Maher: Romney is 'everything the American people hate about a politician'

On Friday night's edition of "Real Time with Bill Maher," host Bill Maher and his guests picked apart the many weaknesses of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney (MA).  The discussion began with both the Obama and Romney campaigns' attempts this week to reach out to the youth vote, but quickly segued into which of the Romney's myriad issues is the best by which to defeat him.

Democratic strategist and George Harris University professor Paul Begala said that he thinks class is the way to go after Romney, the fact that he has made his money by taking over struggling companies, pushing them into bankruptcy and then robbing their employees of compensation when the company's assets were absorbed by Bain Capital.

Another proposed line of attack, of course, is the ever-present narrative of Romney as a "flip-flopper."  Maher favored that strategy in that the "oily salesman" Romney is ultimately "everything the American people hate about a politician."  His flip-flopping is symptomatic of a larger insincerity and inability to empathize with anyone or anything outside his money-padded, 1-percent lifestyle.

Columnist S. E. Cupp jumped in with what has been a common refrain from right-wing surrogates lately, "When did we start demonizing prosperity?" she asked, as if Maher, Begala and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin were objecting to Romney solely on the fact that he's the billionaire CEO governor son of a billionaire CEO governor.

Sorkin reminded her that President Obama came from a lower middle class background, went to the "rich kid" schools on scholarships.  "He lived the American dream way more than Mitt Romey did," he said.

Watch the video, embedded vie Mediaite, below: