Romney tries to clarify statements amid backlash

The Romney campaign held a special news conference Monday to respond to a video leak where he told wealthy donors that 47% of Americans think they are victims. But another clip from that same fundraiser has others asking questions about Romney. This new clip has the presidential candidate saying that the Israel/Palestine conflict s unsolvable. “You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem … and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it” Romney said in the clip.

During the press conference Romney offered no apologies for him comment, but said that he considered the comments to be a fundamental difference between Obama’s government centered approach and his free market approach. He did say that the comments were not elegantly stated and off the cuff. “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” Romney said in the video, “There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that 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.” He said his job “is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”