Romney loses election

[Ben Kenobi]

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…

If he had stopped here, he would have been fine.

I probably would have written it something like this:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for Obama no matter what.
Who? You see them every day. They are dependent upon the government.
They are the ones who believe that the government should provide for them a comfortable living.
For food, for clothes, for gasoline, for a car, for transportation, for medical care, for housing, for swimming lessons for their children, etc the list goes on.
Here you sit - you have come home from a long day, do your children have these things? Do you struggle to put food on your table? Do you struggle with the Rent?
Does it bother you that these people who demand their benefits - insist that you support them alongside your children with your hard earned money?
You - you are not the 47 percent. You are pulling the cart - and the time has come to make a decision.

Do you want a president who believes that what you give is currently not enough?

[DinoDoc]

You have no idea how hard it was being banned for the duration of the republican contested primaries + Herman Cain's run.

Yes, I know you were desperate for people who had no chance at all of winning even against Obama.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yes, I know you were desperate for people who had no chance at all of winning even against Obama.

We needed a president who didn't take himself so damn seriously.

[Boris Godunov]

OP is ridiculous.

Romney lost the election in August, when he spent a month letting the Obama campaign define him as a heartless plutocrat without any effective response. He fell into the same trap Kerry did in the summer of 2004. Obama's lead over Romney in the election has virtually mirrored Bush's over Kerry's eight years ago. But Romney is even less-likeable than Kerry was and more prone to making big gaffes. Sprinkle in his having been a vulture capitalist at a time when voters aren't too keen on the Wall Street crowd, a poor choice of running mate and a failed national convention and you have a perfect recipe for a candidate who is doomed.

[DinoDoc]

Can someone tell me why this is an issue when Obama called his own voters dependent on the government to the extent he even promotes the fact in campaign material?

[giblets]

To tell you the truth, this doesn't strike me as any different from "you didn't build that" or any other embarrassing Kinsley gaffe of the last two years of campaigning.

Are you saying that he failed to word a sentence in a way that wouldn't allow anything to be taken out of context?

[Boris Godunov]

Yes, I know you were desperate for people who had no chance at all of winning even against Obama.

If Romney was the best the Republicans could do, then I guess there was no hope for them from the outset.

[giblets]

The other thing is that Romney insulted people who aren't going to vote for him. Like, explicitly, "the people who don't like me are x". They already didn't like him. How many Romney voters does this actually offend?

A substantial percentage of poor people still vote for Republicans.

[Ben Kenobi]

If Romney was the best the Republicans could do, then I guess there was no hope for them from the outset.

Ouch.

[SlowwHand]

stay at home moms pay taxes you idiot. it's called "household income"

No.

[Boris Godunov]

Can someone tell me why this is an issue when Obama called his own voters dependent on the government to the extent he even promotes the fact in campaign material?

Because it fits perfectly into the narrative established that Mitt "I'm Not Concerned About the Poor" Romney is just a rich guy running so he can give himself and his friends more tax cuts while he expects the needy fend for themselves. This has been an ongoing theme in the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney, and they've been very effective. Now this just seems to prove their point and that he'll cop to it while behind closed doors with his big donors.

If Romney didn't think it was a problem, he wouldn't have given his panicky impromptu press conference this evening.

[kentonio]

To tell you the truth, this doesn't strike me as any different from "you didn't build that" or any other embarrassing Kinsley gaffe of the last two years of campaigning.

He just got his dumb ass filmed writing off nearly half of all Americans as pathetic welfare whores. Not just pathetic welfare whores but pathetic welfare whores who he feels no responsibility towards.

"[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."

He lost the election when he jumped into the Libya mess and looked like an unseemly opportunist in the process, but that statement above just made absolutely sure he is not going to get elected.

[Aeson]

The other thing is that Romney insulted people who aren't going to vote for him. Like, explicitly, "the people who don't like me are x". They already didn't like him. How many Romney voters does this actually offend?

The independent voters generally are the ones who really look at what a candidate says, and decide the election. It certainly would be possible to get on the bad side of independent voters by making patently absurd claims about those aligned against you. Though in this case, the sentiment that Romney is expressing really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Even if it was, the fact that Romney could say such a thing in such a speaking environment definitely wouldn't be. So it shouldn't be much of a factor.

To tell you the truth, this doesn't strike me as any different from "you didn't build that" or any other embarrassing Kinsley gaffe of the last two years of campaigning.

Regardless of what you think of the validity of the claims being made in either case ... the main difference seems to be that "you didn't build that" was actually a gaffe due to the wording lending itself to being taken out of context with the supporting statements. Obama's actual point was clear in context, but he screwed up the wording in one sentence to make a (more, if you like) damning soundbite. On the other hand, here it seems Romney was accurately expressing his views (or at least what he was portraying as his views to the specific audience), and the surrounding statements support the "47 percent are [victims seeking entitlements and don't pay taxes]". If there was a gaffe, it was by allowing someone to record and release the tape.

It would be a better comparison to "clings to guns and religion".

[Wezil]

Besides turning potential voters off, Romney is off message.... again.

The fact he isn't very bright was obvious since the get go. He subscribes to the obvious hoax of Joseph Smith.

[Jon Miller]

I have talked to bright Mormons.

They tend to focus on the results of being Mormon, which I admit to be pretty positive on average even compared to the Christian average.

JM