This old punching bag again? Sure, why not? It turns out that Mitt Romney now says he didn't say comments he was caught on video saying. When author Dan Balz interviewed Romney for an upcoming book about the election, he asked Romney what he was thinking when he said 47 percent of Americans couldn't take responsibility for themselves, Romney replied:

Actually, I didn't say that…That's how it began to be perceived, and so I had to ultimately respond to the perception, because perception is reality.

So now Mitt Romney claims that he's a victim whose statements about how nearly half of the electorate was solidly in Obama's corner were taken out of context. Romney says that he was just talking about reality, and that he never called nearly half of all Americans a bunch of parasites. Except you know who disagrees with Mitt Romney on this issue? Mitt Romney, in the video in question, as relayed by David Corn at Mother Jones:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent 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. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax..."[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. Romney is now a private citizen (albeit a disgustingly wealthy private citizen) and he has no influence on the political discourse. He doesn't speak for the Republican Party—he never really did. But this is just such a classic Romney moment that I had to take note of it for nostalgia's sake. After every failed presidential campaign, there are people who say that the character of candidates weren't properly reflected by their own campaign staff. "They didn't let _________ be ________," friends and family members would complain. This is proof that the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, which was full of lies and attempts to distort reality, absolutely reflected the content of Romney's character.