Private Words & Public Deeds

CORE MESSAGE

We've seen Romney's true colors before -- in his plan for America.

Connect: What a politician says behind closed doors can speak louder than what he says in public. His actions speak even louder.

Define: Mitt Romney told his millionaire donors that half of Americans won't "take personal responsibility" and see themselves as "victims."

Illustrate: We've seen Romney's true colors before -- in his plan for Americans who work their hearts out, play by the rules, and pay plenty of taxes.

• For the military he calls irresponsible, his plan abandons them when they return home from combat.
• For the seniors he calls victims, he'd end Medicare as we know it.
• For the working parents he calls lazy, he'd make them pay higher taxes so the wealthy pay less.
• For the students he calls freeloaders, he'd take away their dreams of college.

Expose: How Romney sees -- or fails to see -- the people of this great country says more about him than about the Americans he has written off as not worth a president's time.

Discredit: If a politician doesn't want to serve every American as president, he doesn't deserve to serve any American as president.

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ATTACKS AND RESPONSES 

MITT ROMNEY: "There's a tape of the president saying that he likes redistribution. I disagree."
RESPONSE:

• Here are the shocking things President Obama said 14 years ago in that video: we should "make sure that everybody's got a shot," "foster competition," and make the "marketplace" work better.
• Let's be clear: Mitt Romney is the one who wants redistribution -- tax hikes on the entire middle class and a massive redistribution of wealth from working people to the already-rich.
• In fact, experts say his top-down class warfare agenda would be the largest redistribution of income from regular people to the richest few in modern U.S. history.
• So Romney thinks that if you're struggling, you're not struggling enough -- and you should pay more to make the rich even richer. He's running to be the country's first Class-Warrior-in-Chief.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Any way you look at their plans, independent study after study confirms that the Romney-Ryan agenda would raise taxes on the entire middle class  -- hitting working families especially hard --  so the richest few pays less.
• The Romney-Ryan agenda would cost us up to 4 million jobs or more in the next two years alone.
• The Romney-Ryan agenda would deeply cut our investments in our home front funding, including college financial aid like Pell Grants, education by 20%, and veterans programs by $11 billion.
• The Romney-Ryan agenda would end Medicare as we know it by replacing it with a privatized voucher system that sticks seniors with a coupon to hand over to the insurance companies -- while massively raising costs for current and future seniors.
• When it comes to paying federal income taxes, who is Mitt Romney accusing of being irresponsible deadbeats? Our military serving in war zones, retired seniors, working parents, students, and disabled kids.
• In the last two years, Mitt Romney paid an average tax rate of 14% on the money he's made off of the wealth he already has -- so that he pays a lower tax rate than a middle-class family.
• Romney's VP pick Congressman Ryan has proposed a plan that would've let Mitt Romney pay less than 1% in income taxes.
• Many millionaires and billionaires -- approximately 55,000 -- are paying lower taxes than millions of middle-class Americans. In fact, in 2009, 1,500 millionaires managed to pay no federal income taxes on their millions.

We develop messaging by aggregating, analyzing and distilling polling, tested messaging, and expert recommendations, and monitoring the media to identify what is and isn't working. See here for some of the experts and organizations we draw on.