The Mitt’s Mendacity project ran its course a couple of years ago, and it will not return. But just for old times’ sake, let’s pause to note that the poor guy is still truth-challenged.
Romney, who seems to spend a little too much time thinking about ways to condemn the president who defeated him, has run into trouble once more, this time in an interview with Mark Leibovich. The twice-defeated candidate is apparently still thinking about the “47 percent” video that helped drag down his candidacy.
“I was talking to one of my political advisers,” Romney continued, “and I said: ‘If I had to do this again, I’d insist that you literally had a camera on me at all times” — essentially employing his own tracker, as opposition researchers call them. “I want to be reminded that this is not off the cuff.” This, as he saw it, was what got him in trouble at that Boca Raton fund-raiser, when Romney told the crowd he was writing off the 47 percent of the electorate that supported Obama (a.k.a. “those people”; “victims” who take no “personal responsibility”). Romney told me that the statement came out wrong, because it was an attempt to placate a rambling supporter who was saying that Obama voters were essentially deadbeats.“My mistake was that I was speaking in a way that reflected back to the man,” Romney said. “If I had been able to see the camera, I would have remembered that I was talking to the whole world, not just the man.” I had never heard Romney say that he was prompted into the “47 percent” line by a ranting supporter.
No, that’s a new one. It’s also patently false.
Since David Corn first helped shine a light on the infamous “47 percent” video, in which Romney told a group of wealthy donors that nearly half of Americans are lazy parasites, the Republican has struggled to come up with a coherent response. Initially, Romney actually endorsed the sentiments on the video and said they reflected his core beliefs.
He later changed his mind, saying his remarks were “completely wrong” and the result of misspeaking. Later still, Romney switched gears again and said the comments were taken out of context. Now he’s come up with an entirely new explanation: Romney’s not responsible for what Romney said; some guy in the audience deserves the blame.
Ironically, in the video itself, Romney says of struggling Americans, “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility.” Funny, he doesn’t seem to be a big fan of personal responsibility, either.
The facts here are obvious and easily checked.
Romney now believes a rambling supporter caused the trouble, but David Corn checked the video itself and found that’s simply not what happened. The question was actually quite succinct.
To recap: Romney has gone from side-stepping the remark, to owning the thrust of this comment (though noting it was not well articulated), to saying he was wrong, to denying he said what he said (and contending his words were distorted), to claiming he was only mirroring the rambling remarks of a big-money backer. This last explanation is certainly not fair to the 1-percenter who merely expressed his very 1-percentish opinion. Does this mean that Romney was thrown off his game by a simple question — or that he was trying to suck up to a donor?In the two years since Romney was caught on tape, he just cannot come up with a clear explanation of an easy-to-understand short series of sentences that were responsive to the question presented. But there is one possible explanation he hasn’t yet put forward: He said what he believed.
Of course he did. Romney was speaking in a relaxed setting, free to say whatever he pleased. He shared his contempt for nearly half the country, which went a long way towards explaining the Romney campaign’s policy platform. Indeed, it’s why the failed Republican candidate immediately responded to the video by saying he agreed with the sentiments it captured.
Lying about it now doesn’t help Romney’s case.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."