It’s very stupid because he could have made the same point without dragging in the “poor” and the “very rich.” Note that he said “very rich” and not “rich” also. He’s apparently still concerned about the rich! They need help too!
New thought:
With a little effective cutting of romney’s last comment, you could make it sound like “I don’t care about the poor. The rich are fine”
That would be tit for tat after that ad the Republicans ran that took a sound byte by Obama deliberately out of context.
The mushy centrist media would melt down completely because of the IOKIYAR double standard.
Timex
1965
Way too many letters in that acronym.
Regarding taking things out of context, it can sometimes be tricky. I think a few years ago someone took some guy’s comments totally out of context, to the extent that it implied he was saying the opposite of his actual statement. When the original statement was made clear to the public, they turned on the guy who was running the ad, and he ended up getting crushed in the election.
The voting public can be a fickle beast.
ShivaX
1966
Wasn’t it the dude that was quoted in an ad as saying something to the effect of “women should be subservient to their husbands” or the like when the actual context was him saying that he thought the exact opposite?
The Daily Show nailed that dude to the wall on that one.
That person was an idiot then.
The correct political tactic is to have your “completely independent political action group” run the ad while at the same time calling for an end to attack ads.
For example:
Gamers Alliance For Freedom (this is what i would name mine): Mit Romney doesn’t care about the poor, unless they are mormons!
Murbella during debate: It is time to get big money out of politics! For too long have special interests such as unions and government workers <pause for booing> bought up air time to spread their vile attack ads which more often than not are completely untrue attacks in order to support our president! <pause for booing>. Why, just yesterday i sat down with my family to watch some football <pause for applause> and I saw a deplorable ad attacking my fellow Republican, mit romney. Now, we’ve had our differences but i’m sure mit romney actually cares about the poor and anyone who claims that he doesn’t care about them and wants to take their food stamps in order to give more money to the mormon church is not being honest.
Gamers Alliance For Freedom: Mit Romney says he is against Gays, but these videos show him going in to the bathroom with Larry Craig.
We saw Romney doing this a bit during debates when gingrich cried on his shoulder about the attack ads bringing up his past assholery. It is the primary means to have your cake and eat it too.
ShivaX
1969
Well now Mitt says it was taken out of context or something. Even though the interviewer went out of her way to basically say “Are you sure you want to say that? How about you reword that?” To which Romney’s response was basically along the lines of “You heard me.”
But you know, he does a lot of interviews. He can’t be bothered to pay attention to small fries like CNN.
JeffL
1970
Mitt now says he wished he hadn’t said it that way.
Duh.
Yeah, double duh. I assume it’s captured on tape, however. It should make for a nice advertising soundbite.
Thing is, I believe him. I don’t think he’s worried about the poor or the “very rich.” I’m sure he’s plenty worried about the wealthy, however.
No shit, Mitt. You can just imagine the horrified look on his campaign manager’s face while he’s saying that.
Krugman had a good piece today saying that the more context you give Romney’s quote, the worse it becomes.
Lorini
1974
Interesting analysis from fivethirtyeight.com regarding the economy and Obama’s chances for election. I really would urge you to read the whole thing. Right now, his chances are fair to moderate if you look at the economy but as we all know, the coming months will tell the story.
What a total phony Romney is. The sad part is there’s a strong probability that he’ll be President, because enough morons out there keep wanting to “take their country back” from the scary “foreign” brown man (I’m certain that that segment makes up a significant minority of the GOP base since the Nixon campaign started tapping into their fears and resentments in '68, and it’s only gotten worse since then).
I read this wrong the first couple times. I kept thinking, “surely he doesn’t think that the Mormon population is large enough to guarantee the election?”
Well, apparently according to santorum, socialized medicine is the evil drug that evil liberals use to sucker people in to letting the government control their lives completely (obviously Santorum thinks it is ok to control people if they are gay or non married women).
Was i the only one who caught that he left out one key word when quoting a certain passage:
[INDENT]We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.[/INDENT]
Unless i just missed it, Santorum paused at the creator word and then skipped over it. I’m not sure why he would do this though as his speech was VERY pro religion.
The question is, is Santorum a closet Atheist?
JD
1979
On a totally unrelated note: BLR takes on Newt.
So Santorum wins in Missouri and Minnesota and is leading in Colorado. These are for bragging rights, mostly, but they will get him a lot of press and continue to show how weak Romney is.
It really is the crazy year in Republican politics. It’s making me laugh.
