Upon further consideration…

After stewing on this for a few days, I’ve come to a conclusion: Jim Messina, Campaign Manager for Obama For Against America, is a total douchebag.

In reaction to the Romney statements surreptitiously taped and taken out of full context by Mother Jones magazine, Messina said the following:

Today we learned that Mitt Romney said this about Obama supporters to fellow millionaires at a closed-door fundraiser:

“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 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…These are people who pay no income taxes …

My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The man who spoke these words — who demonstrates such disgust and disdain for half of our fellow Americans — is the other side’s choice for president of the United States. He wants to lead our country.

If we don’t come through for President Obama right now, this will be the guy making big decisions that affect us and our families every single day. (All emphasis in original.)

First of all, Romney was absolutely right. Sadly, we have an element of society (who will likely vote for Obama if they vote at all) who believes they’re entitled to every single morsel of government goodies because there are people who have things they want and they don’t. That selfish attitude lies in stark contrast to the attitude of many Romney supporters who are happy to be charitable but would prefer to make their own choices about who they donate to.

So we have remarks that the other 53 percent of us would likely listen to and nod our head in agreement with (not to mention some portion of the 47 percent who still have some semblance of pride.) Thing is, if the economy hadn’t gone in the tank a half-decade ago we may be looking at only 40 percent of the population being in the class Romney speaks of rather than 47 percent. That would be a huge electoral difference, although on the other hand if the economy were good Barack Obama would have had no chance of winning in 2008.

But the other question is why this video is important right now. Since it was apparently taped in the spring, it’s possible some turncoat – a double agent of sorts (remember, this was a fundraiser that attendees had to pay $50,000 a head for) – came and taped Romney’s remarks. At this point it was pretty obvious that Romney would be the GOP nominee so anything he said would be fair game. In a regular campaign, this tape would likely be the October surprise, but events in the Middle East have forced the Obama campaign and their allies in the press to go to the well a little early as yet another diversion. They couldn’t let the press narrative of Middle East protests sparked by an obscure filmmaker’s video fall apart as more evidence of an organized attack on the Libyan embassy leaked out, so this video becomes the new narrative: “Romney is out of touch and uncaring.”

Even if Romney is correct and Obama gets 47 percent of the vote, the good news is that leaves 53% of the vote for Mitt Romney. Depending on which states fall into each category, we can even allow Gary Johnson 3 percent and give Romney 50 percent and 270 or more electoral votes. Works for me.

Then maybe we can work on paring back that 47 percent on the government dole by growing the economy the right way, through job creation in the private sector and not “independence cards” from the public one. Funny how Jim Messina isn’t taking credit for all those new food stamp recipients.