Romney rocked by secret video

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney was rocked yesterday by a secretly filmed video in which he said nearly half of Americans back President Barack Obama because they are government-dependent “victims” who dodge taxes.

  Obama’s team quickly seized on film of Romney addressing rich donors,  released by the liberal Mother Jones magazine, as proof the multi-millionaire  candidate had written off half the nation and was not fit to be president.

The video was the latest blow to the Romney team as it fought off reports  that the Republican’s White House bid is in disarray, as he struggles to close  a small but consistent gap to Obama in national polls and battleground states.

   In excerpts from the video, which emerged 50 days before the November 6  election, Romney is seen to say in a closed-door, private fundraiser that 47  percent of Americans will vote for the president “no matter what.”   

“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,” he says.

   “These are people who pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes  doesn’t connect. I’ll never convince them they should take personal  responsibility and care for their lives.”    Mother Jones streamed the images on its website and said identities of  people in them were blurred, and the venue of the meeting was obscured to  protect its source.

 The explosive tape was the latest in a long line of comments by Romney that  have complicated his attempts to shed an image framed by Obama’s campaign that  he is a rich businessman out of touch with the middle class.

   Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina pounced.

   “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,” he said.

   “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully  written off half the nation.”     There was no immediate comment from the Romney campaign.

   But Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, launched  a damage control bid, saying the video raised important issues about the nature  of government in American society.

   “I think that it is very clear that one of the key issues for Americans to  decide is what kind of America you want to have,” Priebus said, taking a shot  at Obama’s “cradle to grave” vision for government social programs.
   “We are entering into a dependency society in this country,” Priebus told  CNN.

   Romney earlier dismissed reports, fanned by a story on the Politico  website, of internal campaign infighting.
   “I’ve got a terrific campaign,” he said in an interview with Telemundo, a  Spanish language television network.

   “My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together. I work well  with them. Our campaign is doing well,” he said.

   Senior Romney advisor Ed Gillespie meanwhile said that the candidate would  unveil more concrete plans to voters than he has previously laid out, at  campaign appearances this week.
   Obama was meanwhile on the road in the key swing state of Ohio, mocking  Romney’s tough anti-China rhetoric, then jabbing Beijing himself by announcing  a new trade case targeting Beijing’s auto industry subsidies.
   The president professed to “walk the walk” in making China play by global  trade rules while implying Romney preferred to “talk the talk.”    He again accused his rival of being a pioneer during his business career of  advising US corporations to outsource jobs to low wage economies abroad.

   Romney dismissed Obama’s action as “too little, too late” but spent the day  tending to his own political weaknesses.

   He also tried to narrow his deficit to Obama among Latinos, telling the  Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles that Obama had promised a world of
“limitless hope” but had instead delivered misery.

   “No one is exempt from the pain of this economy, of course, but the  Hispanic community has been particularly hard-hit,” Romney said, and also  pledged to push for comprehensive immigration reform, a key issue for Hispanic  voters.

   But his effort could be undermined by a clip of the meeting with donors in  which Romney said it would have been more helpful to his political prospects  had his father been born Mexican.

   “I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino,” he says,  according to the clip.

   In a poll by the Latino decisions polling group after the Democratic  National Convention two weeks ago, Obama led Romney among Hispanic voters by 66  to 29 percent.

   Obama leads most recent polls in battleground states, by small but clear  margins. The president’s convention “polling” bounce seems to be ebbing  however. Obama was up by just three points in Gallup’s latest daily tracking  survey. - AFP