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September 18, 2012 12:48 AM UTC

Secret Video of Very Candid Mitt Romney Surfaces

  • 71 Comments
  • by: nancycronk

(Um, holy crap? – promoted by Colorado Pols)

A tracker attended a fundraiser for Mitt Romney earlier this year and filmed Romney speaking very candidly to friends and supporters about what he really thinks about the President of the United States, as well as those who voted for him. Mother Jones broke the story, dividing up the video into five parts. Some of the most potentially damaging quotes are below:

“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.”

Later he went on:

“[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Despite the necessity of Romney to improve his numbers within the Latino community, he said some disaparaging things about them when speaking with his friends (which is all the more interesting, given that Romney’s own father, George Romney, was reportedly born in Mexico to Mormon refugees escaping anti-polygamy laws).

Romney said of his father,

“Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.”

Then, when speaking of key demographic groups, he added:  

“..we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation.”

While speaking about messaging strategy, Romney repeatedly indicated he is going after people who voted for Obama in ’08, and does so by calling them, “these people” and “those people” rather than voters (kind of like, “you people”?).

“And the best success I have at speaking with those people (italics used for emphasis) is saying, you know, the president has been a disappointment…. What’re they gonna do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, “Yeah, I think you’re right.” What he’s going to do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who’s been successful, or who’s, you know, closed businesses or laid people off, and is an evil bad guy. And that may work.”

Romney then brags about his campaign team:

“I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn’t realize it. These guys in the US — the Karl Rove equivalents — they do races all over the world…they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I’d tell them to you, but I’d have to shoot you.”

When asked why Romney doesn’t discuss policy much, he responds that policy doesn’t win elections.

“…in a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject-discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn’t win elections. And there are, there are, there are-for instance, this president won because of “hope and change.”

Perhaps Romney’s most curious moment was when he attempted to predict the outcome of the race. Based on the assumption he would win, he said the following would occur:

“We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see– without actually doing anything– we’ll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets re-elected, I don’t know what will happen. I can- I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected.”

Mother Jones offers more “Mitt Romney at the fundraiser” to come soon. Grab some popcorn.

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71 thoughts on “Secret Video of Very Candid Mitt Romney Surfaces”

    1. Kinda nice to see Romney finally speak from his heart of hearts.  Really humanizes him.

      However, I think I see a flaw in his winning strategy.

      If 47% of us moochers are already a lock for the President, doesn’t that imply that Obama only needs 3% +1 of the non-moochers’ vote to win the election?

      That’s not much of a challenge, don’t you think.

      Guess we’ll get 4 more years by Mitt’s reasoning.

        1. Representatives that share his opinions.  We need to do something about that real soon.

          Bring back the moderates that have been pushed out of the Republican Party.  Or start another one.

          1. We need to do something about that real soon.

            You think?

            The republicans control a majority of state houses and I think state legislatures.  It is way too late for the dems to respond….most states don’t even have effective party organizations. The elections of 2010 were critically important…not just for the House but for the states.

            I think the repubs will take the Senate…..

  3. Can’t deny he’s run his campaign exactly as he promises here that he would. Anti-intellectual talking points, painting the President as a disappointment, and complete disregard for the working class.

    What does worry me is that the people who think Romney isn’t talking about them when he discusses the people beneath him. They don’t see themselves as poor. As Steinbeck said, “the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”  

  4. Willard’s not like you people . . .

    That’s just the way the ultra-wealthy, ultra-productive talk among themselves when they’re saying all the right things . . .

    You gotta’ admit — that’s some Presidential hair, huh?

    (I’ve found a new respect for ArapaGOP . . . coming up with any positive things to say about this knucklehead is harder than anyone imagined.)

    2. Yes, yes, yes! That’s just the way.

      They not only don’t know us, they don’t see us. We exist only as pesky, replaceable things, quite unnecessary to their very important self-made lives. And, having been a country club employee and one of those invisible things, less than a fly on the wall, I can attest that’s the way they think and talk among themselves.

