September 18, 2012 12:48 AM UTC

Secret Video of Very Candid Mitt Romney Surfaces

•  
• by: nancycronk

(Um, holy crap? – promoted by Colorado Pols)

A tracker attended a fundraiser for Mitt Romney earlier this year and filmed Romney speaking very candidly to friends and supporters about what he really thinks about the President of the United States, as well as those who voted for him. Mother Jones broke the story, dividing up the video into five parts. Some of the most potentially damaging quotes are below:

“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.”

Later he went on:

“[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.”

Despite the necessity of Romney to improve his numbers within the Latino community, he said some disaparaging things about them when speaking with his friends (which is all the more interesting, given that Romney’s own father, George Romney, was reportedly born in Mexico to Mormon refugees escaping anti-polygamy laws).

Romney said of his father,

“Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.”

Then, when speaking of key demographic groups, he added:  

“..we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation.”

While speaking about messaging strategy, Romney repeatedly indicated he is going after people who voted for Obama in ’08, and does so by calling them, “these people” and “those people” rather than voters (kind of like, “you people”?).

“And the best success I have at speaking with those people (italics used for emphasis) is saying, you know, the president has been a disappointment…. What’re they gonna do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, “Yeah, I think you’re right.” What he’s going to do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who’s been successful, or who’s, you know, closed businesses or laid people off, and is an evil bad guy. And that may work.”

Romney then brags about his campaign team:

“I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn’t realize it. These guys in the US — the Karl Rove equivalents — they do races all over the world…they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I’d tell them to you, but I’d have to shoot you.”

When asked why Romney doesn’t discuss policy much, he responds that policy doesn’t win elections.

“…in a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject-discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn’t win elections. And there are, there are, there are-for instance, this president won because of “hope and change.”

Perhaps Romney’s most curious moment was when he attempted to predict the outcome of the race. Based on the assumption he would win, he said the following would occur:

“We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see– without actually doing anything– we’ll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets re-elected, I don’t know what will happen. I can- I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected.”

Mother Jones offers more “Mitt Romney at the fundraiser” to come soon. Grab some popcorn.