Obama: “I Didn’t Say What You Heard Me Say”

By Paul Sakuma, AP

When Obama denigrated business owners at a campaign event in Roanoke, Virginia, a week and a half ago, he did’t mean for it to become the firestorm of approbation it became.

He meant for it to be received like most of his watered down class warfare rhetoric is – embraced by the left, rejected by the right. But without his teleprompter to guide him, he let the mask slip a little too far, and found himself making utterances 72% of Americans disagree with.

So now, very predictably, the President is running with the Media Matters/MSNBC talking points defending his anti-business rhetoric. He’s claiming that he was taken out of context, as if only one line of his speech was objectionable: “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.” The President and his praetorian guards in the MSM want you to believe that he was talking about roads and bridges, not businesses.

Last night, to an audience in Oakland, CA, he went with this “out of context” defense..

“Frankly, the other side can’t sell their ideas so what they’re going to do is distort my vision. Earlier today, Gov. Romney was at it again,” Obama said, according to the pool report. “Knowingly twisting my words to suggest I don’t value small business.”

“In politics, we all tolerate a certain amount of spin,” he added. “I understand those are the games that get played in political campaigns. Although, when folks like omit entire sentences of what you said, they start kind of splicing and dicing, you may have gone a little over the edge there.”

Here’s his weak “Truth Team” ad:

Ain’t buying it, Skippy.

Your “Jedi Mind Tricks” may work with the drones, but they don’t work with most Americans who still have working brain cells.

Whether or not, he was referring to roads and bridges or peoples’ own businesses (and from the transcript it definitely sounds like the latter), his entire argument is still repellent to most Americans.

What he said, one more time, “in context”:

“Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

“The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

Yeah, you know what? It still stinks to 73% of the people.

And no one has been more effective at smashing Obama’s “out of context” argument to bits than Mitt Romney, himself. He joined Larry Kudlow last night on the Kudlow Report to discuss the context of President Obama’s ‘build that’ statement. He said: “Well, just read the whole speech. I found the speech even more disconcerting than just that particular line. The context is worse than the quote.“

You think you’ve been successful because you work hard, a lot of people work hard. This is an ideology which says hey, we’re all the same here, we ought to take from all and give to one another and that achievement, individual initiative and risk-taking and success are not to be rewarded as they have in the past. It’s a very strange and in some respects foreign to the American experience type of philosophy. We have always been a nation that has celebrated success of various kinds. The kid that gets the honor roll, the individual worker that gets a promotion, the person that gets a better job. And in fact, the person that builds a business. And by the way, if you have a business and you started it, you did build it. And you deserve credit for that. It was not built for you by government. And by the way, we pay for government. Government doesn’t come free. The people who begin enterprises, the people who work in enterprises, they’re the ones paying for government. So his whole philosophy is an upside-down philosophy that does not comport with the American experience. And if we want to get people working again–and that’s my priority–if we want to get people working again, we have to celebrate success and achievement and not demonize it and denigrate the people who have worked hard, who are smart, who have made the kinds of investments to build a brighter future.”

MORE:

Now, laughably, NBC is bending over backwards to manufacture a “you didn’t build that” moment for Mitt Romney:

Of course. NBC (or, the online news source formerly known as MSNBC) is trying to equate President Obama’s recently infamous “you didn’t build that” remark about Americans and their businesses with Mitt Romney’s “you didn’t get here on your own” remark about the Olympic athletes during the 2008 opening ceremonies. While President Obama was making the argument that the wealthy should pay even more in taxes because they need to stop thinking they’re “just so smart” or that they “worked harder than everyone else” and instead realize they could never have accomplished anything without some degree of dependency on government, Mitt Romney reminded the athletes to be grateful for the parents and coaches who loved and supported them — and NBC tries to posit that they’re both merely making an “it takes a village” argument. It’s cute, really.

Read Romney’s remarks at the 2008 Olympics, and compare them to Obama’s anti-business diatribe. There’s really no comparison for those of us with working brain cells.

NBC is really scraping the bottom, these days.

With a new GOP ad: These Aren’t Gaffes.

Twitchy: Obama on his business owner slam: I didn’t say that. Romney made that happen

The buck-passer in chief is at it again. At an Oakland, Calif., fundraiser yesterday, President Obama accused Mitt Romney of “twisting” the words in his contemptuous “you didn’t build that” slam on entrepreneurs.

Michelle Malkin: How desperate and dense are the Obama lapdogs at MSNBC?; Update: Obama blames Romney