Since the secret video of Mitt's speech to his $50K a plate supporters became public, there's been a lot of outrage out there, and rightfully so. But there are some pieces from the puzzle missing, as well.
For instance, if you don't hang out on sites where right wing trolls feel privileged to share the logic of their diseased brains, you might not realize that they think that having to pay any taxes at all is the equivalent of rape, slavery, and "the gubmint guy holding a gun to our heads and stealing our hard-earned money to redistribute to illegal aliens and [put slur of the moment here]", all rolled into one.
They think poor people don't pay nearly enough in taxes and should pay a lot more, which will be enough money to balance the budget. They think all government payments to people who don't work should end, and people who do work would be making enough so they don't need help if only they'd work as hard as Willard.
They think the solution to childhood poverty is to tell poor women that "they should have kept their legs shut."
Remarkably, people who feel this way are often living on disability, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment, and other sorts of payments. So if payments were stopped, they'd be in big trouble. But they don't think he's talking about them.
Or sometimes they are just living in their mothers' basements getting paid by the troll post by right wing operatives trying to move dialog to the right.
Since the Romney campaign has a serious Venn diagram fetish, I thought I'd put together a couple of them to explain Mitt's real point he was trying to make in the speech.
Notice how he makes equivalent in his mind the 47% of voters who voted for Obama and the 47% of Americans who are too poor to owe Federal income taxes.
We know what Mitt is saying is generally a lot of lies intended to pander to whoever he happens to be speaking with at the moment (to the best of his ability, of course). But it looks to me like Mitt actually believes what he is saying, which makes him functionally innumerate. He doesn't get arithmetic any more than Paul Ryan does. Mitt lives in a magical land where the CEO can make a business decision based on whatever he wants to make it on, snap his fingers, and accountants all around him make things happen without Mitt having to worry about getting into numbers himself.