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Bitter Clingers
Mitt Romney’s indictment of 47% of America tonight is a damning gaffe because it seems to reflect authentic, impolitic instincts, what some people on his side think some of the time, even if they don’t say it.
On April 12, 2008, Barack Obama’s deeply patronizing comments on conservative Pennsylvania voters spurred an almost identical flap.
““And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said, explaining — he thought — some voters’ politics during the long Pennsylvania primary.
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them,” Hillary Clinton responded then. (Today, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said, “It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.”)
Romney immediately today said he’d been inelegant in his phrasing; Obama, at first, stood fully by his comments, and tried to reinterpret them on the fly. “I’m out of touch?” he asked rhetorically at an Indiana event the night they emerged. The next day, he conceded: “I didn’t say it as well as I should have.”
His full, combative cleanup effort that Friday night the story broke:
I was in San Francisco talking to a group at a fundraiser, and somebody asked how, well, how are you going to get votes in Pennsylvania? What’s going on there? We hear that it’s hard for working class people to get behind your campaign. Why is that? I said, well, look, they’re frustrated. And for good reason.
cakes
September 18th, 2012
I am a Jewish woman who clings to her guns and religion, built a small business by herself, would like to expand that business but is hindered by new regulations and taxes, who is now told by the Obamas that there is a war on women because she is nothing more than sex object- a vagina and uterus- and that women are incapable of being responsible for said uterus and vagina, while gloating about the Arab spring at the exact time the spring’s modern, young freedom lovers were raping Laura Logan and threatening Israel ,who Obama tells us he loves as he refuses to meet with Bibi, who he complained about to the head of France and walked out of a meeting with while having the white house chef serve the observant Jew non kosher food.
Nope, Obama hasn’t offended me yet.
GW Bear
September 18th, 2012
I don’t know, in my mind this should get him votes, not lose them. The mopes on welfare either weren’t going vote at all or if they do vote, they’ll vote for the Ohole.
Right now that’s a big problem for the Teleprompter in Chief. Even black ministers are advising their congregations to stay home and not vote. Plus all the utes who voted for the a-hole in the White House are living in their mommy’s basement because they can’t get a job with their social studies and women’s studies degrees aren’t going to go to the polls.
They’ve been screwed by President Hopey Changey and they don’t have the gas money to drive to the polls.
muddjuice (Absolutist)
September 19th, 2012
This doesn’t change anything. Those who would have voted for Obama will still vote for him. Same for Romney.
This country has been deeply divided since Adams vs. Jefferson……