      (Apologies for the !, but you so nailed it, and many folks refuse to believe it.)

  5. He doesn’t even pretend like he gives a shit about half the people in the country.

    That doesn’t even get to the point that he is full of shit.  Mitt Romney wouldn’t be in shouting distance of being elected if it weren’t for lower income whites, particularly white men.

    I had a “friend” (friend as in she was friends with my friends in high school 25 years ago) post something on facebook the other day “blah blah blah ‘obama sucks’ blah blah blah.”

    Her complaints were non specific or easily refutable, but I suspect relate more to the president’s race (like I said I’ve known her a long time).

    Kicker she is on medicaid and receiving SSDI, or as she would call it if a person of color was receiving it, “welfare”.

    Not to go into her medical condition, some of which is self induced, but despite her use of entitlements, she will joyfully pull the lever for Mitt Romney.

      1. Where the hell is his 2011 tax return? (Even his 2010 wasn’t complete.) Most folks get a couple of quarters’ extension. The bastard keeps getting credited for two years. I know, he only promised his 2011 “before the election”. But the lying s.o.b. has gotten away with so much, I think it’s time to return to that old subject: where are your tax returns, Willard, and what are you hiding?

        (As addressed to you, CT, this is all rhetorical, of course. Apologies. I’m just so pissed over this video [not that it reveals anything new] that any reminder of the lying cs’s past remarks/excuses/waffles/evasions/fuck-all-you-peons rebuffs sets me off. )

  7. DAMN RIGHT. Mitt is saying what needs to be said. We have an enormous dependent class in this country, and as Mitt has said before, there is already a safety net for them. We won’t pull out of the funk we’re in by focusing all of our energies on the people who are failing.

    The best course for America, and that INCLUDES the 47% who pay no federal income tax, is to focus our energy on success and encouraging success. Mitt believes that the best way forward is neither cutting programs or raising taxes, but by GROWING THE ECONOMY. Economic growth gives the Republicans our success while providing more for the dependent class, too. Democrats should fight Mitt, but not too much, because you and all of your precious programs will be better off under a Romney administration.

        2. Or do you have a ‘secret plan’ like Rmoney?  

          Those old people on the dole?  Put ’em to work!!!  They could be picking up trash on the highway or shoveling horseshit for Mitt.

          Those people who earn less than $20,000 a year?  DEPENDENTS!!!!  Tax ’em, make ’em pay!  ‘Broaden the tax base’!!!  Damn old and poor people–Standing in the way of Willard’s great love of money country.  Its a shame.  

        3. Or provide any substance.  But here is the skewer to your GOP ‘tax the poor’ BS, should you actually have the integrity to engage in a discussion as opposed to regurgitate some repackaged talking point.  

          http://economix.blogs.nytimes….

          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.

          …Moreover, the Bush tax cuts – the signature Republican economic policy of the 2000s, which doubled the child tax credit, increased a number of other deductions and exemptions, and lowered marginal tax rates – erased millions of families’ federal income tax liabilities.

          1. Team Willard wouldn’t let that fucking Bush class traitor speechify at their Tampa soirГ©e (. . . that, and his spindly white chicken legs look so out of place on a proper Cayman-registered yacht).

    2. Did you happen to catch Michael Grunwald’s excellent article One Nation Subsidized in last week’s TIME magazine?

      Got to give Mitt credit, he’s already got his vacation plans made for January 21st thru the next 4 years.  He’s confident that the economy will heal without him lifting a finger, because you know, he’s such a swell guy.

      “We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see– without actually doing anything– we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.

      Love to know which Banana Republic dictatorships his international team of crack election consultants worked for.

    3. I’m so tired of posting links….facts…that without exception the administrations of Democratic president OUTGREW the economy compared to Republicans.

      Counterintuitively, even the rich got richer under Dems.

      Obama has already put more private industry jobs into the economy than BOTH of the Bush disasters.

      Of course, the likelihood of you making a response to this painting you into the corner fact filled,  um, response is zero.  

      Like Republican economic results.

