Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Charles Dharapak / AP
Lunch is served as Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at a campaign fundraising event, the first of which reporters’ cameras were allowed in, at The Grand America in Salt Lake City, Utah, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012.
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012 | 4:05 p.m.
SALT LAKE CITY — His campaign at a crossroads, Mitt Romney said Tuesday the federal government should not "take from some to give to the others" as he sought to deflect a wave of criticism over recent remarks dismissive of nearly half of all Americans.
The former Massachusetts governor neither disavowed nor apologized for the comments he made in a videotape that surfaced on Monday. In it, he said 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes and believe they are victims entitled to government help, adding that his job as a candidate is "not to worry about those people."
He spoke as at least two Republican Senate candidates pointedly disagreed with the man at the top of their ticket, and as GOP officials openly debated the impact of a series of recent controversies on the party's chances to capture the White House from Barack Obama.
Obama's White House piled on, seven weeks before Election Day. "When you're president of the United States, you are president of all the people, not just the people who voted for you," said press secretary Jay Carney. He added that Obama "deeply believes that we're in this together."
Romney seemed to say otherwise in the video, made last May, in which he told donors at a fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans "believe the government has a responsibility to care for them ... believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement." He said, "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
In a Tuesday interview on Fox, the network of choice for conservatives, Romney said he wasn't writing off any part of a deeply divided electorate in a close race for the White House, including seniors who are among those who often pay no taxes. Instead, he repeatedly sought to reframe his remarks as a philosophical difference of opinion between himself and Obama.
"I'm not going to get" votes from Americans who believe government's job is to redistribute wealth," he said, adding that was something Obama believes in.
"I know there's a divide in the country about that view. I know some believe government should take from some to give to the others. ... I think that's an entirely foreign concept."
He also said he wants to be president so he can help hard-pressed Americans find work and earn enough so they become income taxpayers.
Romney didn't say so, but the U.S. income tax is designed to be progressive, so those who earn the most theoretically pay the most. Through programs as diverse as Social Security, Medicare, health care and food stamps, the government collects tax revenue and pays it out in the form of benefits for those who qualify.
Privately, some Republicans were harshly critical of Romney's most recent comments and his overall campaign to date, saying he had frittered away opportunities. They also noted that with early voting already under way in some states, the time to recover was smaller than might appear.
Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Connecticut, was open with her criticism. "I disagree with Governor Romney's insinuation that 47% of Americans believe they are victims who must depend on the government for their care," she said in a statement posted to her website.
Sen. Scott Brown, in a tough race for re-election in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, said of Romney's comments: "That's not the way I view the world."
Still, with high-profile presidential debates and seven weeks of campaigning yet ahead, others said those concerns were overstated.
"I don't expect the negative headlines of this week will be what we're talking about a week from now," said Fergus Cullen, the former Republican state chairman in New Hampshire and a close ally of Romney. Like other Republicans, he said, "It's incumbent on the Romney campaign to make it (the election) about Obama's handling of the economy."
Top Republicans in Congress volunteered no reaction to Romney's remarks — just as they generally refrained from commenting a week ago when he issued a statement that inaccurately accused the Obama administration of giving comfort to demonstrators after they breached the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
In the days since, Republicans have grumbled that Romney needed to sharpen his appeal to struggling middle class Americans by stating more clearly what he would do as president to help them. That effort began overnight with a new ad designed to appeal to female voters.
The controversies blazed as opinion polls showed Obama moving out to a narrow lead nationally and in some of the key battleground states in the two weeks since back-to-back national political conventions.
The sluggish economy and lingering high unemployment are by far the overriding issues of the election, and Romney's case for the presidency is based on his claim that his success as a businessman has left him the skills needed to create jobs in a nation where unemployment is 8.1 percent.
Obama and the Democrats have tried to counter by depicting the president's challenger as a multimillionaire who has some of his wealth invested in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere overseas, and is out of touch with the needs of middle class Americans.
In his original reaction to the video, posted by the left-leaning magazine Mother Jones, Romney told reporters Monday night that his fundraising remarks were "not elegantly stated." But he offered no apologies and did not answer directly when asked if he felt he had offended anyone.
He also called for the release of the entire video, rather than selected clips, and Mother Jones did so Tuesday afternoon.
By then, the magazine had already posted another excerpt in which Romney offered an unvarnished assessment of the chances for peace in the Middle East. "The Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace," and "the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish," he said.
"You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem," he said, "and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it."
Obama, who has yet to comment on Romney's videotaped comments, had an appearance on the David Letterman show and a fundraiser with Beyonce and Jay-Z on his campaign schedule for the day.
Romney held a fundraiser in Salt Lake City, with a second one set for evening in Dallas. Obama's campaign emailed a fundraising appeal to supporters referring to Romney's remarks and posted a video online asking voters to watch his comments and respond.
