Mitt Romney committed an epic gaffe today because he said something that was true but simultaneously ludicrous.
ROMNEY: We have to make sure that the promises we make — and Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare — are promises we can keep. And there are various ways of doing that. One is, we could raise taxes on people.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Corporations!
ROMNEY: Corporations are people, my friend. We can raise taxes on —
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, they’re not!
ROMNEY: Of course they are. Everything corporations earn also goes to people.
AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]
ROMNEY: Where do you think it goes?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It goes into their pockets!
ROMNEY: Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets! Human beings, my friend. So number one, you can raise taxes. That’s not the approach that I would take.
Corporations are not people, which is why the audience just laughed at Romney. But they are treated as if they were people in a variety of legal circumstances. It makes sense to allow corporations to enter into contracts and to act as one party in a law suit. Whether it makes sense to treat them as people for the purposes of free speech or campaign contributions is a bit more controversial. But that’s what the Supreme Court says we should do, and so Romney is technically correct in every sense except the most literal.
But if you walk up to a man on the street and tell him that corporations are people, he’ll think you’re a weird asshole. If you’re dressed like Mitt Romney, he might just punch you in the dick. So, yeah, this was a major gaffe that’s going to stick to Romney like glue.
“If corporations are people, why don’t they pay taxes?”
“If corporations are people, maybe that explains why you’re so interested in representing them in Washington.”
And so on.
Kind of like Cheney’s “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” and Kerry’s “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
Comparatively, though, how much was Kerry’s statement flogged in the mainstream media compared to Cheney’s? Exponentially more, would be my guess.
I’m sure by the time a large chunk of our media are done with it, most Americans will be reflexively nodding their heads in agreement with Romney and parroting it as if “everyone knows that it’s true”.
IOAGIYNAR- It’s only a gaffe if you’re not a Republican”
Yes, except that the media is funded by people who will be very happy to hear Romney say what he said, so they’ll just give a Jedi wave of the hand and say “this is not the gaffe you’re looking for” and that will be the end of that.
“the fundamentals of the economy are strong.”
Well yeah, but that was 6 weeks before the election. We’re still well over a year out, and while coverage is already ridiculous, it’s year out ridiculous, not 6 weeks out ridiculous. Nobody is going to remember this in a year.*
(* – note my attempt at a reverse jinx!)
Trust me. This will be a mantra if Romney wins the nomination. Bumper stickers, t-shirts, hot-air balloons, blimps, sky-writers, billboards, Times Square, the Moon. Everywhere.
this is Mittens being Mittens
To be generous, he presumably meant that corporations are made up of people, which is also true but not very relevant to the point. They’re made up of people in a particular structure, with a clear hierarchy of both power and financial benefit.
Basically, he’s probably trying to say that raising taxes on corporations will have a trickle-down effect on the lower level employees. Which is roughly as true as tax cuts having a trickle-down effect, which is to say hardly at all.
So yup, gaffelicious.
You know, he’ll just say “The US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world! They do pay taxes!”
That would require knowing where you are in the space-time continuum at all times. Mittens doesn’t know that.
For all the talk of what a great businessman he was — and I don’t see it, personally — the man’s just not very good at thinking on his feet. Doesn’t anybody remember Rudy Mussolini and Huckster running circles around him in the 2008 debates?
Ha, a number of people think that very performance the other day is a good example of him doing just that.
Suggested Streisand lyrics:
And then there was one of my favorite bands ever, the Village Corporations….
This also creates a new twist on our favorite food, Soylent Green!
Ha!
“We the Corporations of the United States, in order to
formdestroy a more perfect Union…”Fine, but corporations are greedy and cruel ass****s.
Please let this be a turning point in civic perception.
Seems like some corporate people might be a little insulted. Cause corporate people don’t have to do little people stuff like go to jail. Like if a crime is corporate enough, it’s not a crime anymore. It’s economic innovation or something.
There are not enough Americans in the undecided bracket…the only 30+% that counts in an election…who will vote for him. He’s the past. He looks, smells, thinks, talks and acts the past.
Remember…there are “undecideds” both left and right of the center. I would guess a good 10+% of that 30+% are to the right of the mainstream RatPubs and a smaller 2-3% are to the left of Obama and the DemRats. That leaves a very centrist 18+% of the voting public who will decide the next election. The Dems and minorities will vote Dem (The minority vote…especially the Hispanic vote…is up in the air in terms of convincing them to vote, of course.) and the RatPub loyalists will vote RatPub.
Neither core group…again considering that the minority and youth wild cards are as unpredictable as it is possible for them to be…is large enough to elect a president.
So…can the centrist 25% be convinced to vote for the past? The image of the past, from haircut to shoes and everything in between?
I do not think so.
They glom up mainstream TV in great gobs of “Hottest-thing-ever-ness,” these people. They are the core audience for network TV, and w/very few exceptions network TV is not selling much ’50s stuff these days. The heroes all wear their shirts untucked and the heroines are slim and athletic 20-somethings, most of them. The newscasters? Ditto, mostly. And the ads? Fuggedaboudit!!!
Romney is a hard sell. So are most of the other possibilities. If he is nominated against Obama you can take it as a sign that Obama has been given the corporate green light for another four years of frontsmanship. Maybe only because they couldn’t come up w/anybody more electable in eiher party; maybe because he’s doing a great job as far as the real power people are concerned. Taking the blame, “doing what he can” even though it’s next to nothing…the perfect frontman/fallguy for another four years of economic coup.
