Maddow befuddled by snooty Romney donors: These must be leftist protesters

Noting that Romney's donors at recent fundraiser in New York seemed more like fictional caricatures of the rich and affluent, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wondered if the Republican presidential candidate had been "punked."

"There are only two possibilities here at this point," she said Monday night. "Either this is brilliant satire and the Romney campaign is being punked, and I tip my hat to the 'billionaires for Romney' or whoever you are who have pulled this off and convinced all these reporters that you are actual rich people saying things that obnoxious about Mitt Romney and what he stands for. Or there is somebody inside the Romney campaign who is trying to make Mitt Romney look as much as possible as like Thurston Howell."

Various reporters detailed the fancy $25,000-a-person fundraiser, describing the motorcade of Aston Martins, Bentleys, Feraris, Porsches, Land Rovers, Mercedes Benzes and BMWs arriving at the 40-room private estate in East Hampton. But what has received even more attention are the things the wealthy Romney donors told the press.

"I don't think the common person is getting it ... My college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact," one woman told the Los Angeles Times.

"It's not helping the economy to pit the people who are the engine of the economy against the people who rely on that engine," one Romney donor said, expressing his disappointment in President Barack Obama.

“He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” another donor told the New York Times, while his wife excitedly proclaimed that a major executive from Miramax had stayed on their 75-foot yacht.

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