11 Ways Mitt Romney Shows His Rich-Guy, Ayn Randian Cluelessness

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As I described it at the time:

The wager was offered when Perry took Romney to task for a change Perry said he noticed in a later edition of Romney's book, No Apology; Perry claimed that a sentence was deleted from the paperback edition in which the author offered his Massachusetts health care plan as a model for the nation's. Perry went on to accuse Romney of being a proponent of the individual mandate in the health-care reform law signed by President Barack Obama last year, a favorite bugaboo of right-wingers.

Romney denied the charge. Then he upped the ante.

"I'll tell you what," Romney said, "10,000 bucks? Ten-thousand-dollar bet?"

"I'm not in the betting business," Perry replied.

Within minutes, pundits were having a field day. Before long, the hashtag, #What10kbuys, was trending on Twitter (with a little help from the Democratic National Committee, which apparently got it started).

Romney's challenge to Perry also reminded the GOP's evangelical Christian base that he's not one of them. Evangelicals generally eschew gambling, and Romney's faith -- Mormonism -- was a matter of great consternation early in the primary campaign.

2. "I'm unemployed." Romney's head-scratching bet wasn't the first of his clueless rich-guy quotes; it was simply the one that confirmed an impression left by previous gaffes, like the men Romney met during a June 2011 meeting with unemployed Floridians, at which they revealed the challenges they faced. As reported by Jeff Zeleny for the New York Times:

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney sat at the head of the table at a coffee shop here on Thursday, listening to a group of unemployed Floridians explain the challenges of looking for work. When they finished, he weighed in with a predicament of his own.

"I should tell my story," Mr. Romney said. "I'm also unemployed."

He chuckled. The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter.

"Are you on LinkedIn?" one of the men asked.

"I'm networking," Mr. Romney replied. "I have my sight on a particular job."

3. A tale of two Cadillacs -- and a Mustang. Oh, and a Chevy pickup. I know you know this story, but it's too good not to tell once more. Actually, I'll let Politico's Reid J. Epstein tell it, since he reported the February speech at the Detroit Economic Club, where Romney offered this doozy:

I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually. And I used to have a Dodge truck, so I used to have all three covered."

BTW the origin of "doozy" is often attributed to the nickname for the Duesenberg automobiles, an extinct breed of American luxury cars. Perhaps Ann Romney would have a couple today if they were still in production.

4. The Cadillac elevator in the $12 million mansion. If you have, say, four autos for two people, you might not want to have them all crowding up your ground-floor garage. So when you decide to renovate your beachfront La Jolla house (you also have three houses for two people), why not cough up $55,000 for an elevator for those extra cars, so you can stow them in a subterranean parking bay -- a 3,600-square-foot parking bay. (When completed, the renovated Chez Romney will encompass 11,000 square feet -- that's 6,500 square feet per Romney.) From Business Insider: