Everybody is picking on Mitt again. It is just like when he went on extension. I feel obligated to stick up for him. In case you haven’t read about it in 47 other places, Mother Jones broke a story about him being secretly video taped while speaking to potential donors. Here is the part that got everybody excited.
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.
Romney went on: “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.”
I really don’t think this is anything to get excited about. The key words there are “My job”. Romney is a very focused guy. What is his job right now ? His job right now is Republican candidate for President. If he manages to beat out Jill Stein and Barack Obama, he will become President of the United States and will then be caring about “those people” on the job, not just in his heart. As a candidate he can’t waste time and resources caring about them.
The reactions to the video are I think quite naive. “Here is Romney with a bunch of millionaires saying what he really thinks” seems to be the common view. The fact is he was in a room with a bunch of people that he was hoping would write big checks. Part of what they get for the checks is a feeling of being insiders. How can I be sure of this ? Because, I tasted the bargain basement version of the campaign donor Kool-aid, once and that video strikes me as a slightly more expensive version of the same vintage.
Some years ago, I think it was 1998, but I don’t feel like rummaging through the basement to verify, I received a really interesting letter. I had been identified as a leader in my community and people in high places were interested in my thoughts on important matter. I’m really not that gullible, but I was in a kind of whimsical mood. I also had some hope that I would at least be able to find out how I had been identified as somebody whose thoughts were really important. So I forked over a thousand bucks and became a member of the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle.
I got a medal and a certificate. The golf shirt with the logo on it was extra, I think. I also got my picture taken with Jesse Helms at the event that I got to attend. The event was mainly an educational effort to explain the simple realities of the plight of the Republican party. The guys running the show indicated that there was a science to the whole thing and that they had done a great job in 1994, with Congress, but then people stopped listening to them in 1996. The problem is that the Republicans always start out behind. That is what Romney is explaining to his potential donors. They start out behind so they have to capture more of the undecided vote in the key states that make the difference in electoral votes. In order to achieve that they have to really focus on what moves the small number of voters who might make a difference. His whole dismissive thing about the 47% was just his folksy way of getting that message across to that particular audience.
The other problem they have is best summed up in the words of novelist James Gould Cozzens:
The average fair-minded person is inclined to be liberal for the chief reason that he can’t but see that conservatism, however plausible its arguments, must boil down to a declaration by those who are top-dog that it’s good and right for them to remain top-dog.
I was disappointed that I was never able to find out how I was determined to be worthy of membership in the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle. The most amusing part of the whole experience was when I was wandering around and zigged when I should have zagged. I had intruded on part of the event reserved for the inner, inner circle and was shooed off by the staff. I think it was a hundred grand to get into that group. I also got the distinct impression that the people managing things weren’t all that interested in what the inner, inner people thought either. For a hundred grand, though, they got a lot more fawning over, than I was entitled to.
So overall, the secret video doesn’t give us any more relevant information than the final version of Mitt’s 2011 return will. Mitt was just hitting potential donors over the head with the fact that 47% of the population does not think that the allocators of capital have been doing that well by the rest of us. I feel so bad for him that I am not even going to mention the dog thing or the dancing horse.
You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.
Originally published on Forbes.com on September 19th, 2012