Meet the Press   |  September 23, 2012

Is Romney’s vision for 100 percent of America?

Gov. Deval Patrick and Sen. Kelly Ayotte analyze Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s recent comments about welfare recipients.

Share This:

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> that's not something we saw out of his speech that he gave back in july at a fundraiser to wealthy donors. this is where the 47% came from. and in context here, let's play a portion of that to see exactly what his vision was. watch.

>> the 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believes that government has responsibility to care for them, who believe that they're entitled to health care , to food, to housing, to you name it. it's an entitlement. and the government should give it to them. and they will vote for this president no matter what. i'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility .

>> senator, they see themselves as victims. he now says that he's really for the 100% in america. is anybody going to buy that given that dim vision of half the country?

>> you know, david, that certainly was a political analysis at a fundraiser, but it's not a governing philosophy. he absolutely has a vision for 100% of america. and that is very different from this president, of really getting our economy moving. we have to look back at the policies of this president and where we are in as an economy right now.

>> before we get to that particular argument, do you see 47% of the country that receives government dependence, do you think they see themselves as victims?

>> what i see is what the government sees. i see 15 million more people on food stamps that don't want to be there. i see 47 million overall americans on food stamps that want a good job. they don't and the notion that she or we or people like us would be belittled while we needed some help to be able to stand on our own two feet is exactly what i think governor romney is conveying and exactly what we can project.

>> do you think that president obama has not said to a group of donors, look, there are certain segments that are just not going to vote for me? why shouldn't this just be seen as political analysis and not a governing philosophy?

>> i don't think that's what the president has said or has ever said. what he has done, most importantly, is govinda prasad mainali govern for all of the people. he did things that were not popular with his base but because they were important for the future of this country.