Romney: ‘Great divide’ exists over tax philosophy

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney speaks to reporters about the secretly taped video from one of his cam­paign fundrais­ing events Mon­day in Costa Mesa, Calif. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Charles Dharapak)

KEN THOMAS

Asso­ci­ated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney said Tues­day that Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama believes gov­ern­ment should “take from some to give to the oth­ers” as he defended telling wealthy donors that half of Amer­i­cans believe they are “vic­tims” who are enti­tled to gov­ern­ment assistance.

Rom­ney told Fox News dur­ing an inter­view that he views such redis­tri­b­u­tion as a “for­eign con­cept” and that there is a “great divide” among Amer­i­cans on the subject.

The GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee said a grow­ing fed­eral gov­ern­ment, dri­ven in part by peo­ple who want sup­port from gov­ern­ment pro­grams, has jeop­ar­dized the country.

“It’s a path­way that looks more Euro­pean than Amer­i­can in my view. And it’s a path­way some Amer­i­cans are drawn to,” Rom­ney said. He said peo­ple who pay no income taxes would be unlikely to sup­port his cam­paign because his plan to cut those taxes across the board wouldn’t help them.

The Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date was rein­forc­ing remarks he made at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., on May 17, com­ments secretly video­taped and made pub­lic on Mon­day. Romney’s cam­paign spent part of Mon­day try­ing to mit­i­gate fall­out from the video, in which he tells donors that 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans “believe they are vic­tims” and that his job as pres­i­dent wouldn’t be to “worry about those people.”

In response, Rom­ney offered no apolo­gies Mon­day night dur­ing a hastily arranged news con­fer­ence in which he said the com­ments were not “ele­gantly stated” and were spo­ken “off the cuff.” He said the remarks showed a con­trast between Obama’s “government-centered soci­ety” and his belief in a “free-market approach.”

“Of course, I want to help all Amer­i­cans, all Amer­i­cans, have a bright and pros­per­ous future,” Rom­ney told reporters.

Obama’s cam­paign pounced on the video, which was obtained by Mother Jones mag­a­zine and released only hours after Romney’s cam­paign out­lined a new strat­egy to try to reju­ve­nate a strug­gling cam­paign. The video’s emer­gence came as advis­ers to the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor tried to reas­sure party lead­ers and donors about Romney’s strat­egy amid con­cerns that the race could be slip­ping away.

In the video, Rom­ney also said the Pales­tini­ans “have no inter­est” in peace with Israel.

“You hope for some degree of sta­bil­ity, but you rec­og­nize that this is going to remain an unsolved prob­lem … and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ulti­mately, some­how, some­thing will hap­pen and resolve it,” Rom­ney said. He said push­ing Israel to give up dis­puted ter­ri­tory for a two-state solu­tion with the Pales­tini­ans “is the worst idea in the world.”

Rom­ney has not addressed his remarks about the Mid­dle East.

Those com­ments put him in sync with hard lin­ers in the Israeli gov­ern­ment, includ­ing some aides to Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli cab­i­net min­is­ters. Netanyahu him­self has pub­licly advo­cated for a two-state solution.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion favors a two-state solu­tion with Israel and a future Pales­tine. But it says Pales­tin­ian state­hood can only come about through a nego­ti­ated agree­ment between the par­ties, not through the United Nations.

Pales­tin­ian law­maker and scholar Hanan Ashrawi accused Rom­ney of “destroy­ing the chances for peace” and called his remarks “irre­spon­si­ble and dan­ger­ous and both igno­rant and prejudiced.”

Netanyahu’s office declined to com­ment. The office of Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas also had no comment.

Romney’s com­ments in the first video appeared to focus more on the econ­omy, the No. 1 issue for vot­ers in November.

“There are 47 per­cent of the peo­ple who will vote for the pres­i­dent no mat­ter what,” Rom­ney says in the video. “There are 47 per­cent who are with him, who are depen­dent upon gov­ern­ment, who believe that they are vic­tims, who believe that 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.”

Rom­ney said in the video that his role “is not to worry about those peo­ple. I’ll never con­vince them they should take per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and care for their lives.”

In a seven-minute news con­fer­ence with reporters before a fundraiser near Los Ange­les, Rom­ney did not dis­pute the authen­tic­ity of the hidden-camera footage. He called for the release of the full video, instead of just the clips posted online. Fuller ver­sions of Romney’s remarks at the May fundraiser were made pub­lic Tuesday.

On Mon­day, he sought to clar­ify what he said when asked if he was con­cerned that he may have offended people.

“It’s not ele­gantly stated, let me put it that way. I was speak­ing off the cuff in response to a ques­tion. And I’m sure I could state it more clearly in a more effec­tive way than I did in a set­ting like that,” Rom­ney said.

About 46 per­cent of Amer­i­cans owed no fed­eral income tax in 2011, although many of them paid other forms of taxes. More than 16 mil­lion elderly Amer­i­cans avoid fed­eral income taxes solely because of tax breaks that apply only to seniors, accord­ing to the non­par­ti­san Tax Pol­icy Center.

The videos were the lat­est trou­bles for Romney’s cam­paign, which has tried to focus atten­tion on a weak eco­nomic recov­ery and make the case that the Republican’s busi­ness back­ground would help spur the econ­omy. In recent weeks, the cam­paign has dealt with the fall­out from Clint Eastwood’s ram­bling con­ver­sa­tion with a chair at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion and Romney’s omis­sion of the war in Afghanistan or thanks to the troops in his prime-time con­ven­tion speech.

The erup­tion of vio­lence in Egypt and Libya last week prompted Rom­ney to issue a state­ment assail­ing the Obama admin­is­tra­tion before it was known that an Amer­i­can ambas­sador and three other U.S. cit­i­zens had died in Libya, a move that gen­er­ated crit­i­cism from Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans alike.

A series of polls have shown Obama with an edge nation­ally and in key bat­tle­ground states, lead­ing Repub­li­cans to implore Rom­ney to give vot­ers more specifics on how he would gov­ern. The new approach aims to improve Romney’s stand­ing in the lead-up to the first pres­i­den­tial debate on Oct. 3.

Obama cam­paign man­ager Jim Messina quickly issued a fundrais­ing appeal based on the ini­tial video, telling sup­port­ers: “If we don’t come through for Pres­i­dent Obama right now, this will be the guy mak­ing big deci­sions that affect us and our fam­i­lies every sin­gle day.”

An Obama adviser said the Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign might use Romney’s com­ments from the fundrais­ing video in tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments. The offi­cial wasn’t autho­rized to dis­cuss cam­paign strat­egy pub­licly and requested anonymity.

Romney’s cam­paign released a sep­a­rate tele­vi­sion ad Tues­day, argu­ing that the president’s poli­cies “are mak­ing it harder on women.” It cited unem­ploy­ment and poverty sta­tis­tics for women in an attempt to close the gen­der gap that has shown women favor­ing Obama.

Posted by AP News on Sep 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.