Mitt Romney Tells Fox He Was Wrong to Make the 47% Comments

Last updated on October 6th, 2012 at 03:42 pm

You can bet that Mitt Romney had planned at Wednesday’s debate to say he was wrong for getting caught on tape saying:

“My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives….. There are 47% who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”

But President Obama never gave him the chance to tell the 67 million viewers that he was wrong, so Mitt Romney had to tell the relatively smaller audience at Fox News last night. Romney said, “Clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you’re going to say something that doesn’t come out right. In this case, I said something that’s just completely wrong.”

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So, Romney was stuck telling the only people who agreed with him about half of America being victims that he was wrong. And, he was not given the chance to reinvent himself on this matter to the American people Wednesday night.

After the debate, many pundits wondered why Obama hadn’t hit Romney with the 47% comments. Apparently Romney couldn’t wait until the next debate to show off the rehearsed grand apology, so he spilled the beans on Fox. I can’t imagine that audience was too pleased to hear that Romney thought it was wrong of him to hate half of the country.

Romney’s 47% comments were the first thing that endeared him to much of the Republican base, though rumor has it they were stirred by his braying mania during the debate – so eager are they for another bully-in-chief. They obviously missed the part in the debate where Romney adopted Obama’s policies and moved way to the center, leaving what passes for conservatism these days in the dust of his ambition. He was all slick “empathy” and help the middle class Wednesday night, in quite a startling contrast with his actual policies.

Factcheckers have been spent the last 24 hours scrambling to unveil the seemingly endless inaccuracies that came from Mitt Romney during the Denver debate, but there’s no way to fact check Romney’s real feelings about his words, except to look at his actual policies. Have they changed any? No. His tax plan still hits the middle class and those of you with pre-existing conditions can find an emergency room unless you are lucky enough to pay $650 a month for COBRA and even luckier to find new employment that offers a group policy that won’t kick you to the curb.

Given that Romney presented his harsh policies with utterly false rhetoric during the Denver debate, I’m issuing a caution flag on his admission that he was “wrong”. Romney also announced Thursday that victory was in sight for him, proving that he really doesn’t know very much about the real Barack Obama. But we can all thank him for the good show, which might bring his big corporate donors back to him just in time to abandon the House and Senate races they were fleeing to in the wake of Romney’s relentless fails.

Romney had one “win” thus far in the entire campaign season, and he got it by lying the entire night. No one seemed to disturbed by it, either, though I note that as usual, they blamed Obama for not stopping Romney from lying, as if somehow Barack Obama could force Romney to tell the truth when no one else has been able to do that yet. The narrative that should have come out of that debate was what is wrong with Mitt Romney and why was he so dishonest?

Instead, we apparently awarded points for rudeness, bullying and lying, which suggests that our media has bought into the misguided notion that strong, effective leaders are obnoxious jerks. How this plays into being a good diplomat and strategist, as a President should be, I have no idea, but I am quite sure that they should be held accountable for missing the boat on this one. The right question to ask is “Why was Mitt Romney lying so much?” and “What does this say about what kind of president he would be?”

Well, Victims, you got the closest thing you’ll ever get to an apology from Mitt Romney. He said he was wrong, he didn’t say he was sorry or that he would change his policies to reflect his new awareness of how wrong he was. Nor did he admit that if anyone is a 47% tax dodger, it’s him. He did not clearly articulate that his ideas about the 47% were wrong, leaving us to wonder if he meant he was wrong to say it rather than wrong to think it. At any rate, this conflicts with what he said right after he was busted, which was that he was meant what he said but he had been “inelegant”.

Not to worry — Romney assured Fox, “When I become president, it will be helping the 100%.” And you know what his word is worth.