Compassionate Romneyism

 

Ann Romney pushed back Sunday against detractors whom she said have called her husband “heartless,” emphasizing that she and Mitt Romney have struggled, even if not financially.

“Mitt and I do recognize that we have not had a financial struggle in our lives,” Ann Romney said in an interview with Mitt Romney that aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “But I want people to believe in their hearts that we know what it is like to struggle. And our struggles have not been financial, but they’ve been with health and with difficulties in different things in life.”

...While the Romney campaign tried to play up the nominee’s sympathetic side at their convention, Democrats sought to exploit Romney’s reputation as someone who doesn’t understand people’s suffering. ” I think he’s a good guy. He just has no idea how good he’s had it,” San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro said of Romney in his keynote address in Charlotte.

Ann Romney was defensive about that attack. “For people to think that we don’t have empathy just because we’re not suffering like they’re suffering is ridiculous,” she said. “It’s ridiculous to think that — you can’t have empathy for somebody that’s struggling.”

For her part, Ann Romney described suffering from multiple sclerosis as a “cruel teacher” as well as a “great gift” for teaching “me to be more compassionate and caring for others that are suffering.”

Mitt Romney chimed in with his own response to Castro: “I really think that those people that try and minimize the — the feeling and the connection we have with the American people … are trying to divide Americans based on who has money and who was able to achieve success and who does not have as much.”

(Screen fade to Mrs Romney addressing the Republican National Convention):

We were very young. Both still in college. There were many reasons to delay marriage, and you know? We just didn't care. We got married and moved into a basement apartment. We walked to class together, shared the housekeeping, and ate a lot of pasta and tuna fish. Our desk was a door propped up on sawhorses. Our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen. Those were very special days.