( CNN ) -- `` I 'm not concerned about the very poor . '' Oops . Mitt Romney messed up . Again . This was a bigger `` oops moment '' for Romney than when he said a few weeks ago that the $ 374,327 he earned in speakers ' fees over the course of 12 months amounted to `` not very much . '' It was bigger than `` I like being able to fire people . '' It was the biggest since he blurted out that corporations are people , my friend '' at the Iowa State Fair . Call it a Freudian slip , call it overconfidence emerging from a big win in the Florida Republican primary , call it a classic , out-of-touch-sounding `` Rich Romney '' gaffe . It may be all of those things , but this comment represents a scripted piece of the Romney campaign strategy . He hopes to co-opt an Obama campaign message aimed at appealing to the middle-class voters each will need in the general election . Did his inept remark reflect a poor understanding of this position except as an election strategy ? One has reason to wonder . Whether it 's policies that affect poor Americans , women , immigrants or the nation 's ever-shrinking middle class , one gets the uneasy feeling that the positions Romney recites are crafted for political gain rather than from a sense of conviction about what is good or bad for this country . Why ? On abortion , for example , the former Massachusetts governor supported the right to choose and a greater role for government in helping spread access to health care -- which won him votes in that liberal state . But he shed those positions when they would prevent him from attracting conservative Republicans on a national stage . He has famously and repeatedly done similar turnabouts , most recently when he faced Florida 's Latino primary voters with a kinder , gentler version of his previously anti-immigrant rhetoric . Romney taking heat for `` poor '' comments . Of course , a conservative political candidate trying to both woo a big-government-averse base and appeal to general-election moderates would focus on the middle class . We may even understand when particularly cynical politicians tune their strategies toward higher-income Americans , who tend to vote in greater numbers than lower-income folks . But what is far more puzzling is the reason Romney gave CNN 's Soledad O'Brien for what sounded very much like callous disregard for the poorest Americans . `` I 'm not concerned about the very poor , '' he said . `` We have a safety net there . If it needs a repair , I 'll fix it . '' Actually , if you look at Romney 's policy agenda , you will see that `` fixing it '' could not be further from his plan , unless it 's doublespeak for `` eviscerating it . '' Romney calls for immediate across-the-board cuts in nonsecurity discretionary spending . That would mean slashing the budget for many of the programs that comprise our safety net , by 5 % , according to his spending proposal . These cuts would come on top of the 17 % cut already affected by this summer 's Budget Control Act . Romney : Middle-income Americans are focus , not very poor . Further , according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , his proposals to cap total spending at 20 % of gross domestic product , along with increasing already bloated military spending , cutting taxes and pursuing a balanced budget , would necessitate enormous cuts to vital programs . `` The cuts would measure 21 % in 2016 and 36 % in 2021 , '' the center said . `` If policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts and then cut all other nondefense programs by the same percentage , the cuts would rise to 30 % in 2016 and 54 % in 2021 . '' Funding could all be gutted that helps low-income students afford college with Pell grants , enables low-income women and their children to eat a more nutritious diet , covers the cost of the highly successful Head Start early-education program and pays for job training , housing assistance and veterans ' health care . In short , Romney 's plan would incinerate the very safety net that he claims to be his excuse for expressing no interest in addressing the needs of the `` very poor . '' Oh , and how poor are the poorest 5 % or 10 % of Americans he seemed to be referring to , exactly ? Even the census , which tracks household income for all Americans , does n't say with precision , although it does note that households with annual income of $ 15,000 or less made up 13.7 % of our population in 2010 . I do n't know about you , but I 'm concerned about them . If Romney 's lack of concern about the very poor came with a real plan indeed to fix a tattered safety net so that poverty rates could begin to decrease , he might be less vulnerable to the charge of being out of touch with voters . But as long as his gaffes and policy prescriptions continue to belie either a lack of understanding of the economic plight of Americans or a cynical political calculation that both ignores and will exacerbate that plight , Romney will go the way of his fellow `` oops '' -prone 2012 presidential candidate . When he joins the ranks of the also-rans , do n't worry about him . Given that his net worth is somewhere between $ 85 million and $ 264 million , if anyone in America has a `` very ample '' safety net to fall back on , it 's Mitt Romney . Join the conversation on Facebook . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Karen Dolan .
Karen Dolan : Mitt Romney 's remark that he 's `` not concerned about very poor '' was telling . She says it 's classic Romney : out-of-touch , scripted to pander to middle-class voters . She says Romney 's plans show safety-net programs would be cut in his administration . Dolan : Romney should be concerned about nearly 14 % of Americans in poverty .