Mitt Romney raw and unplugged

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 millionaire donors that nearly half of Americans back President Barack Obama because they rely on government support.

Romney displays a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow American citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don’t contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the wealthy donors he was speaking to) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative.

Here it is in Romney’s own words:
“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…These are people who pay no income tax.”

Romney went on: “[M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney stating this at an intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity.

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