Romney's candid moment

[james&olya 1,121]

And? Last I heard, there were 57 or 58 states, including the "mystery states".

There are the voting jurisdictions that are not states. The District of Columbia, Guam, US Virgin Islands, etc.

[alizon 77]

From political scientists: No, the 47% of voters who pay no federal income tax are not the same 47% who are voting for Obama.

Romney said: "[Obama] starts off with a huge number. These are the people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect."

This last bit makes sense to me, also it seems to be the general consensus that Obama will received at least 47% of the vote in this election. Where Romney goes wrong is in his deterministic connection of the low-income, non-income-tax-paying 47%, with the 47% of the voters who will definitely go for Obama. Yes, Obama will get the majority of the low-income vote, but some middle and upper-income voters will go for him too.

I think Romney was making the mistake of seeing two similar numbers floating around (the 47% or non-income-tax-payers and the 47% floor on the Obama vote) and equating them.

Also this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters/

For what it’s worth, this division of “makers” and “takers” isn’t true. Among the Americans who paid no federal income taxes in 2011, 61 percent paid payroll taxes — which means they have jobs and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax, they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid. Another 22 percent were elderly.

So 83 percent of those not paying federal income taxes are either working and paying payroll taxes or they’re elderly and Romney is promising to protect their benefits because they’ve earned them. The remainder, by and large, aren’t paying federal income or payroll taxes because they’re unemployed. But that’s a small fraction of the country.

...

Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that. (You also see a jump after the financial crisis begins in 2008, but we can expect that to be mostly temporary.)

Some of those tax cuts for the poor were there to make the tax cuts for the rich more politically palatable.

Edited September 18, 2012 by alizon

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Hint: Here are the 10 states that rely the most on food stamps:

South Carolina, Maine, West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Tennessee, Oregon and Mississippi.

6/10 of those went red in 2008.

16% of the 2008 Red State population is on SNAP - 16M out of 97.3M

13% of the 2008 Blue State population is on SNAP - 28.5M out of 214.3M

Facts are hard to swallow for the right wingers. Romney has been dissing his base.

[james&olya 1,121]

From political scientists: No, the 47% of voters who pay no federal income tax are not the same 47% who are voting for Obama.

Also this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters/

Of course you are right. That was all obvious from the very start for all but the 1% who really don't have a clue! The real irony is how many of the tea-party that will vote for Romney are part of that useless 47% paying no income tax!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Of course you are right. That was all obvious from the very start for all but the 1% who really don't have a clue! The real irony is how many of the tea-party that will vote for Romney are part of that useless 47% paying no income tax!

That is the real irony indeed.

[abner137 48]

He may not be "politically correct", but where is the flaw in his logic?

The flaw is he has absolutely no idea what he talks about, he's like a distinguished Palin possibly with a male sex organ.

He'll never win because he is going to have to speak....and he'll say something extra stupid.....

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The flaw is he has absolutely no idea what he talks about, he's like a distinguished Palin possibly with a male sex organ.

He'll never win because he is going to have to speak....and he'll say something extra stupid.....

Rumor has it that the Romney campaign came up with the plan:

NEW YORK In what his campaign described today as a bold strategy to insure victory in the Presidential contest, Republican nominee Mitt Romney will undergo a procedure to have his mouth wired shut until Tuesday, November 6th.

The decision reportedly was made in response to the release earlier in the day of rare video footage showing Mr. Romney saying what he really thinks.

In the video, Mr. Romney blasts the American people for being “insanely obsessed with food, clothing, and shelter,” and asserts that many of them are “too lazy to hide their money overseas.”

At another point in the video, Mr. Romney refers to his own hardscrabble childhood: “I was never handed anything in life. If I wanted to cut a gay kid’s hair off, I had to pin him to the ground myself.”

Romney campaign aides were upbeat about the mouth-wiring procedure today, with some saying they wished they had thought of it months ago.

When asked about the procedure at a campaign stop in Ohio, Mr. Romney said, “Mmmnff ffnn mmfff nnnnnff.”