WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney, during a private May fund-raiser captured on video, talked disparagingly about nearly half the electorate, saying they were “dependent on government” and could not be convinced to “take personal responsibility” for their lives.
In blunt terms clearly not intended for public consumption, Romney said that 47 percent of the country’s citizens see themselves as “victims’’ and will, without fail, vote for President Obama.
Comments
My 87 year old father in law, a WWII veteran and disabled, is one of these 47% leeches. Good to see Romney wants to get him off the dole. Ironically, the guy is pretty senile but would vote for Romney if he could leave the nursing home. I don't think he sees himself as a victim, however.
The Democrats evidently are waging biological warfare, they have infected Romney with FOOT IN THE MOUTH DISEASE
He just won my vote. The Democrats are supposed to be the party of science and truth, but they don't challenge the veracity of Romney's statements. Since FDR, Democrats have understood, the more people on the dole, the more votes and power for them. Once you get 50% of the people on the dole, you have a permanent majority.
I'm dismissing 50% of the major presidential candidates, the one who fails to acknowledge the millions and millions of senoir citizens and veterans who are a large part of the 47% of AMERICAN CITIZENS that he completely dismissed as irrelevant, because they do not currently pay income tax. Those living breathing people include my 84 year-old mother, and my 90 year-old father-in-law, disabled in by a German sniper in WWII. These people worked hard, fought our wars, paid excise, income, and social security taxes all their working lives, and still pay sales taxes and other taxes today. It's become clear Romney doesn't really care about 99% of Americans, though remarkably he still expects a majority to vote for him.
I was dumbfounded at Ann's RNC plea that "you may not like Mitt or agree with him or what he stands for, but you need to vote for him". Say what? Why would people vote for someone who despises them?
He's not wrong and you have to put this in perspective. Obama is trying to convince anyone who gets a check for whatever ason from the taxpayers, that they will lose it if Romney is elected. I've read that 47 pct don't pay taxes either.
Numeral, it won't matter to you, jonrobin2, migh et al, but at least pretend you deal with facts/reality when discussing this topic. As noted in the Economix blog in the New York Times, "The nonpartisan and highly respected Tax Policy Center derived the 47 percent number - it is actually 46 percent, as of 2011 - and published an excellent analysis of it last summer.
It found that about half of the households that do not pay federal income tax do not pay it because they are simply too poor. The Tax Policy Center gives as an example a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 a year: The household would pay no federal income tax because its standard deduction and other exemptions would simply erase its liability.
The other half, the Tax Policy Center found, consists of households taking advantage of tax credits and other provisions, mostly support for senior citizens and low-income working families.
Put bluntly, these are not households shirking their tax liabilities. The pool consists mostly of the poor, of relatively low-income working families and of old people. The tax code is specifically designed to reduce the burden on them. [ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/the-reasons-behind-the-people-who-pay-no-income-tax/ ]
Senior citizens (my mother) and verterans (my father-in-law), don't pay taxes, but they built this country and fought our wars, and made America great. Romney's message is no different than the one he had at Bain for the employees at companies he gutted: Your work may have built this place, but I don't need you now, can make a bigger profit without you, so, you're fired. Being heartless, and lacking a shred of loyalty may be okay in business, but sorry, those are fatal shortcomings in a president.
Now I understand why Paul Ryan is still running for re-election in Wisconsin. If he had some guts, he would resign right now. Z.
Numeral- "He's not wrong." Are you kidding? He's wrong on the fact that none of those 47% would vote for him. Many of those folks are elderly and on SS. He despises them but they will vote for him. On a deeper level he is way wrong. As a disabled veteran I'm not a victim. I worked all my life. I get SS, Vet. Benefits and my retirement and earned them all. I also am heavily invested in stocks. A leech, a victim? I don't think so. Perhaps the few thousand millionaires who pay no taxes are leeches, but I'm not. However, beyond that anyone who can simply dismiss with disdain, who seemingly is unaware of the number veterans and elderly amongst that 47 percent does not deserve to be President. He shows himself to utterly and completely out of touch with vast swaths of American's. I never realized how much of a Dickens character Mitt truly is. "Are there no poor houses?" "Let them die and reduce the excess population." By the way I also pay taxes do what does that make me in Mitt's world, a sorta leech.
You are so full of baloney, Attaturk. You know he's not talking about the elderly and veterans. You should listen to some different news channels for a change. George Stephanopolis and the "quivering leg", Chris Matthews Alphabet media characters have misled you.
