Mitt Romney surprised everyone by saying that his denigration of the 47%, the much-discussed item in the secretly recorded video, was “completely wrong”.
Why the reversal at this late stage when he had earlier defended those same remarks? It can only be that they have been hurting his campaign even more than people realized and hindered his attempt to shift to the center after pandering shamelessly during the primaries to the most extreme elements in his party.
His reversal has left flat-footed those in his party who had rallied to his side and hailed him for speaking the truth and hoped that this signaled a new and even more vigorous assault on the poor. What will they say now?
I suspect that they will be quiet, thinking that this is yet another cynical lie by Romney in order to court the elusive undecided vote at this late stage of the campaign.
They are likely right.
It fits with a theme: Romney’s rush to the center in the first debate.
There is a silver lining to all of this… I said even before Romney clinched the nomination, back when people like Rick Perry were looking like actual possible presidential candidates, that Romney would ultimately probably be no worse a president than Bush Jr. (I’m setting the bar low here, I know, but when freaking Santorum was seriously on the table, this was no laughing matter), because he ultimately didn’t really have the courage of his convictions, and that, those “convictions” being what they were claimed to be, that was really a good thing in this case.
In other words, he’s not going to be the hard right winger he pretended to be, because he doesn’t really mean it. In the unfortunate event he wins the election, that’s a good thing.
What’s interesting is that the article says that Romney had a prepared statement for the Wednesday debate so that he could disavow his 47% remarks during the debate but didn’t get to because it never came up.
While I doubt Obama’s people could have known about this, one must wonder if there was some calculation made along those lines when they decided whether Obama should bring it up during the debate. Now it looks like it wasn’t such a bad idea to avoid the 47% issue and force Romney to backpedal in a forum that will get him less exposure than the national debate would have.
Mitt, were you lying then, or are you lying now? Or do you even have a passing acquaintance with the concept of “truth”?