ANALYSIS | Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday and is set to take on the first-in-the-South primary in South Carolina on Jan. 21.
But he has found himself the target of more attacks on his seeming distance from the average American, his insensitivity to the unemployed, his being out of touch with the working class. As both Democrats and Republicans assail Romney's political record, they are also attempting to paint him as part of the corporate elite and the monied establishment that has become synonymous with Washington corruption, crony capitalism, Big Money influence, lobbying and special interests. And thus far, it is the quotes, the gaffes, and the misstatements directly attributable to Romney himself that seem to be causing the former Massachusetts governor the most trouble.
The question is: Although his gaffes are worrisome, will they be enough to cost him the Republican nomination or, barring that, cost him the national election in November?
Some of what have been labeled as Romney's more insensitive and out of touch comments follow:
* "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me." -- said at a breakfast gathering in New Hampshire, Jan. 11, according to CBS News , and later taken completely out of context (Romney was speaking about firing insurance providers)
* "I know what it's like to worry whether you're gonna get fired. There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip." -- said at the Opera House in Rochester, N.H., on Jan. 8, according to the Boston Globe , not elaborating on the fact that he was highly recruited out of college and was part founder of Bain Capital
* "I'll tell you what, ten-thousand bucks? $10,000 bet?" -- said at the ABC News Republican Presidential Debate in Iowa on Dec. 10 in response to political rival Rick Perry's assertion that a particular passage on individual mandates for insurance was in Romney's book Turnaround
* "It's not those in the low end; it's certainly not those in the very high end. It's for the great middle class - the 80 to 90 percent of us in this country." -- said in September at a town hall meeting in Florida (via CBS News ) when talking about his tax plan, perhaps momentarily forgetting that that none of the "us" in the "great middle class" were multi-millionaires like himself
* "Corporations are people, my friend." -- said at a political rally in Iowa prior (via C-SPAN ) to the Ames Straw Poll in August in response to yells of "Corporations!" when he mentioned raising taxes
* "I should also tell my story. I am also unemployed... And I'm networking. But I have my sight on a particular job..." -- said at a coffee shop in Tampa, Fla., on June 16 (captured on video by CNN), where the former governor would later relate that he had volunteered as a church counselor and had spoken with those that had found unemployment "stressful"
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