Big Shift for Romney: He Puts Focus on Poverty

Mitt Romney spoke to the Republican National Committee last night and sounded very much like a candidate trying to erase an image of being rich and out of touch, reports AP. Consider these quotes:

• “Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before."
• “It’s a tragedy—a human tragedy—that the middle class in this country by and large doesn’t believe the future won’t be better than the past or their kids will have a brighter future of their own. People want to see rising wages and they deserve them.”
• “First, we have to make the world safer. Second, we have to make sure and provide opportunity for all Americans regardless of the neighborhood they live in. And finally, we have to lift people out of poverty."

The Washington Post sees the emphasis on poverty and the middle class as "a dramatic departure from the themes he sounded in losing the 2012 campaign to President Obama." Time writes that he "sought to cast himself as a champion of the nation’s poor." So is he, in fact, running? Romney would say only that he's giving it "serious consideration." The New York Times, meanwhile, reports that wife Ann, who was once adamantly opposed to another run, seems to have come around to the "maybe" camp. "She knows where my heart is," Romney told the crowd last night. (More Mitt Romney stories.)