Two Things I Don't Get (Mainly One)

Jordan Weissmann piles on the "let's not take Romney at his word" wagon with regard to FEMA. One (the one everybody knows is a problem): Why does the fact that Romney flip flops a lot mean that he'll always flip to the reasonable position? Why are people always so confident about this? He might flip being relatively technocratic as Governor to being Tea Partier-in-Chief for all we know. Two (the main one): Romney uses many strong words, and it is quite difficult to thread Weissman's needle on this one. When King repeats: "Including disaster relief, though?" as his follow up, Romney replies: "We cannot...afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we'll all be dead and gone before it's paid off. It makes no sense at all." Ok, so we, the sophisticated, are to understand that Romney really doesn't mean that. But what is the message that comes down from our political elites? There is a lot of evidence that the views of the general public to a large degree reflect the attitudes of the elites. Why is it then permissible to use such strong language? To say we should read between the lines is to miss the point that many people won't. Why isn't this something to call Romney on?