Boy, was this stupid:

 He could have bet a beer. Or maybe a steak dinner.

But during a heated dispute with Rick Perry during Saturday night’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa, Mitt Romney extended his right hand and asked the Texas governor if he’d wager $10,000 to settle a dispute over his healthcare record. The rich bet instantly provided Romney’s opponents with new ammunition for their charge that he’s out of touch with middle-class America.

“I’m just saying, you’re for individual mandates, my friend,” Perry said to Romney.

“You’ve raised that before, Rick, and you’re simply wrong,” Romney responded, extending his hand toward Perry. “Rick, I’ll tell you what: 10,000 bucks?”

Perry laughed it off: “I’m not in the betting business.”

It was an exchange that spanned less than a minute. But it’s one that likely won’t soon be forgotten.

Only $10,000? What about the keys to the Maybach?

Gingrich also got off a good line at Romney’s expense tonight:

“The only reason you didn’t become a career politician is because you lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994.”

UPDATE: A new piece in the NYT suggests that to smear Romney as an out-of-touch Richie Rich is especially unfair. Excerpt:

Soon after Mitt Romney handed out eye-popping bonuses to top performers at his private equity firm in the early 1990s, a young employee invited him to ride in his brand-new toy — a $90,000 Porsche 911 Carrera.

Mr. Romney was entranced by the sleek, supercharged vehicle: at the end of a spin around downtown Boston, he turned to the employee, Marc Wolpow, and marveled, “Boy, I really wish I could have one of these things.”

Mr. Wolpow was dumbfounded. “You could have 12 of them,” he recalled thinking to himself.

But Mr. Romney had insisted on driving an inexpensive, domestic stalwart that looked out of place in the company parking lot — a Chevrolet Caprice station wagon with red vinyl seats and a banged-up front end.

It was a stark sign of the tug of war, still evident in Mr. Romney’s life, between an instinctive, at times comical frugality, and an embrace of the lavish lifestyle that accompanied his swelling Wall Street fortune.

Mr. Romney, 64, has poured $52 million of his own money into campaigns for the Senate and the White House, but is obsessed with scoring cheap flights on the discount airline JetBlue.

He has acquired six-figure thoroughbred horses for his wife, Ann, yet plays golf with clubs from Kmart. And he has owned a series of multimillion-dollar homes, from a lakefront compound in New Hampshire to a beach house in California, but once rented a U-Haul to move his family’s belongings himself between two of the vacation retreats.

Friends, co-workers and relatives describe Mr. Romney, now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, as something of a paradox: a man exceedingly deft at and devoted to making money who has never become entirely comfortable with his own wealth.