Joe Scarborough seems to have a little problem understanding why people would be upset with Mitt Romney's great wealth and how much he pays in taxes, or at least he pretended to on this Monday's Morning Joe. Here's Scarborough doing his best to carry a little water for Mittens and downplay whether those things should be an issue in the general election.
SCARBOROUGH: John Heilemann, Americans didn’t care that Jack Kennedy was rich. They didn’t care that Roosevelt was rich. They didn’t even care that John Kerry was rich in ’04. People aren’t talking about that. But Mitt Romney has given the Obama team so many buzzwords, Swiss bank account, Cayman Islands, "I like firing people," 14 percent, "let the market bottom out"...
BRZEZINSKI: "I know what it's like to be unemployed."
SCARBOROUGH: ...pink slips, I know what it's like.. You could go on and on. He has set himself up for a November killing.
BRZEZINSKI: He's the 1 percent.
After John Heilemann noted that Romney's "painted himself as a combination of Gordon Gekko and Richie Rich" and that his refusal to release his tax returns is going to come back to haunt him, Scarborough came back with this.
SCARBOROUGH: I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I think it’s a fair question to ask. [...] Why would they care that Mitt Romney paid a 14.3 percent tax on his income when John Kerry paid a 13.1 percent tax on his income and he had more money than Mitt Romney?
Simple answer Joe. Because they weren't advocating for austerity and policies that would make the fact that we've got record income disparity in the United States worse while also pushing policies that would make their own taxes lower, like Mitt Romney is now.
