If you want to gauge how effective a popular movement has become, compare the present statements of leading politicians with their prior positions. In the case of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R), the difference is night and day.
During an appearance in Florida last week, Romney was calling the “Occupy Wall Street” protests “dangerous” and “class warfare.”
Since then, a poll surfaced showing that most Americans who’ve heard of the protests have sympathy for the demonstrators’ motivations, and that “Occupy Wall Street” is much more popular than Congress.
The position is in stark contrast to his actual policy positions, namely Romney’s refusal to even consider normalizing tax rates between the wealthy and middle classes. Wealthy Americans tend to pay a much smaller percentage of their income in federal taxes than middle class earners, and the vast majority of Americans — including a majority of Republicans — support raising their tax rates to help eliminate the deficit.
Romney, however, has proposed $6.6 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, along with a major cut to corporate taxes and the elimination of the estate tax on vast inheritance wealth. He’s also come out in favor of a constitutional amendment to balance the U.S. budget, which would be impossible with such tremendous losses in federal revenue — unless the government were to utterly destroy Social Security and Medicare, a move the huge majority of Americans oppose.
He’s also been criticized for calling corporations “people,” and saying that the protesters on Wall Street are just “trying to find scapegoats to attack.”