I'm not going to pretend I know anything about US taxes, but did he actually screw charities? The way I read it, he donated the same he would have usually, but did not report the full amount on his tax paperwork, which is to say he did not claim the entire fiscal recompense he was entitled to in order to artificially inflate his tax rate. Like the key word here is that he reduced deductions, not donations. Maybe I'm just figuring wrong though.
Wouldn't that make him ineligible to be President by his own criteria?
Well the argument there is that he was perfectly aware of such tax breaks, and therefore competent, but decided not to claim them because he's such an upstanding citizen. Exactly 13% an upstanding citizen.
(In the interest of full disclosure, my ETR last year was 12.1% federal and 5.2% state. It would have been 22.3% and 5.2% state if I didn't own property and go to school last year, both of which factors go out the window under the Ryan Plan.
Paul Ryan wants to nearly double my taxes and nobody cares, now THAT'S vexing.)
And I'm still fucking baffled as to why anyone thinks this particular video is a big deal. I mean, yes, we should be outraged that a Republican thinks half the country is made up of lazy moochers. We should be outraged by this 100% OF THE TIME. This is not Mitt going off-message; it's not even Mitt saying anything different from what he was saying in public a few months ago (I'm thinking specifically of the line he gave at a college Q&A; don't remember the exact quote but it was along the lines of "Well if you think the government's job is to give you a handout, vote for the other guy.").
It's just...no fucking shit, that's all.
The rage over the video itself is overstated; it's the capper on a consistent string of terrible, terrible mistakes that start way back with, what, London? The timing was just horrible. People were already in a mode to doubt whether or not this guy was fit to be President after he
made light of the murder of an American ambassador (I will not and should not be expected to let that go); hearing those three most sinful words of leadership, "
I don't care", coming from his mouth in a perfectly candid moment pretty much answered it for them.
But those are the other two factors at work here. First, because it's Romney supposedly speaking his heart. We accept a bunch of terrible things a politician says to another group because, well, we believe they're feeding
us a line of bullshit, so it's comforting to believe that he's feeding
them a line of bullshit as well. When the campaign is over, he'll shake up the Etch-a-Sketch, and magically become the real Mitt Romney who
just so happens to be the perfect candidate we always wanted him to be e.g. the exact opposite of the one he claimed to be. But, no, this is the real guy. This is the person who may become President. And deep down in his heart, he detests every one of us.
The other factor of course is, he's said some offensive things about the poor, holds some policies that will definitely hurt us, and may
obviously not give a shit, but he has never up to this point said anything as definitive as "These people are not useful to me, so I am not going to pay attention to them." That's not something you say about your followers as a leader and expect to have them still accept you as a leader. Even if they're slaves. It's... well, it's the Cake Comment that Mongrel was waiting for. It's
exactly what it is. An unthinking, absolute writeoff of the people who are depending on you for support.
And then there's a third, that's unique to this country: We really,
really love our democracy, or at least our rough semblance of it. If you say out loud, "47% of the people have no voice as far as I'm concerned", then you're just about a rounding error away from being Against the People. Even if we have trouble articulating it,
every American has a revulsion to that built right into our most basic beliefs. On some level, I'm sure even the fundamentalists are shocked.
So in short: Yes, a single gaffe can still end a campaign - if your gaffe is less of a loud scream and more declaring yourself to be King George IV.