“I’m not concerned about the very poor,’’ Romney said on CNN. “We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.’’
The quote was a slice of an overall pitch on how the thrust of his campaign will center on helping the struggling middle class. Yet critics and rivals seized on the “very poor’’ comment and said it was the latest in a string of examples illustrating how the candidate - by far the wealthiest in the field - is oblivious to the needs of everyday Americans.
Newt Gingrich, his chief rival for the GOP presidential nomination, read Romney’s quote aloud to supporters in Reno, Nev., sparking boos.
“I’m fed up with people in either party dividing Americans against each other,’’ Gingrich said at the Great Basin Brewery. “I am running to be the president of all the American people, and I am concerned about all the American people.’’
Obama’s reelection campaign also piled on.
“So much for ‘we’re all in this together,’ ’’ Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote on Twitter.
Several weeks ago, Democrats and Romney’s Republican rivals criticized him for saying, “I like being able to fire people who don’t provide services to me,’’ even though he was speaking about giving consumers the power to fire health insurers.
Aboard his campaign plane, Romney said his latest comments were being taken out of context.
“No no no no. I - no no,’’ he said, when asked what he meant about not caring about poor people. “You’ve got to take the whole sentence, all right, as opposed to saying, and then change it just a little bit, because then it sounds very different. I’ve said throughout the campaign my focus, my concern, my energy is going to be devoted to helping middle-income people, all right?’’
