As you probably heard, a video of Mitt Romney taking questions at a closed-door fundraiser from mid May has caused a little stir. It was leaked by Mother Jones, which has a clear liberal bias. The age of the clip and source will be important later, so just keep them in the back of your head. Here’s the video and here’s the quote that’s getting attention.
“There are 47 percent of the people 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 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. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.”
I don’t generally wade into the realm of political “gaffes” here, but I will here. This will be a two-part post. In Part 1, I will explore why I don’t usually look at these. In Part 2, we will look at what this particular incident can tell us about the race and how political operatives think and act. In any event, let me lay out the five main reasons I generally don’t.
First, they usually have a very short life in the media due to short attention spans and selective memory. Think about it. Unless it’s a really big story, it doesn’t stay in the news cycle for very long. By the time this post gets published, it will probably be largely out of the news cycle because they’ll be onto something else.
Second, usually a negligibly small number of voters would be persuaded to change their vote or non-vote due to a single incident.
Third, somewhat along the lines of the second reason, they are usually little more than a quick shot-in-the-arm for the base of both the person who commits the gaffe and the person running against the person who committed the gaffe.
Fourth, accidents and coincidences are rare things in the political world. There is almost always a calculated reason for a politician to do or say something. Truly unintentional mistakes like Weinergate are very rare.
Finally, and this is probably the biggest one, there is generally very little value to be gained by discussing them.
That’s why I don’t generally look at gaffes. The reason I’m going to make an exception this time around is I think the way this thing played out is very revealing of not only the general state of the campaign, but also how political operatives think and act. I’m not getting into the merit or lack thereof in the statements themselves because that’s a whole other topic.
My belief is that if the general public understands how political operatives think and act, we’ll be better equipped to not fall for their trickery and see beyond their smoke and mirrors. I want to take people behind the curtain, so to speak. I think this exercise will also lay out why this event really isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things and represents little more than a calculated, short-term action by the Democrats and reaction by the GOP. There are two key questions we have to look at. The first is the Democrats’ timing and the second is the GOP reaction. We will consider these questions in Part 2.
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