Karen Heller: GOP race is full of wealthy 'outsiders'

Are you ready for some class warfare?

We can all agree that by any measure, Mitt Romney is filthy rich. Also, that many voters aren't pleased with his income and his tax returns.

Americans have a complicated relationship with wealth. We love money. Moneyed people? Not so much. Especially when they enjoy a lower tax rate than workers dependent for income on jobs.

Or when Romney's individual's weekly investment income puts him in the top 1 percent of annual earners.

Or when Romney says he received "not very much" from paid speeches, and not very much turns out to be $374,327.62, slightly less than the president's annual salary.

Does this make Romney capable of understanding the economic woes of most people? Possibly - FDR came from great wealth - but we're not off to a great start.

President Obama emphasized these tax inequalities in Tuesday's State of the Union speech while Warren Buffett's secretary - who pays a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss - sat with the first lady.

We root for athletes, musicians, and actors, because we relate to their rapid accumulation of wealth, as if anyone can suddenly become a star. Hence the surfeit of reality star-making shows. Buffett and Bill Gates (as well as the late Steve Jobs) enjoy popularity because they project being average guys while being nothing of the sort. Stiff, coiffed investment bankers are another matter.

In recent years, tensions among the classes have become strained due to multiple causes: an inequitable tax code, soaring executive compensation regardless of company performance, stagnant or decreasing workers' wages, a permanent class of unemployed or underemployed skilled workers, the subprime mortgage and attendant housing crises, the Occupy movement, and the Citizens United decision, which allows the rich to donate millions to super PACs aligned with candidates. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson have injected $10 million into Newt Gingrich's Winning Our Future PAC.

Gingrich, born in humble circumstances, has adapted to the better life, paid $1.6 million as a "historian" by Freddie Mac while maintaining a $1 million credit line at Tiffany's. As a former Gingrich strategist says in the New Yorker: "Callista did not want him to run for president. That's why he had to buy her so much damn jewelry."

Newt, the professed Washington "outsider," despite having lived there since 1978, brands the media as "elite." To him, President Obama is also a member of the "elite" - when he's not preaching "the radicalism of Saul Alinsky."

Clearly, the definition of elite is someone who doesn't agree with Newt Gingrich.

Can we pause to ask if there has ever been a presidential candidate less committed to being liked by voters? We've had cool and uncuddly - Al Gore and virtually every politician from Massachusetts - Romney, Kerry, Dukakis - but even Nixon made more of an effort than Gingrich. Anger's the scum that rises first in elections, and Gingrich is gifted at attracting the indignant.

Campaigns are filled with sweeping narratives, the stories candidates tell us, the ones voters tell themselves. If Gingrich is the "outsider" and enemy of the elite, Rick Santorum sells himself as the self-made man from modest immigrant stock. That's the story Americans tend to love, the simple beginning, the immigrant dream, success achieved through hard work.

On the campaign trail, Santorum speaks of "my grandfather the coal miner," the man who "ended up continuing to work those mines until he was 72 years old, digging coal." His grandfather "left fascist Italy, left Mussolini's Italy, left a good job and a secure job, a job that the government was telling him that they would take care of him in, and chose freedom."

True, but Santorum was paid $142,500 as a "consultant" for Consol Energy, a giant coal and natural gas concern. Coal helped make the coal miner's grandson rich.

Do our ancestors tell us who we are any more than tax returns? Rich men tend to triumph in politics, where big money is so key to winning. This presidential race will be the costliest ever at a time when many citizens sense they will never realize the American dream. Seems like the ideal time to debate class, taxes, income inequality, and opportunity, although whether the class warfare will amount to lasting changes remains to be seen.