Pro fox-if Mitt is not talking about the poor and the elderly he should adjust those percentages.What he said is truly insulting to wide swaths of the electorate whom he needs in November .Many, many people who fall under his definition were planning on voting for him.Now, maybe not so much.
Of course people will vote for the candidate that will give them what they need to survive, after all, what would we americans do without our government, we couldn't function.
I know, "Let them eat cake." I think that theme was rejected some time ago. Without government we have chaos and those down on their luck will have little chance to get back in the game. Take a look at lousy governments around the world and judge for yourself what the purpose of government is. Thomas Paine called government "a necessary evil" because of our "wickedness." People on their own do not always do the right thing and squash rights and allow their fellow citizens to decay when with some help they can contribute to making the society better. If you look at the US, those states with the higher taxes and contribute more to the Feds than they get back, are most prosperous. Those who get more than a dollar back for every dollar sent to Washington are states with low taxes and serious poverty. Without aid from the wealthier states they would be sunk.
Not 'let them eat cake' this time but "if they have no money to eat, why don't they just sell stock like we did?"
While he clearly loves Military contractors he does not particularly like the folks who put on the uniform. Won't mention them at his convention and he does not like all of the government benefits they EARNED while in uniform...to him they are free-loaders on the dole!
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Welcome to Romney world. Individuals and families have paid in taxes so if they or someone in their family is down on their luck or never had the chance to save enough for a decent retirement they or their family would have a chance at a livable life. It is decidedly off base and the mark of a cloistered politician that he does not understand society's Social Contract and continues not to understand even after the manure hits the fan. However I thank Mitt Romney. He has forthrightly told what Republicans believe. Let people starve or live on the edge or depend on charity or hopefully they have a rich uncle to make it through. This is not what a society is for. Tom Paine remarked: "No one joins a society to be worse off."
"Didn't have the chance to save for retirement?" Most people work for 40 years, in 40 years, people didn't have a chance to save anything at all? Don't expect too many people to believe that.
Pats Girl-if you are 29, come back in 20 years and brag about how much you have saved.
I suggest we all dismiss 50% of the major presidential candidates, the one who apparently fails to understand that millions and millions of senoir citizens and veterans are among the AMERICAN CITIZENS he dismissed as irrelevant. These living breathing people worked hard, fought our wars, paid excise, income, and social security taxes all their working lives, still pay sales taxes and other taxes today, and deserve a President who doesn't just cast them to the curb like a 'redundant' Bain employee.
And???? So this is a big story why? He spoke the truth.
In context, a favorite liberal claim, he is correct. Also, if this had been a secret tape of Obama saying somehting similar the press would not be critiquing the comment but asking the Romney campaign if they planted the person and if they should repudiate the remarks and find out hwo taped it.
But it was not the president, it was Mitt, Mr. Entitled.
Missing the point Resterling
Oh, outrage, outrage! It is so sweet. Only in Taxachusetts would the chorus swell in vibrato with words to inflame. Mr. Obama and you believers love wallowing in self-pity. Well, get a life! The "rest of the story" is that the blind, iron clad votes Democrats count on are all immutably immersed in seas of self pity. Gathered within that 47% are those beloved teacher's unions in Chicago and all those career welfarers who live on food stamps, medicaid and social welfare programs. Don't forget those registered illegal alien voters lined up in that 47%. Woe is me to need to I.D. to prove who I am to vote - TRAVESTY! Facts are facts and the truth is no matter how bad or disastrous the last 4 years of Obama's reign has been, you believers will vote for him.
I don't think there is any real need for outrage. I suspect that writing off 47% of the population in a race where the percentage needed to win is between about 47% and 51% will not much improve Mitt's "likeability" rating. Or, perhaps of more significance, his chances of winning.
Do you have a cite for your claim about voter fraud and "illegal aliens"? Or...or...could you be spouting from the patoot? I suspect the latter.
So, I suppose my family is a member of the "you people" Mrs.Romney referred to. Many more working Americans have probably been "victimized" by Mr.Romney than their desire to pull themselves out of the putrid,self-loathing, 47% class of voters he has written off.
How arrogant. First, he did not inherit, his father was alive so he just gave him the money. It's their money and they can do what they want with it. But he just has to twist the truth. So it is OK for Mitt to use the tax code to avoid taxes, but not working people. All of you who think he wouldn't't touch SS etc., just wait if by some crazy accident he gets a chance. He has contempt for real work because he has never done it.
Stop the jealousy. At least give Romeny credit for working hard and being successful. Sorry that you are so miserable.
