Romney and Obama; Let's Look Closer.

Romney said the following at a fund raiser in May of this year.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney said in the secretly recorded remarks. "There are 47 percent who are with [President Barack Obama], who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."

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

Romney was speaking in the context of votes. Romney is not worried about trying to win the votes of people who will vote for Obama because of their dependency.

In a Fox News interview Romney stood by his 47% comment; further explaining what was already obvious considering the context in which it was stated.

The problem, Romney argued, is that people are so poor nowadays that they’re not paying taxes.

“I want to get people back to work,” he said. “I’d like to see everybody who’s not retired, not in the military, having the privilege of having a good job and a good income – enough that they qualify to pay taxes.”

But even while he tried to make a broader policy argument, Romney in the next breath said that his comments at the fundraiser were not about policies – they were a measure of his political chances of winning the White House.

“I was talking about the fact that I don’t expect to get 60 or 70 percent of the vote,” Romney said. “I understand that some portion will be the president’s, some portion will be mine. I’ve got to get as many as I can from every single cohort in this country.”

Romney several times referenced a 1998 clip that surfaced just before his interview, which shows Obama, then a state senator, advocating for helping the poor through “redistribution.”

I think it's pretty clear what he was getting at. Now let's shift gears for a minute to what Obama has said. Of course everyone remembers Joe The Plumber right.

OBAMA: ... in order to give -- in order to give additional tax cuts to Joe the plumber before he was at the point where he could make $250,000.

Then Exxon Mobil, which made $12 billion, record profits, over the last several quarters, they can afford to pay a little more so that ordinary families who are hurting out there -- they're trying to figure out how they're going to afford food, how they're going to save for their kids' college education, they need a break.

So, look, nobody likes taxes. I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself. But ultimately, we've got to pay for the core investments that make this economy strong and somebody's got to do it.

The 47% comment by Romney is correct. There is a large percentage of the population that stands to benefit from handouts. If that were not the case why then vote for Obama? What has Obama done to limit government dependency?

This Obama comment from 2008 gets to the core of the debate. Obama actually believes that "investment" in government is going to make the economy strong. Romney was pointing out that he wants the economy to do better by having less government involvement. The government will have increased tax revenue when more people pay into it, not taking more from the few that pay in now.

The economy is the private sector. Taking money from the private sector and putting in government is never going to result in a stronger economy. It simply makes no sense.

Obama has been an advocate for higher taxes and more government economic intervention from the very beginning, even before the 2008 election. People just didn't catch on. I only hope this time that people pay more attention to what Obama says and include his past actions when formulating their opinion of him.

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