Mitt Romney's instinct to backtrack on his "Let them eat cake" moment is dead on, according to a new Pew Research Study.
Romney, who disclosed last week that he earned $20 million in 2010, told CNN Friday that he "misspoke" when he said he was not "concerned about the very poor." [Long Battle Bad for GOP, Experts Say.]
"I misspoke plain and simple," Romney said. "Well what I said was my focus, my primary focus is helping people get into the middle class and grow the middle class."
The Pew report shows that 57 percent of lower-income Republicans and Republican-leaning voters believe the government doesn't do enough to help them.
They also asserted that Wall Street harms them, not helps them, and that corporations and the rich have too much power. [See a collection of political cartoons on the 2012 GOP hopefuls.]
Lower-income voters (making less than $30,000 a year) account for nearly 25 percent of the GOP and will be a critical part of the Republican electorate in 2012.
The survey, conducted in early October and released Thursday, reveals that only 18 percent of poor Republicans believe the government is doing too much to help them.
And while poor and rich GOP voters were equally distrustful of government, wealthy Republicans polled took the opposite view on government intervention, with 44 percent responding that the government does too much to help the poor.
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