Hot on the heels of the 5th anniversary of Lehman Brother’s collapse, Tuesday marks one year since a different sort of economic catastrophe. On September 17, 2012, Mitt Romney gave his infamous, and quite possibly campaign killing, “47%” comment. Clandestinely recorded by Scott Prouty, a bartender at a May 17 fundraiser for the GOP presidential candidate, the video made its way on to the internet on Sept. 17 of last year, and immediately changed the trajectory of the race in the heat of the campaign season.
In a column in Monday’s Huffington Post, Jarryd Willis questions whether it really was a gaffe at all, or rather an accurate reflection of what he calls the “GOP gospel.” He examines a laundry list of GOP policy remarks made over the last year, including on issues including, race, labor–even sweatshops, and concludes:
Taken together, it is clear on this anniversary of the 47% tape that many of Romney’s comments reflect core Republican Party values, which have continued to undergird policy positions and statements throughout 2013. It should be noted that in the year since the gaffe heard around the world, the “47% percent of Americans [who] pay no income tax” that Romney so artfully describes in the video has dropped to 43%, due to “the improving economy, (slowly) rising incomes, and the expiration of various stimulus-era tax cuts,” according to the Washington Post.
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