Romney audio: Obama won because he bought off minorities, women with ‘gifts’

SHARE Romney audio: Obama won because he bought off minorities, women with ‘gifts’

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Mitt Romney, talking with his supporters and donors in a call Wednesday, went back to the 47 percent well.

In pointing to the reasons he lost – by a lot – to Obama in the race for president, Romney said that the president promised gifts to African Americans and Latinos in exchange for votes, the Los Angeles Times reported. Specifically, The Times report says Romney was referring to student loan forgiveness, immigration reform and Obamacare as promises made to low income, minority communities in order to salt away their votes.

Romney is quoted, from his donor call, in the report By Maeve Reston:

Romney argued that Obama’s healthcare plan’s promise of coverage in perpetuity was highly motivational to those voters making $25,000 to $35,000 who might not have been covered, as well as to African American and Hispanic voters. Pivoting to immigration, Romney said the Obama campaign’s efforts to paint him as anti-immigrant had been effective and that the administration’s promise to offer what he called amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants had helped turn out Hispanic voters in record numbers. The president’s campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift — so he made a big effort on small things. Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.

Speaking of the all-important Latino vote, Romney went into great detail on the “gifts” to that community that won Obama the White House, according to ABC News:

What the president did is he gave them two things. One, he gave them a big gift on immigration with the DREAM Act amnesty program, which was obviously very very popular with Hispanic voters, and then number two was Obamacare … For any lower-income Hispanic family, Obamacare was massive, I mean for–the average income for a household in America is fifty thousand dollars a year, that’s the median, fifty K per year. For the Hispanic household, my guess is it’s lower than that, maybe it’s forty thousand a year. For a home earning let’s say thirty thousand a year, free health care, which is worth about ten thousand dollars a year, I mean is massive, it’s huge. So this–he did two very popular things for the Hispanic community. In order to get Hispanic voters, what the president did we would be very reluctant to do, which is one, provide amnesty for those that are here illegally, and number two put in place Obamacare which basically is ten thousand dollars a family. It’s a proven political strategy, which is give a bunch of money to a group and, guess what, they’ll vote for you. What I would do if I were a Democrat running four years from now, I’d say, you know what, dental care will be included in Obamcare . . . and Republicans will say, no, that’s going to cost a trillion dollars, and the Democrats will say, that’s fine, you know, we’ll pay it. So this is a challenge we’ve got on how to deal with this is a real issue. Immigration we can solve, but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with.

This comes just a day after President Obama had mentioned Romney quite favorably in his first post-election press conference – going so far as to suggest that he may consult Romney on job creation and economic issues in the spirit of bipartisanship.

Judging by the speed with which Republicans are distancing themselves for their candidate for president, though, that Obama-Romney non-beer summit may be on indefinite hold.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, himself emerging as a contender for the top of the Republican ticket and the newly installed head of the Republican Governors Association, had perhaps the strongest words for Romney’s mindset and the harm it does the party:

We have got to stop dividing the American voters. If we’re going to continue to be a competitive party and win elections on the national stage, and continue to fight for our conservative principles, we need two messages to get out loudly and clearly. One, we are fighting for 100 percent of the votes. And second, our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American dream, period.

Jindal went on to tell CNN, in perhaps the most stinging rebuke of Romney, saying that “if you want voters to like you, you have to like them first,” implying that Romney’s continued remarks looking down on certains sectors of society are not so much gaffes as his true feelings coming through.

Perhaps Gov. Jindal – and his outraged colleagues – should steer clear of Paul Ryan’s views on the loss of the election as well. Talking to WISC-TV on Monday, Rep. Ryan pointed firmly at the get-out-the-vote effort in “urban areas” as the reason Romney-Ryan went down in flames:

The bickering over Romney’s statements on minorities and inclusiveness aside, his comments about Bill Clinton and a conversation the two had may be the most eye-opening. Romney claims Clinton, one of Obama’s chief and most effective surrogates on the campaign trail, told him that he though Romney was on the way to a win up until superstorm Sandy smashed into the East Coast.

Romney claims that Clinton believes that allowed Obama to be presidential, to look bi-partisan and to sway momentum his way.

Romney also says the former president had high praise for Ann Romney, claiming that the governor’s wife had CLinton ready to switch to the right side of the aisle:

I spoke with president Clinton the day before yesterday, he called and spent thirty minutes chatting with me. He said a week out I thought you were going to win. And he said, but the hurricane happened, and it gave the president a chance to be presidential, and to look bipartisan, and you know he got a little more momentum, and of course he also said that when he was watching Ann speak at the Republican convention, he decided he was tempted to join the Republican Party. So he may have just been effusive with generous comments as he chatted. He was very complimentary, by the way, of how well we did with middle-class voters, and he said they were surprised by how strong we were in Ohio and in other states with middle-class voters, they did exceptionally well with minorities, but white, middle-class voters, we really cleaned up with and that caught them by surprise.

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