Mitt Romney, the man who was just one step away from becoming the president of the United States, is now blaming President Obama’s “gifts” to minorities, youths, and women for his own Election Day demise.
In a conference call with donors, Romney blamed his loss on how Obama was “very generous” to black, Hispanic and young voters through Obamacare and his student loan relief plan. He also said, “free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women.”
The comments follow Romney’s “47%” flap in which he remarked half the country was unlikely to vote for him because they’re dependent on government.
“What the president, president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote,” Romney said, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News. msnbc is uncertain exactly when this call took place.
According to The New York Times, Romney also explained that “you can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity—I mean, this is huge,” Romney said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition, with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”
The Los Angeles Times first reported the call.
Romney’s campaign confirmed the authenticity of the phone call, and issued a statement: ”Governor Romney was simply elaborating on what (Obama senior strategist) David Axelrod had said about the Obama campaign’s effort to target key demographics, most specifically, women.”
The former Massachusetts governor’s comments builds on a litany of instances outlining the GOP’s racial resentment to the manor in which the party lost the election. Though Romney claimed the majority of support from white voters (59%), exit polls show that he was trounced in shoring up votes from minority groups. President Obama took 93% of black voters, along with 71% of Hispanics.
Romney’s running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, blamed his ticket’s loss on the strong Democratic turnout in “urban areas.” Liberals jumped on Ryan’s remarks, taking “urban” to mean “non-white people.”
“The surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview with WISC-TV. “When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, and those ones coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.”
Or take state Sen. Alberta Darling from Ryan’s home of Wisconsin, who said voter ID would “absolutely” have helped a Republican win in the state.
Over in Maine, GOP chair Charlie Webster suggested that the “dozens” of black people who turned up to vote in rural regions were committing voter fraud because “nobody in town knows anybody that’s black.”
Amanda Sakuma