I caught this item on Political Wire just before I left the house for several hours this afternoon. My immediate thought was: Romney is worse than even I thought he is. It's frightening to have this guy still so close to the presidency. But I also thought: this could be pretty bad for him, eventually.
By the time I got back it had blown up so big that Romney called a sudden 10 p.m. press conference, tried to control the damage by answering three questions, not really backing off the statements, and stalking off while the questions were still coming. That's all within a matter of hours.
Here's that item:
A hidden camera video of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser shows him talking disparagingly of people who will vote for President Obama.
Said Romney: "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what...These are people who pay no income tax."
He adds: "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
The original story and video appear here at Mother Jones.
The Obama campaign was quick to respond. Campaign director Jim Messina got to the heart of it: "It's hard to serve as president for all Americans when you've disdainfully written off half the nation."
Disdain as it turned out was one of the milder words used to describe the Romney statement. Perhaps the most eloquent was Jonathan Chait whose New York story online ran under the headline The Real Romney Captured On Tape Turns Out To Be A Sneering Plutocrat. He writes:
"Instead the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined...The revelations in this video come to me as a genuine shock. I have never hated Romney. I presumed his ideological makeover since he set out to run for president was largely phony, even if he was now committed to carry through with it, and to whatever extent he’d come to believe his own lines, he was oblivious or naïve about the damage he would inflict upon the poor, sick and vulnerable. It seems unavoidable now to conclude that Romney’s embrace of Paul Ryanism is born of actual contempt for the looters and moochers, a class war on behalf of his own class."
The condescension doesn't surprise me--I noted that in his acceptance speech. But this is naked contempt--colder than the hot contempt of some on the Rabid Right, but cold contempt in some ways is worse. It's just as self-righteous and deluded.
The 47% Romney is talking about isn't 47%: it is (on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street) the 99%. He has declared class war on seniors on Social Security and Medicare, the millions on unemployment insurance and who need food stamps to feed their families in tough times... Whatever the political effect, what it tells us about policy is devastating. It really is going to be tax cuts for the rich, and everybody else be damned.
All this comes after a week in which Romney was trying to get out from under his Embassy statements, and after a morning of brutal stories about the wheels coming off his campaign, and disorganized and contradictory comments from his campaign about how they aren't disorganized and contradictory, including contradictory statements about how the campaign is going to change. Here's a summary of that.
All this led Andy Borowitz to file his report:
"In what his campaign described today as a bold strategy to insure victory in the Presidential contest, Republican nominee Mitt Romney will undergo a procedure to have his mouth wired shut until Tuesday, November 6th. The decision reportedly was made in response to the release earlier in the day of rare video footage showing Mr. Romney saying what he really thinks."
But what this portends is far from comic. For all day apparently the Rabid Right has been cheering Romney's statements, which he did not really disavow. It now looks as if he's stuck with a campaign of Gingrichian hate, against the socialist food stamp President and his undeserving supporters, that 99% of black Americans and 65% of Latinos, half of white America, most elderly and students, etc. who can't be convinced to take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
So it's likely to get uglier, especially with the huge negative ad buys his billionaires are funding. But those who still have the right to vote can take personal responsibility and care enough to make their votes count, and make sure Romney does not move into the White House.
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