It's also a rather extreme stand, and one contravened by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to assert that people are not entitled to, say, "food." According to the United Nations treaty, to which the United States is a signatory, "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
According to the Tax Policy Center, in 2011, 46 percent of households paid no federal income taxes. (According to Harry Reid, Mitt Romney has been among them in the past.) About half simply didn't make enough money to pay income tax. The other 38 million households are exempted from paying by a variety of specific tax deductions. Nearly half of that latter group, 44 percent, were the elderly eligible for tax breaks. Another 30.4 percent were exempted by credits for children and the working poor -- breaks long championed by conservatives, most recently President George W. Bush.
Aside from the income tax issue, there are millions of Americans who use federal aid but don't see themselves as "dependent" on government. The active-duty soldiers and veterans who spent $100 million on military bases over the last year are just one example.
The perception that Romney's remarks showed a man out of touch with reality was worsened by the location of the closed-door fundraiser shown in the video: the private home of private equity manager Marc Leder. According to the New York Post, Leder once hosted a party at the Hamptons where "guests cavorted nude in the pool and performed sex acts, scantily dressed Russians danced on platforms and men twirled lit torches to a booming techno beat." A person with knowledge of Leder's parties confirmed the gist of them to The Huffington Post.
"Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy," opined conservative columnist David Brooks of The New York Times. "It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney."
New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait dubbed Romney a "sneering plutocrat" whose comments "disqualify his claim to the presidency." For TPM's Josh Marshall, it was a "fine distillation of the most rancid version of the libertarian conservative worldview." It was "absolutely devastating," Politico's Ben White concluded.
The mainstream media's most respected arbiters piled on. It was his "darkest hour as a candidate," said the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.
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