October 05, 2012 05:39 PM UTC

Are They Going To Let Romney Etch-a-Sketch "47%" Away?

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• by: Colorado Pols

CBS News–fuggedaboutit!

Mitt Romney, trying to distance himself from perhaps his most damaging campaign moment, said Thursday that his infamous “47 percent” remarks were “completely wrong.”

“Clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you are going to say something that doesn’t come out right. In this case I said something that’s just completely wrong,” Romney told Sean Hannity on Fox News. “And I absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown that I care about 100 percent. And that has been demonstrated throughout my life. And this whole campaign is about the 100 percent. When I become president it will be about helping the 100 percent.”

A leaked videotape last month revealed Romney telling wealthy donors at a Boca Raton, Fla. fundraiser that 47 percent of the country, President Obama’s supporters, don’t pay income taxes; consider themselves victims; feel entitled to government handouts, and will never be persuaded to take personal responsibility for their lives…

Following what’s broadly considered a Mitt Romney victory in this week’s debate at the University of Denver, it makes perfect sense that Romney would try to deal with his severely damaging remarks about 47% of Americans who “believe they are victims” before that afterglow fades. Of course it’s the moment to do this. Romney’s heretofore response on the questions raised by that video, that his point was “inelegantly stated” but essentially correct, had completely failed to quell the resentment over what he plainly said. Recorded in secret, before the friendliest of audiences, these remarks have been firmly planted in the national consciousness as reflective of how Mitt Romney really feels–regardless of what he says in public. Absent something even more dramatic, this video could well have been the beginning of the end of the race.

And folks, it still may be. Romney’s debate performance was not so commanding that it allows him to simply erase an issue that dominated the headlines in the weeks prior, that Romney had explicitly defended after its exposure, and was never even addressed in the debate that has supposedly given him all this newfound space to morph back into “Moderate Mitt.” In addition, post-debate fact checking has done much to undermine Romney’s oratorical victory.

Like we hinted above, if we were giving Romney advice, we can’t say we’d tell him not to try this. Resolving this seriously damaging incident on Romney’s terms would be a big help, and would underscore the folly of President Barack Obama’s failure to attack Romney in the forum where it would have been most appropriate–Wednesday’s debate on economic policy.

But it’s also exactly what you would expect from a guy who will say anything to win.