"That's not somebody who I'm thinking, 'Oh, I want him as my president,'" says one woman shown in the video.
Wow. This divisive mormon wont represent 47% or gay guys or lesbians or immigrants or non christians! Lets face it, he is for the top 1% and mormons only.
OBAMA HAS BEEN TRYING FOR MONTHS TO STEM DAMAGE FROM ALL OBAMAS VIDEOS & HIS RECORD.
OBAMA never mentions his 4 year record because it horrible ( more Americans unemployed, 6 trillion added to the debt ) eventhough Obama promised to lower unemployment & he would cut the debt in half.
OBAMA never mentions the poor or the poverty rate because Obama has increased the US poverty rate to 1 in 6 Americans now in poverty. 45 million now on food stamps. Obama scraps Clintons work for welfare & now requires that you don't have to work or look for work to get welfare. Just free money from Obama. Obama wants as many people poor & on welfare as possible because those people will always vote Democratic & for Obama.
OBAMA still blames Bush 4 years later. Obama says the economy is so bad because the republicans blocked him EVENTHOUGH Obama had a democratic controlled Senate & House his 1st 2 years AND the democrats have controlled the Senate and the house since 2007 only loosing just the House for 2011. The democrats have been in the position to get anything accomplished that they wish & the economy is in shambles, the USA is broke ( 16 trillion in debt ) & our foreign relations are destroyed. Obama has insulted Israel & Great Brittin & the middle east hates us more now than ever.
CLICK TO HEAR 2007 CANDIDATE OBAMA SAYING HE WILL CURE MUSLIM HOSTILITY - http://www.breitbart.com/Br...
There are 1.9 million more unemployed Americans than the day Obama was inaugurated http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/e...
Obama has created record debt at a faster pace than any President in history
Bin laden is dead and GM is alive. We have been creating jobs for 40 months. Obama is for everyone. Romney is not. Mormons never bring people together.
The video tell us many things, and confirms what many of us have suspected. Mitt can't lie his way out of this one.
Character matters and there is no way to talk his way out of what can clearly be heard, read, and seen in the each of the videos.
This is another of the many events and gaffs that show Romney is unfit to be our President.
Obama's record cannot be isolated from the events and problems that led to the clean up he had to deal with. Nor can they be isolated from the global economic crisis which effects us directly and indirectly. To think otherwise is denial or ignorance.
Romney wants to haul the 47% off to the garbage dump
It's always amusing to watch someone that "claims" to be a Christian and a follower of the teachings of Jesus, spew so much disdain of the poor.
He apparently believes that he's going to buy his way into heaven.
Mormons don't believe you should gamble but they have no problem taking the profits from gambling.
....AND OBAMA HAS NEVER OFFENDED ANY GROUP"..THE SAME OBAMA WHO SAYS ( YOU DIDN'T BUILD YOUR BUSINESS ) OR ( WE NEED TO SPREAD THE WEALTH )" THE SAME OBAMA WHO HAS OFFENDED THE ENTIRE NATION BY INCREASING THE UNEMPLOYED TO 23 MILLION AMERICANS.
Sorry, the Obama media should look under Obama's bus ........... it is really crowded..........
Obama campaign abandons white working-class voters in favor of minorities and the educated
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... cated.html
President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign will be the first in modern political history to abandon white working-class voters, strategists claim.
For decades, Democrats have been losing more and more blue collar whites. Their alienation helped lead to the massive Republican wave in 2010, when the GOP wooed 30 percent more of them than the Democrats could.
Democratic strategists say President Obama is focusing his attention, instead, on poor black and Hispanic voters and educated white professionals.....
.....'All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment... and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic,' longtime political reporter Thomas B. Edsall wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times. ......"
factsforyou is not very accurate with the facts. Obama never said " You didn't build your business" Your guy Romney screwed up big time and the best thing he can do before the election would be to shut up.
factsforyou gets an A+ in bagger logic. The irony is off the charts with links to Breitbart, WaPo and dailymail as 'proof' of 'facts'. LOL. What's next are you going to drop some deep thoughts from Joseph Farrah at WND on us? Or maybe you can enlighten us with some 'facts' from Tucker at Dailycaller. I feel a Rasmussen poll coming on.
That is not what Romney means. I feel like a victim to the Obama administration, what has he done for me??? Nothing. I pay higher health insurance premiums and my copay and deductible had to go up with it. I pay taxes, not like 50% of Americans across the country, which means I must be carrying their share of the burden of running this country. I'm not in foreclosure, I own my home out right, I have no debt. Obama is only trying to split the nation, which I must say he is doing a good job, he is deceiving the nation with his let tax millionaires when his real plan is to raise taxes for anyone making over $200,000. I'm more comfortable with a president who can work with congress, who will admit when they make a mistake and knows the difference between running a business using investors, instead of using taxpayers to invest in failing companies.