The Ongoing Saga of Romney and the Proletariat

Getty’s Justin Sullivan, who was part of our Campaign ’12 Salon a few weeks ago, captured these stark images from Romney’s visit to an Ohio factory on Sunday. Looking at the expressions and the body language, one might speculate the hard hats were not exactly thrilled with the candidate. At the same time, however, we’ve seen a lot of these factory dog-and-pony shows interrupting a work shift so it could just be the workers didn’t like the interruption or were skeptical about the spectacle.

What does stand out about the image, however, is the way you could draw a line right through the middle of it — clock punchers above and Romney, GOP Senator Portman (worth about $8 mil), the factory’s Executive V.P. and the white hat supervisor-guy below — and there, again, you’d have a nice portrait of two Americas.

…Or, a variation on the same theme, there’s the layering here (reminiscent of the Newt factory shot we looked at last month) of the working man to the rear:

But then, maybe these expressions — reflecting the depth-of-the-ocean-difference between Bain Capital and Main Street capital — aren’t that ambiguous after all.

Slide show: Romney Campaigns Through Ohio One Day Before Super Tuesday (Zimbio)

(photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images caption: Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (C) tours a factory before a campaign rally at Gregory Industries on March 4, 2012 in Canton, Ohio. With one day to go before Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney is making one final push through Ohio.)