Pickle barrel e waterfall - Tradução em português

"But this week when Romney said that he wasn't concerned about the very poor in this country, he jumped in the pickle barrel and went over the waterfall"

I know that pickle barrel is "barril de peclis" and waterfall can mean "cachoeira" but I couldn't understand the real meaning of this phrase.

Would be the translation like this: "Mas está semana quando Romney disse que ele não se preocupava sobre os mais pobres nesse país, ele pulou no barril the picles e foi em cima da cachoeira" ?

This translation doens't make any sense to me. Did I translated these words wrongly? Or this can be an idiom? Or I simply translated to portuguese wrongly?