Folks, politicians say a lot of things that they don’t really mean. They say “welfare queen” because, as Lee Atwater said, you can’t say “Nigger, nigger, nigger” anymore. They say job creator when they really mean a Randian “elite,” or, as Huckabee said, “the guy who fires you.” But, a lot of the time, it’s hard to know what they really mean. You can’t know unless you take three steps back and survey the whole of the scene. There’s one that I’ve actually figured out recently. And, I haven’t heard anyone else really say it out loud, so I wanna tell you all about it.
I’m sure you remember that video of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser, yeah, that one! He rather absurdly said in that video, “my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.” Other than from Paul Krugman, this didn’t get as much traction as the other, far more absurd thing that he said in the video. But, this really merits taking a moment on, because, as Krugman also points out, this actually seems to be a massive part of his jobs plan!
So, what does he really mean? I’m sure at least some of you have read Atlas Shrugged. In the book the “elites,” the “job creators” all go on strike to protest a government that is overburdening them (poor, poor millionaires and billionaires!) with taxes and regulation and so on and so on. What Mitt Romney is saying is that all of the job creators are on strike. If he's elected president, they'll come back.