Mitt Romney: Reduce taxes on middle-income people. You know, the ones making $250,000

When it comes to budget and taxes, Mitt Romney's strategy is to sound like he's explaining things without actually explaining anything. Make big promises about lowering taxes and balancing the budget while denying that he'd accomplish that any of the ways it is actually possible to accomplish it. So when George Stephanopoulos pressed him on how exactly all this will work, Romney, as usual, ran in rhetorical circles, finally coming to this point:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Is $100,000 middle income?

MITT ROMNEY: No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less. So number one, don't reduce' or excuse me, don't raise taxes on middle-income people, lower them.  

Considering this is a man who thinks $362,000 is "not very much" money, I guess it was possible he'd think people making $200,000 to $250,000 were downright poor. But this is also a man running for president of a country in which the median household income, the amount that half of households earn less than and half of households earn more than, is around $50,000 a year. Four to five times what the average family makes is not middle income. I can't believe that's something that has to be said.

On a policy level, Romney's claim that he would reduce taxes on people making less than $250,000 is ... well, it's a lie, for one thing. The few specifics he's offered on his tax and budget policies make that clear. If it was something he actually intended to do, though, it wouldn't be very controversial. President Obama wants to keep tax levels the same for families making less than $250,000'it's just that Obama sees $250,000 as a ceiling where Romney sees it as a floor. That's how out of touch Romney is. The $250,000 that most of us understand as representing the threshold to the top 1 percent is his idea of the struggling middle. People making less? An afterthought, like he doesn't quite believe they're real.