The secret video reveals Romney as "the sneering plutocrat..."

"... fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party," says Jonathan Chait.

[Romney] believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)...

The revelations in this video come to me as a genuine shock. I have never hated Romney. I presumed his ideological makeover since he set out to run for president was largely phony, even if he was now committed to carry through with it, and to whatever extent he’d come to believe his own lines, he was oblivious or naïve about the damage he would inflict upon the poor, sick, and vulnerable.  It seems unavoidable now to conclude that Romney’s embrace of Paul Ryanism is born of actual contempt for the looters and moochers, a class war on behalf of his own class.

There are plenty of conservatives who will celebrate all of that. Not the "sneering plutocrat" part, but the Paul Ryanism.

Chait is demonstrating how Democrats can stir up antagonism to Romney, but much of that antagonism will be felt by people who were never going to vote for Romney... like Chait himself. I have never hated Romney, he says. Yeah, you didn't hate him because he seemed so bland and ineffectual, and you didn't think he'd win. But Paul Ryan and his crisp conservatism — that, you hate. I'd say Romney ought to avoid sucking up to Chait. That's the McCain mistake: You get liberals to like you, but they don't vote for you, and the conservatives lose interest.

Chait gives it all away when he brings up Ryan and portrays him as contemptuous. "Sneering plutocrat" is a great phrase, and I expect Democrats to take advantage and plunge forward with that meme. But Ryan is no sneering plutocrat. He brings youthful vitality and intelligence to the conservative cause. If Romney seemed like Ryan in the secret video, that's a useful revelation.

IN THE COMMENTS: Crimso said:

Did Chait actually suggest it is wrong to have contempt for looters and moochers? 

And edutcher said:

When you've lost Jonathan Chait...

you've really started to scare the Lefties.