        1. I can.

          I can also honestly say that many more people would be worse off today if McCain had won. Not as bad as if a real teabagger had become president, of course, but Clinton did the math for you already at the Dem convention.

          How is Mitt supposed to create those 12M jobs BTW? Waiting for clarification on that.

        4. My job is secure, my 401(k) is up 115% since ARRA was enacted, health insurance is cheaper, friends are back from Iraq and will be back from Afghanistan.

          In what way are you worse off?  And crazy ramblings about creeping socialism don’t count.

        5. As Florida’s economy crashed in 2007-2009, there was zero hope that I could get any part time job at all, a job to help out as I took care of my parents after moving from Colorado.  

          I remember a black female manager of a Burger King that I was sort of friends with getting off of the phone from a job applicant.  She turned to me and with her hands showed me that the stack of applications she had was six inches high.

          Today I could go out and get SOME kind of a job.  Granted, minimum wage, but something.

          So, yes I am better off than four years ago.

          How about you?  

        6. Here I’ve been busting my nuts all day trying to keep your sorry-ass candidate from drowning alone, undefended, while you’re out lollygagging around behind the counter at the 7-11 and . . .

          Can you honestly say you’re better off now than you were four years ago?

          . . . this kind of tired nonsense is the very best you’re able to fucking come up with??!!??

          So much for helping your fellow man.  No more.  I’m through mother fucker — next time you’re on your own.  Good fucking luck.

        8. I’ll never forget the wild-eyed, crazed look on Henry Paulson’s face in the fall of 2008 — the Bushies pushed this country and the world economy to the brink, and that was after pushing our federal budget to the brink with two off-the-books wars (and uncountable deaths and injuries as a result) plus an unfunded prescription drug benefit.  And BTW, you can sometimes find Mr Paulson hiding out in the mountains of Colorado . . .

        10. Explain again how keeping taxes that are already in place and have been throughout the Recession–yet have not resulted in the magic job creatin’ that our rich overlords ensure will happen–if we just get rid of those pesky mercury standards for coal plants…

          You may believe that crap you spit back up here, but its not selling.  Not here, and not in America it seems.

          Tough cookies.  Choose a better candidate next time.  Or keep blaming someone else.  Talk about ‘victims’…  I have never seen a more responsibility-dodging crew as today’s GOP.  Everyone’s fault but their own.  …The GAYS!  The MUSLIMS!!! The MEXICANS!!!   SANDRA FLUKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    4. …..I presume you nor any family member does not use Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm supports, military employment, student loans, food stamps, whatever.

      You never answered my question about why my family and I are such reprobates for using some government programs to prevent death and homelessness.

      Anything to add?  

    5. What 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax?  Is your source for that a Romney tape?

      1.  The US population is approximately 311 million people.  Less than half of that is in the workforce.  So it’s a surprise that about half of Americans don’t owe income tax?

      2.  Or maybe you are hanging your hat on one of the fake statistics that purport to show that a lot of American tax units–not Americans, but American households–do not have a federal income tax liability.  Well, that’s bullshit too, because Social Security and Medicare taxes are federal income taxes, too, and the vast majority of American tax units–i.e., households, pay those taxes.  In fact, since most tax scholars think that the incidence of the employer and employee share of Social Security and Medicare taxes fall on the employee, it is quite likely that most of whom Romney denounces as a “dependent class” is paying a higher rate of income tax than he is.

    6. “What [Romney] doesn’t mention is that every single one of those 47% who pay no income tax pay a greater portion of their income in tax, in most cases a vastly greater portion, than most of the income-tax payers. There are many kinds of tax. And anyone who receives a paycheck knows that none of those famous “tax cuts” apply to him, as his tax bite goes up and up and up, and then goes up and up and up after he cashes that check, too.”

      http://www.thestranger.com/sea…

    7. Thanks for the confirmation.  Mitt Romney, and Republicans who support him, don’t care about 47% of the people, because they’re “beyond reach”.  Go out and sell that one: it’s good to have a President who doesn’t worry about 47% of the population.

