Oh, so that’s who the Republicans are complaining about, Mitt Romney! You know — the unemployed guy just goofin off, schleppin’ around the mansion, flying around on his private jet, stubbornly pursuing only one job, when he’s better suited to so many less-desirable jobs. That guy.

That’s the lazy, too-good-for-your-minimum-wage-job unemployed guy the Republicans refer when trying to cut off unemployment benefits. I wondered who that guy was.

Turns out he showed up at an event for unemployed workers down at Buddy Brew Coffee in Tampa Florida, according to New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny. A bunch of folks were telling their hard-knock stories about trying to survive without a job. Tom Yarrenton, for one, told Romney his story of being unemployed. At age 55, after 31 years as an auditor in the manufacturing industry, Yarrenton lost his job a few months ago. “I should tell my story,” Romney told Mr Yarrenton and the other unemployed folks in solidarity. “I am also unemployed.” Must’ve made them feel better.

Creative Commons photo by Dave Delay

Mitt Romney thinks his last five years of permanent campaigning are the same as being unemployed.

I wonder if he should reassure the folks whose stories the National Employment Law Project is collecting. It might help R.P., a father of three, from Pembroke, New Hampshire, who recently lost his job as an IT technician, to know he’s in the same boat as multimillionaire Mitt Romney. “I have sent my resume to over 250 companies since June 2010 and have had 6 interviews all of which told me I was either overqualified or underqualified,” R.P. reports. “At this point I have started applying at fast food chains and janitorial companies but still cannot get hired. I broke down crying during an interview yesterday because I cannot stop thinking about what will happen if I can’t find a job that at least pays me $250 weekly.”

It couldn’t be R.P. and Tom Yarrenton that Republicans are trying to throw under the bus by yanking unemployment benefits, could it? And the other almost 14 million unemployed Americans struggling to find jobs that aren’t there? A congressional panel recently approved a GOP bill along party-lines that would allow states to take $31 billion of federal money that benefits the long-term unemployed and use it instead to pay down state debt. I couldn’t figure out why they would want to do this. I heard the complaints about the lazy, good-for-nuthins sucking off the guvmint’s teat instead of looking for work. But I didn’t actually know of someone like that until the other day when the former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential candidate spoke out in Tampa. The only problem is that Mitt Romney doesn’t collect unemployment insurance. His government subsidy comes in the form of the Bush tax cuts for multi-millionaires.

Now that that the Republicans have found their culprit, I am sure they will switch tacks and extend unemployment benefits for the millions of suffering out-of-work Americans and let the tax cuts for the lazy goofin’ off unemployed rich guys expire.