But Romney? The rest of the Rats?
Look at the pictures.
I’m sorry, man…they all look like refugees from a ’50s sitcom, slightly modified to pass in 2011 as normal people. There simply aren’t enough voters still living in the ’50s to vote any of them in w/the possible exception of Palin, who knows how to pass but won’t get the nod from the corporate media because she is too dangerous to their interests. (Hard to predict what she’ll do, so no go. Bet on it.)
So…what can they do. I think that the Republicans will once again be the designated loser once again. To Obama or Clinton. (Yeah, I know. She’s unelectable; she’s not running, yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda. If the controllers think Obama is in danger of losing she’ll be there in a NY minute. Watch. As presidential candidate or as vice=president. Watch.)
But Romney?
Here’s a picture of his father.
They couldn’t sell George Romney when it was the ’50s! (Well…the ’60s, but who was counting? In 1968 fully 2/3rds of the country was still living in 1953. Bet on it.)
Here is a Wikipedia chart depicting George Romney’s poll numbers over two years.
Right down the toilet!!!
Like father, like son. The must be at least a few Rat strategists w/enough brains to see that much!!!
Watch.
AG
I went to the linked Wikipedia entry, and there is a glaring error. It states that at the 1968 convention, Mayor Lindsay of New York placed George Romney’s name in nomination for the Vice Presidency. In fact, Lindsay made the nominating speech for Spiro Agnew. When he ran for President himself four years later, Lindsay would say, “When I pull a boner, it’s a beaut.”
I was trying to find the exact quote by typing “John V. Lindsay” and “boner” into a Google search, but surprisingly it didn’t come up, as Google took the liberty of changing “boner” to “erection”. I think this proves that corporations ARE people, and that Google is a real prude.
What I think is most damaging to Mittens about this gaffe is the raucus laughter and jeering that greeted his statement, and its being embedded in a clip of him being totally unable to control the crowd he was speaking to. I heard it twice on the radio today, once on NPR, the other time on a local AM station whose night-time talk audience is just as benighted as you’d expect, and in both cases they played enough of the clip to hear Romney bleating “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You’ll get your chance to speak! Wait a minute!” and being shouted down and trampled over (metaphorically only, alas) by the crowd.
Mittens not only said something stupid, something even a Joe the Plumber would find ludicrous; he said it in a context that made him look weak and helpless, verging on panic. Hell, when someone yelled they wanted to tell him something he actually retorted something like he didn’t come to listen, he’d come to speak to them. You can imagine how that mob reacted to THAT.
So it’s damaging in context and out of context as well! Exxxcellent… </Montgomery_Burns>
Sounds like “macaca” to me.
Yeah and we have that idiot running for a senate seat here in Virginia against Kaine. George Allen who dresses up like a cowboy and rides his horse in parades. OMG. He is a potential serial killer for sure! You almost want to elect him to keep an eye on him. But then again better to just notify the police.
I didn’t know you’re from VA. What part? Also, Allen got really close to beating Webb, and Kaine is very similar in campaign style, demeanor, and politics. I’m not sure he’ll have a good chance. Perriello would have been so much better…
Winchester
To tell you the truth I like Kaine he is a rational man. I thought he was a good governor. Kaine is about as progressive as it gets here. I am afraid that seat will go back to the Repugs I have already contributed to Kaine.
Where part of Va are you?
I went to school in the southwest (Blacksburg), but I currently reside in Eric Cantor’s district in Spotsylvania.
I like Kaine, too, I’m just having another one of those Creigh Deeds sinking feelings with him.
Cantor’s district. I’m sorry to hear that I have Wolf bought and paid for but not overly sociopathic for a Repug.
You know speaking of people in corporations, remember the 90% top tax rate from the Eisenhower/Kennedy years?
Think how effective that was in controlling the bloated salaries of executives. Everything over say a million dollars a yr. gets gets a 90% rate it leaves little incentive the customer and shareholders.
Now hedge fund managers who make much much more need a Financial transaction tax and have capital gains taxed as regular income. This nation will get some revenue its out there and the nation will benefit greatly from it.
….leaves little incentive to ripoff the customers and shareholders….
High corporate taxes also encouraged corporations to reinvest profits rather than hoard cash.
Corporations are People. Some of my best friends are Corporations.
The jokes really do write themselves.
There are not enough Americans in the undecided bracket…the only 30+% that counts in an election…who will vote for him. He’s the past. He looks, smells, thinks, talks and acts the past.
Remember…there are “undecideds” both left and right of the center. I would guess a good 10+% of that 30+% are to the right of the mainstream RatPubs and a smaller 2-3% are to the left of Obama and the DemRats. That leaves a very centrist 18+% of the voting public who will decide the next election. The Dems and minorities will vote Dem (The minority vote…especially the Hispanic vote…is up in the air in terms of convincing them to vote, of course.) and the RatPub loyalists will vote RatPub.
Neither core group…again considering that the minority and youth wild cards are as unpredictable as it is possible for them to be…is large enough to elect a president.
So…can the centrist 25% be convinced to vote for the past? The image of the past, from haircut to shoes and everything in between?
freesexElite Escorts