Romney shows disdain for half of US in secretly-recorded speech

A collection of secretly-recorded videos of Mitt Romney speaking to an affluent fundraiser crowd shows the Republican candidate for US president making several off-color comments about minorities and supporters of President Barack Obama.

After recently surfacing on YouTube, the videos were brought to the press Monday by Washington magazine Mother Jones, and are reportedly from a private, closed-door Romney fundraiser conducted after his acceptance of the Republican Party's nomination for presidential candidate in August of this year. Speaking on the topic of the minority vote, Romney tells his audience that "if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting bloc has in the past, why, we're in trouble … as a nation."Continuing on the theme, he adds that he would "have a better shot of winning" had he been born Mexican.Very little information on the videos has been provided, apparently to protect the filmmaker's identity. They are mostly blurred, with the exception of Romney's face, ostensibly for the same reason.But despite the filmer's identity being unknown, David Corn at Mother Jones has revealed that the video was shot at the Boca Raton, Florida estate of Marc Leder, a hedge fund manager known for throwing raucus parties. Last December the New York Post reported on a "wild end-of-the-summer bash" at a Hamptons mansion in Long Island, New York,  "that Leder rented for a whopping $500,000 a month," where "guests cavorted nude in a pool and performed sex acts."Raising money at Leder's Florida residence, Romney responded to a question about how he plans to attract voters before the November general vote by calling nearly half of Americans freeloaders, contending that "there are 47 percent who are with [Obama], 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." In regards to whether he would be able to reach voters with such expectations, he continues, "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."In an especially candid admission of how elections work in Western and Western-backed countries, Romney states that his advisors "do" elections all over the world, specifically mentioning that he has staffers who also work for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom he refers by the nickname "Bibi." Hesitant to reveal which of his campaign's employees have engineered political races "in Africa, in Israel," Romney simply tells his audience, "I'd tell them to you, but I'd have to shoot you."

In comments Monday Romney stood by his remarks in the videos, saying that he and Obama favor different styles of governance. He claimed that Obama prefers a government-dominated society, while he prefers a society of free people, free enterprise and free markets, the Washington Post reports.“It’s not elegantly stated… I’m speaking off the cuff in response to a question,” Romney explained to reporters Monday night.