hopes to carry out from there to the campaign trail, assuming he is the nominee. That’s when the Democrats will match it with the “I like being able to fire people” comment and the “corporations are people” riff in a devastating national ad roll out. They will paint him as cold and callous and make him the proxy for every hated boss, and the author of every layoff and every nasty corporate action, in America. Don’t think that I’m giving them ideas here. I just know how these Democrats think. They’re already working on the ads.

They’ll produce ads that make him look like a hypocrite and opportunist on RomneyCare versus ObamaCare, too. He’s making it too easy for them.

Romney will not be able to bury Obama in negative ads to beat him, as he has done twice to Newt Gingrich. If anything, Obama and his allied super PACs will bury Romney in negative ads. Romney doesn’t have a strong, solid record in office to point to. He just doesn’t. He will have to rely on his corporate and Olympics record and run a tight, efficient, focused and ruthless campaign. He will have to watch every word he says. And he could still lose, thanks in no small part to the way his own comments can and will be used against him. Hopefully he and his team, but especially the candidate himself, will learn something from this episode.

Update: Looky there, ABC News is already creating the Obama ads.