Jon Chait captures why the resemblance between Romney’s 47% remarks and Obama’s “cling” comments are purely superficial …
Some pundits have likened Romney’s comments to Barack Obama’s 2008 monologue, also secretly recorded at a fundraiser, about his difficulties with white working class voters in rural Pennsylvania. But the spirit of Obama’s remarks was precisely the opposite of Romney’s. While Obama couched his beliefs in condescending sociological analysis about how poor small town residents vote on the basis of guns and religion rather than economics, the thrust of Obama’s argument was that he believed his policies would help them, and to urge his supporters to make common cause with them.
If the first woman in this video from the new “Women for Akin” group is any indication, supporting Todd Akin these days requires going into the witness protection program.
As no shortage of people have already noted, it’s factually incorrect for Mitt Romney to dismiss 47 percent of Americans as members of a dependency class. It’s also misleading in the same sense that it’s misleading for Republicans to attack President Obama for failing to create any jobs, or increasing unemployment, or ballooning the deficit.
But if you assume the remark wasn’t just cynical pandering to rich people — that Romney and other conservatives genuinely believe this stuff — then it’s also hard to escape the conclusion that either Republicans have accepted their own demographic mortality, and that they have a truly bleak outlook for the country as a whole. Read More
Bill Kristol: Romney’s 47 percent remark just as “stupid and arrogant” as Obama’s cling-to-guns-or-religion comment in 2008.
Romney adviser Bay Buchanan on CNN this morning pretty much reaffirmed everything Romney was “caught” saying about the 47 percent.
It’s not the biggest point. But it’s worth noting. One of the biggest drivers of the fact that 47% of households pay no income tax is Republican public policy. Specifically, the Earned Income Tax Credit or EITC. Now, to be clear, it’s a good policy. I’m not sure whether it’s better than others like just increasing the minimum wage. But we’re much better with it than without it. Again, though, that’s Ronald Reagan’s baby right there. And something Democrats eventually embraced. The basic idea is that if you’re working and have kids the tax code will try to nudge you up over the poverty line with negative taxes, i.e., tax credits. If this is a disaster, we know who to blame.
Rich Lowry: “The overall impression of Romney at this event is of someone who overhead some conservative cocktail chatter and maybe read a conservative blog or two, and is thoughtlessly repeating back what he heard and read.”
I kind of agree with what Lowry says here simply because in addition to being contemptuous of half the American people and wildly offensive to ordinary people trying to make ends meet, Mitt seems to string together a handful of really distinct conservative talking points — and in a way that makes you think he just heard them in a fragmentary way and pasted them together without any clear sense of what he was saying. Read More
Rough sign when the private equity guy who hosted the party reaches for the parachute.
Marc Leder, who hosted the now-infamous fundraiser in Boca Raton (and also hosts parties in the Hamptons where people get to do the 1% wild thing in the pool — not that there’s anything wrong with that) releases this statement to Fortune …
In a statement first given to Fortune, Leder says: “I hosted a fundraiser for an old friend in May. I believe all Americans should have the opportunity to succeed, to improve their lives, and to build even better lives for their children. I have supported people from both political parties who share this view and make it a priority, even though their ideas on how to achieve it may differ.”
TPM Electoral Scoreboard moves to Obama 278, Romney 206 as Virginia moves from Toss Up to Leans Obama.