Shame: Mitt Romney Caught On Video Saying 47% Of Americans are Government Freeloaders + He'd Have a Better Chance Being President If He Was Mexican

Mitt Romney was forced into damage-control mode Monday over a video revealing he told wealthy GOP donors that 47% of Americans are government freeloaders — and that he’d have a better shot at being President if he were Mexican.

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the President no matter what,”Romney said in a strikingly candid chat at a closed-door cash grab in May.

“All right, there are 47% who are with him; who are dependent upon government; who believe that they are victims; who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them; who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing — to you-name-it.”

Romney was attempting to argue that his campaign strategy must be to focus on swaying “the 5 to 10% in the center that are independents,” but his words prompted the Obama camp to accuse him of being opposed to half the electorate.

“The President starts off with 48, 49 (percent), he starts with a huge number,”Romney continued in his pitch to fund-raisers at the Boca Raton, Fla., pad of hedge-funder Marc Leder.

“These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. . . .

“And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The potentially damaging video clip had been kicking around YouTube for months, but the campaign firestorm erupted after the magazine Mother Jones posted it on its website Monday. The video is just 67 seconds long, but Romney managed to make a second foot-in-mouth statement.