Again Obama for his next presidential term :chai:
Washington (CNN) – Seven weeks before voters decide on their next president, a secretly recorded video threatens to further undo Republican candidate Mitt Romney by portraying him as out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Taped with a hidden camera at a private fund-raising event in May, the video shows Romney telling his donors that nearly half of Americans back President Barack Obama because they rely on government support.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney says in one clip first posted on Monday afternoon. “There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”
It’s the latest in what has been a shaky stretch for the Romney campaign following last month’s political conventions and as the candidates hurtle toward three presidential debates next month.
How candidates are preparing for the debates
Criticism of Romney’s remarks came from both sides of the political spectrum.
At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney avoided directly addressing the matter but sought to show that Obama’s approach differed from the views expressed in the video by the former Massachusetts governor.
“When you are president of the United States, you are president of all the people, not just the people who voted for you,” Carney told reporters. “You have heard the president saying so many times, because he deeply believes it, that we are in this together - all of us.”
Vice President Joe Biden limited his response to a lone sentence, saying he would let Romney’s words “speak for themselves.”
Conservative commentator William Kristol wrote in his Weekly Standard column Tuesdaythat Romney’s comments insulted some of his own supporters – such as senior citizens on Medicare.
However, other conservatives supported Romney for highlighting what they call the increasing dependency of American society on government programs.
“Do you want a country dependent on government programs and handouts, or do you want a country with an economy that produces good jobs and returns America to a higher standard of living?” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, which calls itself the movement’s largest group.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire, Romney’s running mate – conservative Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin – touched on the issue of the role of government.
“We do not believe that the role of government is to equalize the results of people’s lives,” Ryan said. “It’s a very different idea. Government is instituted to protect our natural rights. The idea of government is not to invent new rights so that … we can have a government-centered society that defines and regulates our rights. That’s up to us.”
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Hours after the video footage emerged online, Romney held a brief news conference late Monday in which he said his comments were “off the cuff” and “not elegantly stated.” However, he defended his main message that the election is a choice between what he called "a government-dominated society and a society driven by free people pursuing their dreams."
As for why he spoke more candidly with the group of donors, Romney said he was addressing some concerns at the fund-raiser.
“At a fund-raiser you have people say, ‘Governor how are you going to win this?’ And so I respond ‘Well, the president has his group, I have my group. I want to keep my team strong and motivated and I want to get those people in the middle.’ That’s something which fund-raising people who are parting with their monies are very interested in,” Romney said.
Obama’s campaign quickly seized on the reports, issuing a statement that said it was “shocking that a candidate for President of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives.”
Democrats pounce on Romney comments
Obama had a celebrity tinged day planned, heading to New York later Tuesday for an appearance on “Late Show with David Letterman” and then addressing two fund-raisers, including one hosted by entertainers Beyonce and Jay-Z.
The new controversy for Romney follows questions raised last week about an initially inaccurate statement by Romney after attacks on U.S. diplomatic compounds in Egypt and Libya, as polls showed Obama receiving a “bounce” in support after the Democratic National Convention that ended September 6.
A CNN-ORC poll conducted after the Democratic convention showed Obama with a 52%-46% lead over Romney after the two were tied at 48% in the same poll the previous week. Anda Washington](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/post-poll-obama-up-8-points-over-romney-in-virginia/2012/09/18/ca691d9a-0193-11e2-9367-4e1bafb958db_story.html)****Post poll released Tuesday******showed Obama continuing to lead Romney in Virginia, one of the vital battleground states of 2012.
CNN’s Polling Center
Unable to gain ground in recent polling, Romney’s campaign pledged this week to retool its approach to again focus on economic issues identified by voters as their top priority. However, the new video clips provide the Obama campaign with new ammunition to challenge the commitment of Romney – a multimillionaire former businessman – to working class Americans struggling under the nation’s sluggish economic recovery.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus defended Romney on Monday, saying the nominee was simply describing the “monstrosity” of government.
“The point of all of this is that the size of government is too big, and if we don’t do something about it we’re going to really lose the very idea of America,” Priebus said on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” adding: “I don’t have the numbers in front of me but clearly what we do have, very clearly, is a government and a society here in this country that is becoming dependent.”
The secretly recorded videos were posted Monday afternoon by the left-leaning news websites The Huffington Post and Mother Jones. The person responsible for the footage said he or she wishes to remain anonymous for “professional reasons and to avoid a lawsuit,” according to the Huffington Post.
Appearing on MSNBC late Monday night, the author of the Mother Jones article, David Corn, said the event took place May 17 in Boca Raton, Florida, at the home of Sun Capital executive Marc Leder.
Another clip from the event, posted later Monday, shows Romney questioning the prospect of ever reaching peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“I’m torn by two perspectives in this regard,” Romney is shown saying. “One is the one which I’ve had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”
Romney goes on to describe the obstacles he sees toward developing a so-called “two-state solution” that would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. He cites problems of geography, including the proximity to Tel Aviv of a potential border between the two states, as preventing any real progression toward the two states.
“These are problems - these are very hard to solve, all right?” Romney says on the tape. “And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, ‘There’s just no way.’”
In public, Romney has previously declared support for the two-state solution.
The video clips also show Romney joking that he would be more successful in his White House bid if his father were actually Latino, rather than having been born in Mexico to missionary parents from the United States.
“My dad, as you probably, know was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico … and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this,” Romney said. “But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. … I mean I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino.”
The footage was released the same day that Romney addressed the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles as he continues to court Latino voters who traditionally support Democratic candidates. According to a recent Gallup poll, Obama leads Romney among Latino registered voters 64%-27%.
Obama was caught in a secret camera moment in 2008, when he was recorded at a private fund-raiser saying that some voters “cling to their guns and religion.” At the time, Republicans quickly pounced on the comment and now Ryan uses the quote against the president on the campaign trail.
“This Catholic deer hunter is guilty as charged and proud to say so,” Ryan said Monday at a campaign event in Iowa. “That’s just weird. Who says things like that? That’s just strange.”
Reference: Romney comments rock campaign, latest setback in shaky stretch - CNN.com