Romney Clarifies Statements About Voters Who Pay No Taxes

(Newsroom America) -- In a hastily formed press conference Monday night following the release of a recording in which he said nearly half of U.S voters pay no income taxes and will likely support his incumbent rival, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney clarified his comments but stuck by them at the same time.

Earlier, a recording released by Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, captured Romney speaking off the cuff at a fundraiser in Florida in May, in which he said his campaign would not try to appeal to "47 percent of the people” who will vote for President Barack Obama "no matter what."

Those voters, Romney said, "pay no income tax" and are "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them." Because of that, he said, "our message of low taxes doesn’t connect."

"My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," he was quoted as saying.

Later Monday, at a fundraiser in California, Romney said he could have made the same comments more eloquently, but nevertheless stuck by them.

Romney said his comments were directed at "a question about direction for the country: Do you believe in a government-centered society that provides more and more benefits? Or do you believe instead in a free-enterprise society where people are able to pursue their dreams?"

Romney went onto say he offers the same stark message to wealthy donors as he does Middle Class voters, though he has not used the same language at events featuring the latter demographic.

And, he said, he wanted to offer donors a very candid sense of his candidacy and strategy, since they play a vital role in his bid to win the White House.

"That’s something which fund-raising people who are parting with their monies are very interested in — knowing can you win or not and that’s what this was addressing," he said.

The Obama campaign quickly seized on Romney's remarks, describing them as "shocking."

Jim Mesina, Obama's campaign spokesman, questioned why Romney would "go behind closed doors" to make such remarks.

It's not the first time a candidate has made such off-the-cuff remarks out of the limelight, The New York Times reported.

Four years ago, then-candidate Obama was caught making remarks at a San Francisco fundraiser saying small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to vent or deal with their frustrations.

Romney’s figure of 47 percent comes from the Tax Policy Center, which found that 46.4 percent of households paid no federal income tax in 2011.

More than half of those households did pay payroll taxes, however.

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