Timing, Trump may mask Romney gaffe and its impact on young voters

Fortunately for Romney, his ill-advised comments about the poor may get swept under the rug - for now at least.

Any negative headlines he would have gotten this morning have been overshadowed by distracting reports that reality-TV star Donald Trump is set to endorse Newt Gingrich sometime today.

Now, I can't think of any less consequential news, but fortunately for Romney, the Trump sideshow will completely distract everyone from his questionable statement yesterday.

Romney needs to count his blessings, and then seriously think over the way he's been phrasing his responses to economic questions. As it stands, he continues to hand ammunition to not only his GOP challengers, but also to the Democrats who are prepping to take him on come the summer.

As the New York Times reports:

Taken in the full context of his remarks, as Mr. Romney urged reporters to do, his statement appears more benign: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich — they’re doing just fine.”

But for a campaign that has been accused of taking Mr. Obama’s remarks out of context, the sentence about the poor immediately became cataloged in a growing list of comments by Mr. Romney that suggested a distance from the concerns of struggling Americans.

As his tax returns became a growing issue, Mr. Romney said his speaking fees of more than $370,000 amounted to “not very much” money.

When talking about taxation in August, he said, “Corporations are people” — a line that will not go away, despite its context: “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

And he said, “I like being able to fire people” for bad service, just as his leadership at the venture capital firm, Bain Capital, was being questioned.

So, the latest remarks about the poor play into the narrative that his critics like to draw — that he is an out-of-touch capitalist. Even conservatives are furious with Mr. Romney.

In many ways this misstep is extremely similar to Newt Gingrich's comments about unmotivated, impoverished youth. By using poor, confusing and racially charged wording, both candidates created distractions and potentially disenfranchised independent and young voters.

But if we learned anything from Gingrich's janitor comments it's that GOP voters don't really care.

The same could be said for Romney's debate bet with Rick Perry - when he offered up $10,000, which the media was convinced would finally prove that Romney is out of touch and would be a game change. Now, months later, Romney is still the front runner, has won the most important of the primaries thus far and the $10,000 bet almost never comes up anymore.

Now don't get me wrong, I can see these new comments about poverty coming back to haunt Romney, but not until the general election.

Alexander: These latest comments are the most recent in what has been a long line of gaffes for GOP candidates during this election. Which of the gaffes do you think has been most harmful?