      Mitt’s plan for the economy, as stated above, is to just be Mitt Romney – that’s all he needs to do.  Which, of course, he can do just as well on a yacht near his Cayman Islands millions as anywhere else.

    8. “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

      Seriously? ANY person who happens not to pay INCOME taxes –

      – the hardworking janitor at my office who doesn’t earn enough to pay INCOME tax but pays more PAYROLL taxes than YOU’VE paid taxes during the one year of tax returns you’ve deigned to disclose

      – my friend down the block who’s disabled and can’t find a job

      – MY RETIRED MOM, for Christ’s sake!

      – is someone who doesn’t “take personal responsibility” and doesn’t “care” for his or her life?

      Do you count your fellow millionaire tax dodgers among that 47%, Mitt?

      Go to hell, Mitt Romney! You SUCK.

      Up until now I thought you were maybe an okay guy on a personal level, but I didn’t like your policies. And I thought Paul Ryan was a damned liar. But now I think you, Mitt Romney, are just plain awful – a terrible human being. Your dad would be ashamed of where you’ve sunk to now.

      1. it takes until 50 days before the election – after years of campaigning – for the masses to get a clear, genuine picture of who Mitt Rmoney really is.  We need a whole different process to elect our public servants.

  10. you’ve lost David Brooks . . .

    Thurston Howell Romney

    Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.?  Is it the student getting a loan to go to college?  Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

    It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America.  Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people.  Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

    It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture.  Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government.  On the contrary, trust in government has declined.  The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

    The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers.  They are Republicans. They are senior citizens.  They are white men with high school degrees.  As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

    Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09…

    . . . you’re nothing but toast.

    3. There’s more than one culture of America.  He knows the one he knows- where the middle is $200k annual.

      The one where two college educated adults work outside the home  and make $120k, with daycare and no outside staff, just family and friends – he has no freakin’ clue except to say they should borrow money from their parents. No way he understands the disabled,  vet or otherwise. The poor, elder or otherwise.

      If you aren’t rich- it’s your fault.

      God wants me to be rich.

      What we need is a flat tax, so the poor pay their way.

      The world is a crazzy place.  But as someone else correctly noted- without poor white men, Romney/Ryan would be trailing in just about every state.

      1. Obviously, a response to the Arap question above. (Don’t ever start to post two comments at the same time, I’ve now learned, because the site’s software repeats the same text.)

    1. if they are, put Mitt on em.

      Mitt Romney is an arrogant, evil piece of shit.  I didn’t agree with McCain but I respected him and liked who he is.

      Not so this time.  I really can honestly say I hate this man.  Truly disgusting person.

      1. all I can say is, as was Reagan, this creep is truly deserving of disgust. As are those who worship him. Not even W was this fucking arrogant, mendacious, bullying, evil. Dangerous. (Gotta get out my Roget’s.)

  12. The Obama campaign on Monday attacked the Romney camp over a leaked campaign video where the Republican nominee brags about touring a Chinese factory as president of Bain Capital-and Romney’s campaign gave an official “no comment” on the story. In the video Romney describes the company as having crowded workers into crowded dormitories behind barbed wire while paying them only a pittance compared with American wages. (emphasis Twitty)

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/c…

    1. When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married. And they work in these huge factories, they made various small appliances. And as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10 rooms. And the rooms, they had 12 girls per room, three bunk beds on top of each other. You’ve seen, you’ve seen them? And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And we said gosh, I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in. And they said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so badly to work in this factory that we have to keep them out.

      http://2012.talkingpointsmemo….

      1. that Rmoney has.  Perhaps he imagines a future in which the poor in our country are poorer, the middle class is gone, we have factories again but they look more like the Chinese one he describes.  And at the same time, we have to fence out the immigrants “because people want so badly to work in this [country] that we have to keep them out.”

  13. Rmoney uses his adolescent imagination to come up with a scenario where Iran hold America hostage with a dirty bomb in Chicago. This the guy who used a fake Highway Patrol uniform and car to pull people over

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