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Should Mitt Romney (pictured) be panicking? His campaign has reportedly decided to abruptly shift its strategy. With poll after poll unanimously showing an upswing for President Barack Obama, it has finally dawned on Team Romney that a White House bid built on largely dishonest damning of Obama while being disingenuous about his own vision for the country won’t be enough to win in November. Whatever new message Romney and co. come up wih, though, there’s reason to wonder if he is too late to resonate with the voters he needs most.

RELATED: Why Unions May Hurt Obama

Strategists in both parties figure that to offset the president’s expected landslide among an expanding electorate of Blacks and Hispanics — Obama won 80 percent of minority votes in 2008 — Romney must garner more than 60 percent of the White vote overall.

The only people who enjoy 60 percent of the White vote are Jesus, Elvis, and maybe Oprah — before her Obama endorsement. It remains to be seen if Obama will match his 2008 performance, but bottom line, Romney needs a bigger share of White voters to offset the support he doesn’t have among the Black and Brown. Unfortunately for Romney, he’s has yet to even capture the support among the fringiest elements of his base let alone his White brethren at large.

According to Reuters/Ipsos polling data, among a certain bloc of White voters – those across the Bible Belt – 38 percent of them said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is “very wealthy” than one who isn’t. By contrast, 20 percent said they would be less likely to vote for an African American.

Those attitudes seem to be changing for a few, however. Roosevelt quoted a 52-year-old Virginia woman by the name of Sheryl Harris who voted twice for George W. Bush and believes Obama is in love with Allah. Yet, she’s voting for Obama anyway, explaining, “Romney’s going to help the upper class. He doesn’t know everyday people, except maybe the person who cleans his house.”

Burn, Sheryl. Burn.

As for Obama, she quipped, “At least he wasn’t brought up filthy rich.”

Guess she wasn’t moved enough by all those dog whistles and unabashed racist shouts from Romney/Ryan.

You know what’s also not going to convince White voters like Sheryl Harris that Mitt Romney needs to win? That new video uncovered by Mother Jones, where he essentially painted all of Obama’s supporters as welfare queens at a private fundraiser held earlier this year.

The full quote:

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.

Says the man who wants to give himself millions in tax breaks.

And according to Romney:

[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.

Does he realize that most of Obama’s voters are not all of color (or that the poorest Americans he’s vilifying don’t often vote)? Sure, some Whites will swear they’re not a part of that group despite statistics saying otherwise, but will enough of them think so?

As David Brooks mentioned in his most recent New York Times column:

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are White men with high school degrees.

More bad news for Mitt comes in the form of a Forbes writer conducting his own poll with JL Analytics and finding that NASCAR fans preferred Obama to Romney (44 percent to 43 percent). If you recall, these are the same NASCAR fans who booed First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Jill Biden and the same NASCAR racers who declined the president’s invitation to the White House.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has just unveiled a new effort aimed directly at religious voters – i.e. some of the very people who have lingering reservations about voting for a Mormon.

Yeah, Mittens, bigotry works in varying ways.

Between that new initiative, lingering skepticism of the GOP presidential nominee among groups known to be staunch supporters of conservative candidates, and Mitt Romney’s own terrifically terrible way of campaigning, it’s very hard to see how he gets the kind of share of the White vote he apparently needs to win.

No wonder why certain staffers from Mitt’s campaign are already talking to Politico as if they’ve lost the election or why House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can calmly and quite comically note, “Oh, Mitt Romney’s not going to be president of the United States. I think everybody knows that.”

For all those who don’t know yet, fret not: You’ll see soon enough.

http://newsone.com/2041020/mitt-romney-47/

Article Courtesy of News One

ELECTION 2012: Mitt Romney’s Big White Problem  was originally published on wzakcleveland.com