Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 07:34 pm
The video the Romney campaign doesn’t want you to see. No, not that one. Another one.
This is a video the Romney campaign put out themselves, titled “Ann Romney to FOX31: Mitt Doesn’t Disdain the Poor,” based on an interview Mitt’s “secret weapon” Ann Romney gave to a local Fox station. The Romney campaign was in panic mode again last night, scrambling to take it down almost as soon as it went up.
Watch the full interview here (from which a clip was used for the campaign’s now vanished video):
Ann Romney told Fox of the furor over the Mother Jones video in which her husband is heard disparaging 47 percent of Americans, “I know he cares and that’s why he’s running. It’s unfortunate when things get taken out of context.”
What? Mother Jones so kindly supplied the full video and there were no edits, no Breitbarting.
The Fox reporter clarified, “So, he wasn’t expressing any disdain for poor people, or people who are on entitlement programs?”
Ann Romney replied, “Absolutely not, absolutely not. Totally not so.”
Well, okay then! This should be a good thing, right? Hey, America, Mitt Romney does not disdain poor people or people on entitlements!
But wait. The campaign then pulled the video when it only had 165 views.
Yes, it really was put out by the “Official YouTube page of the Romney for President Communications Shop” and Buzzfeed had it until it was pulled:
Knowing this campaign, it seems logical to conclude that they realized that this was off-message for their not so committed base. Ann tells Americans that Mitt Romney does NOT disdain poor people, and they can’t have that on a day when Romney has finally managed to curry favor with the Republican base by doubling down on his visceral disdain for the 47 percent parasites of this country (elderly, military, veterans, students, poor children and disabled). His contempt suits their image of the evil liberals they’ve been warned about on Fox News, with Romney condescending, “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
The conservative base is finally getting some smug red meat for their hate addiction and they are NOT going to be denied. Mitt Romney will comply! He will tell the moochers and the takers and the parasites (aka, his base) to man up! They are in full gloat mode.
Somehow the party of no taxes just became the party of “most Americans want to pay taxes” (translation, Mitt really is going to raise your taxes if you’re poor or middle class), brought to you by a guy who won’t release more than two years of his tax returns. He said that he doesn’t pay income tax, but rather capital gains taxes at a much lower rate, “Under that plan, I’d have paid no taxes” he told Newt Gingrich in a debate about Gingrich’s tax plan.
Ironically, The Washington Post points out:
Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that. (You also see a jump after the financial crisis begins in 2008, but we can expect that to be mostly temporary.)
Not to worry, conservatives — Mitt Romney is here to undo all that Reagan and Bush did. Mitt Romney will become the taxer-in-chief and the parasites will finally pay for the policies of the Republican Party.
Remember back in February when Mitt told us that he wasn’t worried about the very poor, because there’s a social safety net for them? “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.” He went on to explain that he cares about the 95% of Americans, “If it needs a repair , I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 to 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”
Now we know that’s not true, not only because his budget makes cuts to those social safety nets, but because Mitt told his wealthy donors in Florida that 47 percent of Americans felt entitled to food and therefor wouldn’t be voting for him so he wasn’t going to give them another thought. So, not a social safety net that Romney thinks much of, apparently (victims!). What little we know of his policies backs up what we heard via the secret tapes. At the time, Gingrich fired back, accusing Romney of “dividing Americans against each other.”
Then Romney told us that he really did care about the poor. And then the Mother Jones videos came out, proving that in his secret heart of hearts, Mitt Romney not only doesn’t care about the poor, he thinks they are lazy and entitled losers who only want free stuff, and that’s why they don’t like him. Again, many of the 47 percent are actually his base, but whatever.
So, once again, Romney was for disdain and then he was against it and now he’s for it again.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s campaign is in meltdown mode (as shown yet again with this video – good idea? No, bad, bad idea!) with aides cursing as they try to round up reporters. One adviser told the New York Times that “the campaign was turning into a vulgar, unprintable phrase.”
Then came the announcement that the business manager’s campaign is in over $10 million dollars of debt. Not to worry, this is not Mitt Romney’s fault, but the fault of campaign finance laws. He has the money, he just couldn’t spend it when he needed it. “A debt of $15 million will appear on the Federal Election Commission reports, due to be filed by the end of the day Thursday. But Romney’s balance on the loan at this point is approximately $11 million, sources said, although his campaign’s financial filings has shown he has enough to cover that.” Phew.
Ah well, it’s nothing Mitt can’t “kick down the field” as he says he will do with the Middle East.
Only a campaign deeply confused about its message (due, in this case, to its unwillingness to discuss its policies) would be scrambling within hours of putting up a video to remove it. After all, what message does it send when you are taking down a video that claims that you do not disdain Americans?
Seriously?
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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