Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Silver spoons and pocketbooks

Visual source: Newseum

Michael Kinsley at Bloomberg takes a look at Mitt Romney's wealth and worldview:

Maybe Romney's not so smart, because he goes on and on about how successful he is in a way that strikes people as obnoxious. 'I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success.'

Is there a 'resentment of success' in this country? I don't sense it. Certainly you do not need to resent success in order to believe that successful people are, for the most part, adequately rewarded for their success.

Sure. Lovely. Let's reward success. But the Republicans seem to think that success is self-defining. Anyone who has done well or was born well deserves what he or she has got, and maybe more, because these are society's 'job creators.' Let's add up just a few of the ways in which this is not necessarily true.

Paul Whitefield at The Los Angeles Times keeps things direct:

Republicans are the party of business and the rich. Democrats are for the working man.

That's what my dad always said.  

Dad, I think you were on to something. [...]

They say this will be a election in which people vote with their pocketbooks.

If so, my dad would say the choice is clear: Republicans want to put money in the pocketbooks of business and the rich. Democrats want to put money into the pocketbooks of the working man.

And I say: Dad, you were pretty smart after all.  

Nicole Hemmer at The New York Times looks at "the boys who cried Fox" and how some Republican elements are turning on conservative media:

When National Review promoted the candidacy of Mitt Romney in mid-December, it stoked outrage among the base. Rush Limbaugh dismissed the magazine as part of the 'Republican establishment media.' The promotion of Romney, the nephew of National Review's founder claimed, 'proves only that this is no longer the magazine of William F. Buckley, Jr. My uncle would be appalled.' Commenters on National Review Online unfurled the nickname National Romney Online, which soon began popping up on other conservative sites.

The funny thing is that this role reversal is the end product of a process that was set in motion by the conservative media. Having spent decades promoting the charge of bias, they have helped strip it of meaning. These days, bias translates roughly to 'reporting something I don't like,' a reflexive defense against stories that cut against conservative interests. (Liberals claim bias, too, but here we're focused on the curious spectacle of right-on-right crime.) [...]

So when the anti-Romney crowd started seeing Fox News and National Review as 'them,' it could only mean one thing. Though long considered bulwarks against pro-establishment (read: liberal) bias, these once-trustworthy media outlets were now hopelessly riddled with it. When everyone not with you is against you, the world becomes a bleak place indeed.

Bill Press on the Republican war on women:

Republican opposition to the Violence Against Women Act is especially odious. Written in 1994 by then-Senator Joe Biden to offer legal protection to women who are victims of domestic violence, it was passed, and has been re-authorized several times, with strong bipartisan support. Three provisions were added this year to extend protection to women in same-sex marriages, Native-American women and women immigrants who are here illegally. Because of those three amendments, all eight Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, voted against the bill. By their presumed logic, it's wrong to beat up most women -- but lesbians, Native Americans, and undocumented women are fair game.

Equally puzzling is Republican opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act. Even today, on average, according to the 2010 Census, women earn only about 77 cents for every one dollar a man earns. Yet the Paycheck Fairness Act failed to get one single Republican Senate vote in 2010. And Republicans vow to block it again this year.

Perhaps most importantly for Republicans, the war on women is not only morally wrong, it's political suicide. No matter how hard Republicans try to deny they're waging war on women, American women aren't buying it. Asked in the latest CNN/ORC 2012 Presidential Poll which candidate is more "in touch with the problems facing women today," women rate Obama over Romney, 59 percent to 23 percent. Bad for Mitt. Good for Barack. Women aren't stupid.

Finally, Helen Cooper at The New York Times brings us a preview of a new strategy for Obama's campaign:

So long, flip-flopper. Hello, right-wing extremist.

Mitt Romney may be inclined to start moving to the political center now that he's practically got the Republican nomination won and done, but the Obama campaign would much rather keep him right where he's been for the past few months: in the conservative territory he staked out while battling for Republican primary voters.

After months of depicting Mr. Romney as the ultimate squishy, double-talking, no-core soul, Team Obama is shifting gears. Senior administration officials, along with Democratic and campaign officials, all say their strategy moving forward will be to tell the world that Mr. Romney has a core after all ' and it's deep red.