When politicians’ private remarks go public

The news broke today that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said some pretty disparaging things about the 47% of Americans who don’t end up having to pay income tax while speaking at a private fund raising event.  The leaked video of the talk was posted online by the progressive political news journal, Mother Jones. Here’s the video Mother Jones posted:

Romney, at a hastily called press conference Monday evening took responsibility for the comments and said that while he admitted that it wasn’t “elegantly stated,” it did represent his thoughts on the subject.

Romney was caught with a common problem facing politicians these days.  He had comments intended for a very limited audience exposed to the nation as a whole.

Candidate Barack Obama had a similar kind of remark go public in the 2008 primary campaign when he told people at a fund raiser that bitter rural Pennsylvanians were clinging to “guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

So the question now is not just how will the the voters react to Candidate Romney’s statement, it’s how the two campaigns will interact based on the the comments.  Candidate Obama survived his outing of private remarks.  Will Romney?

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