There he goes again, as Romney insults the poor

Oh dear. This was already a bad week for Team Romney, what with all the annoying headlines about internal squabbling and infighting at the heart of the campaign, distracting them from their new, focused message about the economy.

Ah yes, the economy. Time for another ‘Oops, he did it again’ moment from Mitt himself, who has now been caught on video at a private fundraiser, declaring that he doesn’t care about the large proportion of Americans who pay no federal income tax, because they’re just going to vote for Obama anyway.

The video, obtained by David Corn of the liberal Mother Jones magazine, shows Romney declaring: “There are 47 per cent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsiblity to care for them.”

And, he goes on: “These are people who pay no income tax…so our message of low taxes doesn’t connect…my job is not to worry about these people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

There are forty seven percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…my job is not to worry about these people. Mitt Romney

So who are these forty seven percent? Luckily the Tax Policy Centre has done a handy breakdown.

Just over half of Americans pay federal income tax. Of the rest, 28.3 per cent qualify for enough tax credits and deductions to take their liability to zero. Many of those deductions, like earned income credit and child credit are part of the Bush-era tax cuts that Mitt Romney supported, and wants to extend. And they still contribute towards payroll taxes, which fund social security and Medicare benefits.

10.3 per cent of households don’t pay income tax because they are elderly and retired, and aren’t taxed on their social security benefits, which they paid into as part of the taxes they paid during their working lives.

That leaves just under seven per cent who have an income below $20,000 a year: but while they fall below the threshold for paying federal income tax, most Americans still pay state and local taxes.

There’s another three thousand people who pay no income tax, and not because they’re poor. In fact, they fall into the top 0.1 percent of earners, with an income of more than $2,178,866 in 2011.

However they’ve managed to siphon it into things like capital gains, which has a much lower tax rate. Something called “tax loss carryforward” also allows investors to offset a big loss from last year against this year’s gains, for tax purposes. Mitt Romney himself is no stranger to this kind of creative accounting, perfectly legal as it is.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

But there’s more. The not-so-private fundraiser took place back in May, in the lavish Florida home of private equity investor Marc Leder. Supporters had paid $50,000 a head to be there. Mr Leder’s company, Sun Capital, has been criticised over the large number of companies it’s acquired which have run into trouble or laid off workers.

Mr Leder has also denied allgations of a somewhat wild and risque lifestyle, after the New York Post reported that guests at one of his parties last summer had “cavorted nude in the pool and performed sex acts”, while scantily clad girls danced on platforms to a wild techno beat.

But back to Mr Romney, who has certainly never been accused of having a flamboyant lifestyle. What he has been accused of, though, is allowing his vast wealth and often distainful manner to frame him as someone completely out of touch with the lives and struggles of the majority of voters.

The examples are almost too numerous to mention: the time he bet Rick Perry ten thousand dollars during one of the primary debates. The quip about his many automobiles, his best friends who owned NASCAR motor racing teams, his refusal to release more than two years of his own tax returns.

Now a video originally put out by the John McCain team during the primary race in 2008, shas re-emerged – showing an evening-dress-clad Romney joking: “When I was young I used to think that being rich and being famous would make me happy. And boy – was I right!”

Campaign disarray

In a hastily-arranged press conference late last night – not something any campaign likes to call – Mr Romney refused to backtrack on his remarks, instead describing them as “off the cuff”, and not “elegantly stated”.

The New York Times has the inside track: describing the unseemly rush to alert the travelling press corps to the unscheduled remarks, right before a major fundraisng event in California. The location – a small ballroom – was, comments the paper, “less than ideal.”

But leading Republicans backed him up: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus leaping to Romney’s defence on CNN talking of a “dependency society” and insisting: “I don’t think the candidate’s off message at all.” To others, he was simply stating the obvious.

The Obama-supporting super PAC Priorities USA hastily put out “We, the People”, a television ad accusing Romney of attacking the middle class and protecting the rich: it is now running in six swing states, including Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

And Obama campaign spokesman Jim Messina declared: “It’s shocking that a candidate for president of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as victims.”

What a week, what a month: the image of a campaign in disarray and a candidate overshadowed by his own caricature. And if Romney was to apologise or backtrack on his remarks, it would infuriate conservatives, who basically agree wholeheartedly with what he said.

Not the easiest place to be in, just fifty days before the election. If this was a company and Mitt was the CEO – how would he turn this one around?

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News