Sound Off: Did Romney Criticize 47 Percent of America?

On Monday, the progressive magazine Mother Jones released a series of audiotapes of former Massachusetts Gov. and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser earlier this year. The tapes appear to have been made without Romney's knowledge.

The comments getting the most attention (in attached video) show Romney talking about what he says are the 47 percent of electorate who will: 

"vote for the president no matter what. All right, 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 later said his "job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

The "half the country pays no income tax" was a topic that came out in the last year and was repeated by groups who were critical of the country's tax system. Those critics implied that nearly half of Americans don't pay taxes. But, as The Washington Post pointed out today, that is incorrect. 

• Of the 46.4 percent of people who do not pay income tax, 28.3 percent—or roughly two-thirds—pay the payroll tax.
• Of the remaining 18.1 percent, 10.3 percent of those do not pay income taxes because they are elderly and retired.
• The remaining people who pay no taxes at all, do so because they make less than $20,000 a year.

The Citizens for Tax Justice, a group cited by both Democrats and Republicans in the past, wrote about the tax rate in 2010.

The Romney campaign quickly released a statement that said, in part: 

"Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work."

The comments from Romney are reminiscent of those from Barack Obama, then a candidate in the 2008 Democratic primary, who said at a fundraiser that some "bitter" working class voters "cling...to guns and religion."

***At a press briefing in California on Monday, Romney said that his comments were not "elegantly stated" according to an Associated Press reporter who was in attendance. Romney added that this "is the same message I give to people in public."

The release of the tapes by Mother Jones is the latest in a growing line of problems for the Romney campaign. Earlier on Monday, the web site Politico published a lengthy story that read like a post-mortem instead of a "state of the campaign" article. In the story, Romney and his top leadership are criticized by their own supporters. 

Last week, Romney was widely criticized by other Republicans for speaking too early about the violence in the Middle East—specifically in Libya—that claimed the lives of four Americans, including the Ambassador to Libya.

In addition, Romney did not receive a bounce from the GOP convention that he had hoped for. Voters told pollsters that the most notable aspect of the convention was Clint Eastwood's performance and not Romney's speech.

Meanwhile, Pres. Obama did get a bounce from the Democratic convention that resulted in him pulling ahead of Romney in a tight race. 

*** This story has been updated since it was originally published to include Gov. Romney's comments at a California press briefing.