Romney In The Raw: Secret Video Reveals Candidate Saying That Obama Voters Are "Victims....Dependent On The Government"

In a devastating new video just released by Mother Jones,  Mitt Romney drops any pretense of being the pragmatic, moderate leader of the Republican party, sounding instead a lot like a far-right leader of the Tea Party.

Behind closed doors, Mitt Romney tells a group of high-powered donors that voters supporting Barack Obama consider themselves "victims" who "believe the government has a responsibility to care for them."



"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what, " Romney told the donors. "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."

Romney's talking point - that low-income Americans aren't paying their fair share because they don't make enough money to pay Federal income taxes - is a popular, if discredited, trope of the extreme right-wing. In fact, low-income tax-payers actually have a higher overall tax rate than top wage-earners due to state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and various fees.

From Talking Points Memo:

The notion that virtually all Obama voters depend on government handouts has strong support within the right wing of the Republican Party. On Friday, former Family Research Council President Gary Bauer made the idea a highlight of his speech to the Values Voter Summit.

“They will vote for their own perceived interests, which is they don’t want anybody cutting back the size of the checks,” Bauer told TPM at the summit.

Romney has for months claimed publicly that Obama is trying to create an “entitlement society.” He said in August that Obama was trying to “shore up his base” with welfare reforms Romney says will eliminate the work requirement for benefits (it won’t), but he hasn’t gone as far as Bauer in public. The Mother Jones video suggests he has gone that far in private.

The Obama campaign said Monday that the video shows Romney isn’t focusing his campaign om the majority of Americans.

“It’s 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,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement. “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”