President Obama went to Woodbridge, Virginia today and spoke about the 47% issue and also had a memorable moment around his use of the word “inside job”. The Romney campaign feels it seized on a gaffe by the President when Obama said the biggest lesson he learned was that you can’t change Washington from the inside. At the univision forum yesterday – Obama said this:
“You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments, like health care, got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut taxes for middle-class families.”
Romney thought it found lightning in a bottle trying to change the conversation from Mitt’s 47% problem and Romney said this at a campaign rally:
“The president threw in the white flag of surrender. He said he can’t change Washington from the inside. We’re going to give him that chance in November. He’s going outside. I can change Washington. I will change Washington. I will get the job done from the inside.”
Watching Romney trying to present this as a scandal is humorous and it has to be disheartening to conservatives. If President Obama said anything remotely similar to what Romney has said regarding 47% of Americans being lazy slackers …. well – you can just imagine how that would play on Fox News, right wing talk radio etc. When will the conservative base just disengage from all the propaganda coming from the conservative side. Come over here … the grass is much greener I promise you.
Part of Obama’s speech:
“You’re the reason why an outstanding soldier won’t be kicked out of our military just because of who he loves. You’re the reason why families all across this country can welcome home loved ones who served us so bravely, give them that hug, know they’re back and safe. You’re the reason. That’s how change happened.
Now, yesterday, I made this same point at a town hall in Florida. I said, one thing I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington just from the inside. You change it from the outside. You change it because people are mobilized. You change it with the help of ordinary Americans who are willing to make their voices heard because of the decency and the goodness and the common sense of Americans. That’s what moves the country forward.
Now, for some reason my opponent got really excited. He rewrote his speech real quick. He stood up at a rally, proudly declared, ‘I’ll get the job done from the inside.’ What kind of inside job is he talking about? Is it the job of rubberstamping the top-down, you’re-on-your-own agenda of this Republican Congress? Because if it is, we don’t want it. If it’s the job of letting oil companies run our energy policy, we don’t want it. If it’s the job of letting politicians decide who you can marry, or control the health care choices that women should be able to make for themselves, we’ll take a pass.
We don’t want an inside job in Washington. We want change in Washington. And from the day we began this campaign, we’ve always said that change takes more than one term or even one President, and it certainly takes more than one party. It can’t happen if you write off half the nation before you even took office.
In 2008, 47 percent of the country didn’t vote for me. But on the night of the election, I said to all those Americans, ‘I may not have won your vote but I hear you voices, I need your help, and I will be your President.’ And for everybody who is watching, or anybody here who is still undecided, I don’t know how many people are going to vote for me this time around, but I’m telling the American people I will be fighting for you no matter what. I will be your President no matter what.”
