Mitt Romney tells Microsoft staffers, “I love you,” putting a fresh spin on the class warfare meme.

Mitt Romney loves corporations. They are his friends. They are his pals. They are chums who helped him make millions. And that love was on full display during his appearance at Microsoft’s Washington State headquarters.

Romney opened by saying that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer reminded him that he had tried to recruit him to his consulting firm, Bain and Company, but that Ballmer, now worth billions, had ended up forming Microsoft. Romney joked, “When I saw him, he said, ‘Mitt, do you remember recruiting me?’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t remember,’ but I said, ‘If you’d had joined us, you’d be worth a million or two by now.” Everyone got a good laugh at the idea of Ballmer having a paltry two million. But then they got down to business.

Romney’s most notable remarks revolved around “cheating” China’s currency manipulation and how it hurts American trade. Penalties and legislation being discussed on Capitol Hill, said Romney, are simply “political theater,” MSNBC reports.

When he’s president, said Romney, he will take a decidedly aggressive stand against China.

“On day one of my administration, I would designate China as a currency manipulator,” Romney told the crowd, according to ‘Business Week.’ “I want to make sure that people we trade with follow the rules and if someone consistently cheats, I want to make sure they understand that can’t go on.”

“We don’t need new legislation; we need a new president,” he said, and reportedly received a round of applause from the audience.

Romney wants to protect the private sector because he “loves” them. “I’m afraid in some corners people don’t like you very much,” he said. “They feel somehow business is bad, that business people are bad. I don’t dislike you. I love you. I appreciate what you do. I appreciate the private sector.”

Mitt’s infamous corporate “friendship” just evolved into something more, or is it devolved?

Just this month Romney described the Occupy Wall Street protests as “dangerous” and “class warfare,” yet here he is, feeding into the same “us versus them” mentality on which class wars thrive. It’s as if he wants to see a class war, so that he can sow anxiety and solidify business interests behind him. Rather than working with the 99 percent movement, people to whom “a million or two” is a lot of money, Romney thinks his well-heeled friends should fear them.

Microsoft of course can’t be blamed for Romney’s subtext. The company told the ‘Boston Herald’ that their PAC organized the appearance and has previously hosted other political leaders, including Democrats Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. Still, the backdrop allows a bit of imaginative whimsy amidst the economic woes and rancor.

Pretend for a second that our world is actually a dystopian science fiction novel — or movie, if you prefer — about the beginning of an apocalyptic civil war. Well, PC people, according to various non-scientific, consumer-oriented studies, are more conservative than the liberal Mac user. Pretending that that data matters, and, again, that we live in this dystopian novel/movie in which cultural and political divides are simplistically exaggerated, wouldn’t Romney be great as the money-loving, polished politico who uses his conservative, PC-using army to fight against liberal Mac users played by gay hipster vegans?

But the only winners in such a battle, we know, are computers, so let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Anyway, here’s video of Romney’s joke about Steve Ballmer: