I don’t know what is more sad, Romney making the statement in the first place or so many conservatives not realizing what is so unfair, misleading and possibly fatally self-destructive about what he said.
All politicians do that, and many very rich people are very gullible, particularly once they lift their heads out of whatever it was they were doing to make all their money, and it's "OH MY GOLLY WHAT ARE THEY DOING".
Then there are the converts ~ they've been supporting Democrats for years and years and now they realize the Democrats intend to strip them down to their skivies. They are easily frightened, but alas, they know nothing of Republican politics ~ and usually end up supporting the fringe elements instead of the candidates best representative of the core of the base.
Some have suggested that the high cost of campaigns is the root cause. But think about that a second ~ this country started out as a huge place, and it had a novel way of selecting it's top leader ~ THE PRESIDENT. No, he's not a king, but there he is, in the end, the leader of the free world as well, and to a degree, the leader of the rest of it too even if he doesn't want to be a leader at all.
Barely out of colonial status the Founders created an office that relied, in part, on tapping into the opinion of the great broad masses of the people ~ and they lived hundreds of miles apart.
Sure, it costs something to do a Presidential campaign today, but it did then too. There were massive costs, and yet people in home tanned buckskins, living in the woods on subsistance farming, undertook all those costs just for a chance to pick the fella' who was going to be instantly thrust onto the world stage as The President of the United States.
That's the part we need to keep in mind ~ this is an important job; it costs something to campaign; not all are chosen, but many are called. And in the end this is a better way to do it than all the other ways!