While the traditional media continue to chase the Herman Cain reality TV show presidential campaign into the abyss, that other Republican presidential candidate polling at the top also keeps saying really stupid things.
Except that when Mitt Romney says stupid things, they are about public policies that would affect every American. And they attract far less media coverage.
The latest forehead-to-the-desk moment was Monday, when Romney -- whose assets are worth about $250 million -- claimed that "people in government" are "making a lot more money than we are."
On top of the ludicrous attempt by Romney to associate himself with the 99% -- while he proposes tax cuts that would mostly benefit his peers in the 1% -- it is not even true that "people in government" are making more money than any sort of "we."
As the Bureau of Labor Statistics just found, according to the Washington Post, federal government "employees are underpaid by 26.3 percent when compared with similar non-federal jobs".
(Furthermore, why should it even be a goal to pay our civil servants as little as possible? Most of us want our government to managed by competent people so it works for us, so we need our government to offer competitive salaries and benefit packages. And that also puts constructive pressure on the private sector to raise wages for everybody.)
Romney is also continuing to tie himself into knots trying to run away from his 2008 oped opposing government TARP funds to save the auto industry. Now Romney is straining to claim the President Obama did what he was suggesting all along ... which, even if true, does not exactly make the case that President Obama's socialistic government is killing American business.
Add that to Romney's comments last month that "the people who need the help most are not the poor," you begin to see a pattern that suggests Mr. Romney is a wee bit out of touch with what most Americans need in a time of economic struggle.
But it is up to voters to decide if Romney's comments show a lack of understanding of economic reality. Perhaps one of these days, the media will report such comments to them.
