Brooks and Mitt's incompetence

You know, Mitt Romney is flirting with achieving the unthinkable. He may talk David Brooks into voting for Barack Obama.

Brooks keelhauled Mitt today in his New York Times column for comments Mitt made to a fundraising event that were published yesterday in Mother Jones. His column concluded: “Mr. Romney, your entitlement reforms are essential, but when will the incompetence stop?”

Brooks is a center-right columnist for The Times, an individual who could fit the voter that Mitt said his campaign is concentrating on, the “5 to 10 percent in the center” who are, as Mitt said, “thoughtful.” As centrist and thoughtful as he may be, I could never imagine David Brooks voting Democrat, but then Mitt Romney has never run for president before.

You can’t reject a presidential candidate just because he has a 12 ½ D wingtip mouth. George W. Bush got elected twice with a 9 ½ C Justin. Bush proved that mouth size plays a small role in overall incompetence, which is what Brooks was saying about Mitt today: it’s not how he said it, it’s what he said.

I can see David’s point. My wife and I voted for Obama in 2008 and we will vote for him again in November. That makes us, I heard Mitt say, among the 47 percent of Americans who “pay no income tax,” who are “dependent on government,” and who “believe they are victims.”

It must be something in the Boston water. Mitt, and I believe I am speaking for a good part of the 47 percent now, we’ll show you our last 10 years of income taxes if you’ll show us yours. Speaking for me now, since my first contribution to Social Security in 1955, I have believed the government was providing me a partnership in which my contributions to Social Security and Medicare would provide me a few years of retirement instead of dropping dead on the job when I was 80.

So it ticks me to hear you say I am dependent on government. Worst of all, though, is you calling us “victims.” I am going to tell everybody I know what you said about us, including my Republican congressman. I'll ask him how he might feel about voting for Obama.