A slight grin on his face and a pained look in his eyes, a distracted Mitt Romney Monday night defended comments he made in Florida dismissing 47 percent of the electorate as freeloaders who will never vote for him.
"My job is not to worry about those people," Romney was recorded saying at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton. "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
Romney convened a news conference Monday to tell reporters, who had been hustled past well-heeled patrons at a gathering in Costa Mesa, Calif., that while his words were "not elegantly stated," the reality is that President Obama "has his group, I have mine" and that the election would be decided by the 5 or 6 percent in the middle, a group he looks increasingly in danger of losing as frustrations mount over a disappointing convention performance and his questionably timed rebuke of the president after an attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya.
After making a brief statement and answering three questions, Romney hurriedly exited the impromptu stage to make a date with the cocktail-sipping donors downstairs, where campaign finance chairman Spencer Zwick had been apologizing for the delay, telling them, "We had a press event that we had not anticipated we would do in the middle of a fundraiser. But this is a presidential campaign and we don't always get to predict what's going to happen every single day."
Charles Dharapak/AP Photo
How Damaging are Mitt Romney's Leaked Comments?
Watch Video Randy Newman Sings About Racism in Politics
Watch Video Hours earlier, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina had slammed Romney for going "behind closed doors" to declare that "half the American people view themselves as 'victims,' entitled to handouts."
"It's hard to serve as president for all Americans," Messina wrote, "when you've disdainfully written off half the nation."
When asked about the tape today in Iowa, Vice President Joe Biden was uncharacteristically brief, saying he'd "let [Romney's] words speak for themselves."
In a twist revealed by New York Magazine Monday night, the clips - originally posted and reported by Mother Jones â€" were apparently shot anonymously, but first delivered to the media by former President Jimmy Carter's grandson, a freelance Democratic opposition researcher.
The opening scenes show Romney telling donors that 47 percent of voters will chose Obama "no matter what."
"There are 47 percent 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," Romney can be heard telling his donors. "And they will vote for this president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax."
In another clip released by Mother Jones, Romney responds bluntly to a question about the Middle East, saying the Palestinians have "no interest whatsoever in establishing peace" with Israel.
Going forward, Romney indicated, "you move things along the best way you can. 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."
Early today, the campaign attempted to square the comment with their stated goal of establishing a two-state peace.
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