While Mitt Romney may well wish he had expressed himself more “elegantly” at the swanky Boca Raton fundraiser where he denounced half the voting population as shiftless, government-entitled moochers, he isn’t backing away from those secretly recorded remarks — although what he said was entirely inaccurate.

Watching him on video, the Republican nominee sounds not only vulgar and arrogant, but profoundly ignorant about the nation he hopes to govern. “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” said the Republican nominee, who proceeded to describe them.

“All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government ... Those people,” he went on, “believe that they are victims ... believe the government has a responsibility to care for them ... believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”