We learned this week, thanks to Mother Jones, that Mitt Romney, speaking at a fundraising event on May 17, 2012, said,

• There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.
• All right, there are 47% 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…
• [M]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.

But who are these 47%?

In addition to the poor and the broke, who have little or no income, this “47%” includes:

• Money managers who had a bad year, and whos capital gains are less than their losses, altho those folks might vote for Romney,
• Money managers who had a great year, but whos capital losses from prior years wipe out their gains, and again, those folks might vote for Romney,
• Wealthy people who keep their money in accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, who don’t have US income, but who benefit from US infrastructure,
• Soldiers in uniform,
• Senior citizens – who paid income taxes before they retired,
• Disabled veterans, who put life and limb on the line for their country – our country – who I think we do owe health care, food, and housing, and who, Mr. Romney, do take personal responsibility for their lives.

As Martin Bashir said, on NBC News, “Insults require apologies.”

In the same clip, Rep James Clyburn noted that disabled veterans do not consider themselves victims.

And as Chris Matthews put it here, ” Linda Lingle, Linda McMahon, George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Scott Brown, Dean Heller… What does it say about Mitt Romney that so many Republican candidates are distancing themselves from him? … As Michael Dukakis said, ‘The fish rots from the head.'”

As David Corn, of Mother Jones and MSNBC said, “Romney has no overarching strategic plan.”

It looks to me that he wants to win the election, to “Be” President. But he doesn’t know, or can’t tell us, what he’ll do, if or when he gets there. In fact, he told us this – in 2007 he told Rupert Murdoch and the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal reported in Consultant in Chief, that he would basically outsource governing to “McKinsey, Bain, BCG, or Jack Welch.”

“There’s no corporation in America that would have a CEO, no COO, just a CEO, with 30 direct reports.”

Running a government organized like this is, [Romney] explains, impossible. “So I would probably have super-cabinet secretaries, or at least some structure that McKinsey would guide me to put in place.” He seems to catch a note of surprise in his audience, but he presses on: “I’m not kidding, I probably would bring in McKinsey. . . . I would consult with the best and the brightest minds, whether it’s McKinsey, Bain, BCG or Jack Welch.”

See also this article in the  Atlantic Wire.

Talk about avoiding personal responsibility! Romney’s the poster child!