There's no jealousy in being outraged by Romney's exploitive behavior at Bain. There's no jealousy in criticizing someone who wormed his way into companies run poorly by his b-school buddies, paying them off with golden parachutes and then raiding the retirement and cash accounts. There's no jealousy in criticizing a man who would attend client meetings -- at client expense -- *only* if they provided a white limo to pick him up and drop him off. There's no jealousy in criticizing a man who has so little regard for truth that, when told that market reports to validate his Bain goal don't exist, he'd order his staff to make them up. This is not jealousy - it's outrage that someone who had so many advantages is so unprincipled that he stomps on ethics and exploits honest, hardworking people. George Romney is turning over in his grave.
And Romney is wrong where?? He's simply saying what so many of us are thinking. God forbid (oops, can I say that 3-letter word?), we strive to get people working and drop the welfare percentage. Politics is a business, and if there is one thing successful businesses do is keep alive their market. What would happen to the Democratic party if everyone prospered? Think about it.
I can relate. I too have been trying to explain how polls can be showing 47% of American voters still supporting Obama. Tempting to guess that they must all be on the government dole than just admit they're clueless. One can reach people who depend on the country staying fiscally healthy, but how does one reach the clueless?
You should be Romney's new campaign manager. You're hired! Get out there and call everyone stupid. That will work. You can even help him pack his bags to head back to Belmont.
This is why Willard Romney won't release his taxes.....he is one of those 47% and it would hurt his message.
GE did not pay any income taxes. I agree they, and other large corporations are "entitled leaches."
Obama's bailout of GM was one big butt-kiss to the unions, at our expense. He looks good and it costs me money. Oh, and protectionism of businesses unable to compete isn't a free-market economy; it is socialism.
This is simply another case of Mitt telling people who aren't in his world to get lost. TELL MITT TO GET LOST IN NOVEMBER BEFORE HE THROWS YOU UNDER THE BUS.
Maybe 47% of us pay no income taxes because we don't earn enough? Women and minorities together make up a 60% majority of the workforce, yet we're paid 20%-25% less than our white male peers. Equal pay for equal work would certainly generate more income tax revenue, but I don't hear Romney eager to make that happen. Have the rich actually done this to themselves?
Unlike Obama, Romney tells the truth. The truth hurts sometimes. Half of the country doesn't care about taxes because they do not pay any income taxes. It's time to stop blaming people who work hard and make it.
It seems like the so-called "tax-payers" are the miserable ones, and they're looking for someone else to blame for their own personal dissatisfaction with their lives. So, ergo, it must be those lazy slackers who are "stealing" your hard-earned money, huh? Except that a huge swath of that 47% is, as other commenters have stated, retirees, veterans, disabled, etc. Do you think they shouldn't be supported by other citizens? Or, since they didn't manage to predict their future misfortune, they should be discarded? No, it's not a surprise that "many people think these thoughts" or that Mitt R-Money does, because people are irrational and will believe what they want to believe, even if the facts prove otherwise. What's interesting is that Mitt dared to say it all out loud. Tsk-tsk, Mr. Candidate. You're showing that you're not ready for prime time.
It's not the truth. In fact it's a complete mis-representation of both the people involved and the tax code.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/the-reasons-behind-the-people-who-pay-no-income-tax/?hp
The nonpartisan and highly respected Tax Policy Center derived the 47 percent number – it is actually 46 percent, as of 2011 – and published an excellent analysis of it last summer.
It found that about half of the households that do not pay federal income tax do not pay it because they are simply too poor. The Tax Policy Center gives as an example a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 a year: The household would pay no federal income tax because its standard deduction and other exemptions would simply erase its liability.
The other half, the Tax Policy Center found, consists of households taking advantage of tax credits and other provisions, mostly support for senior citizens and low-income working families.
Put bluntly, these are not households shirking their tax liabilities. The pool consists mostly of the poor, of relatively low-income working families and of old people. The tax code is specifically designed to reduce the burden on them.
He who pays less in taxes than most middle-class Americans, because of dubious tax loopholes, castigates those who are poor, disabled or elderly? And he thinks Latinos have advantages over him? WOW! Here's an idea, Mitt: Get rid of the 47% moochers by outsourcing them to China.
"Us versus them" was useful when dealing with foreign threats, especially military threats, but to dismiss half of the people you want to govern as 'them' is cynical and Machiavellian.
A rare moment of candor for the Governor. Another reason why the American voter isn't going to elect a financier to be President. They never have and certainly will not so soon after his industry created the largest re-distribution of wealth out of the middle class.