Could Mitt Romney 'victims' comment be good for his campaign?

That's what some conservatives assert. The uproar over Mitt Romney's remarks that 47 percent of Americans see themselves as 'victims' and feel entitled to government support is an opportunity to emphasize how Romney differs from Obama over the role of government, they say.

|
G.J. McCarthy/The Dallas Morning News/AP
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney poses for pictures with supporters, before boarding his campaign charter plane at Love Field in Dallas, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012.

Mitt Romney’s “victims” tape is bad news for his campaign, runs Washington’s conventional wisdom. It doesn’t do to dismiss 47 percent of America as too dependent on government, in this view, and it’s even worse to say “[my] job is not to worry about those people.”

Democrats are gleeful about what they judge to be an electoral game-changer. Some Republicans are running for cover – Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, for instance, was quick to disassociate himself from Mr. Romney’s expressed views.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? Is it possible this faux pas could actually be good for the Romney campaign?

That’s what some conservatives are arguing Wednesday morning. They say that while Romney’s comments may have been badly put, the whole uproar has handed the ex-Massachusetts governor an opportunity to refashion his campaign message and to emphasize that he wants to lessen the power of government, while President Obama wants to increase it.

“Lemonade out of lemons? If he can refine and hammer home,” tweeted conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, a staunch Romney supporter, on Wednesday.

It isn’t as if the Romney train had been humming on an open track. In recent weeks his campaign has been beset by so many problems, self-made and otherwise, that Politico tagged him “man of constant sorrow.” Remember his botched trip to London? Clint Eastwood’s strange GOP convention appearance? The flap about his hasty statement on the Middle East riots, which we won’t even begin to try to describe?

As the “constant sorrow” song goes, “for six long years, I’ve been in trouble. No pleasure here on Earth I find.” (It hasn’t actually been six years, but it might seem that long if you’re a Romney campaign official.)

In this context, a candidate needs to find an opening where he can get it, to paraphrase Ms. Rubin’s post on the subject Wednesday at Right Turn.

“The Romney-Ryan campaign quite correctly, I think, has seen that while there were certainly problems with how Romney spoke to his donors about the 47 percent, the terrain on which he now finds himself is exceptionally favorable,” writes Rubin.

This terrain, according to Rubin and other conservatives, is ground on which Romney should compare his desire for an opportunity-based society with Mr. Obama’s government-centric approach.

This is a formulation that will appeal even to those who are currently boosted by government benefits or don’t make enough to pay income taxes – the 47 percent, writes RedState editor Erick Erickson.

Many people are not in the 47 percent by choice, and they recognize that they are there due to Obama’s economic policies, according to Erickson. They don’t think Romney was talking about them when he used the word “victims.”

“I think the media and the left have badly misread the American mood on this,” writes Erickson.

Conservatives are further heartened by the release of audiotape on which then-state Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in 1998 says, “I actually believe in redistribution, at least to a certain level to make sure everybody’s got a shot.”

Romney himself has an op-ed in Wednesday's USA Today that attempts to make this pivot away from the literal content of his words toward a more general and more positive message.

Government does have a role to play in helping Americans, writes Romney, but not in the manner the current administration intends. Rather, it “creates the space” for people to pursue their own goals. “Instead of creating a web of dependency, I will pursue policies that grow our economy and lift Americans out of poverty,” writes Romney.

But Democrats won’t let Romney easily distance himself from the actual words he used on the already-infamous fundraiser tape. The pro-Obama "super PAC" Priorities USA Action already has an ad up Wednesday using snippets of the tape, including the “victim” remark and the Romney statement of his self-described 47 percent that “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Could Mitt Romney 'victims' comment be good for his campaign?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2012/0919/Could-Mitt-Romney-victims-comment-be-good-for-his-campaign
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe