Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 2012, a video is bouncing around political circles upending the 2012 election.

This video, which had sort of leaked a few days earlier, shows Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney,

telling supporters that, quote, there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president,

referring to Obama, no matter what, because they are, quote, dependent upon government,

believe that they are victims, believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.

These are people who pay no income tax. These comments, and especially

that little phrase in the middle there, the 47% became a touchstone in the home stretch of the election,

especially because it folded into a bigger theme of the election,

which was the economic recovery and how the American economy is structured.

Remember Barack Obama's line about you didn't build that? They were kind of played off each other.

So let's talk about Romney's 47% why it went so viral and what it signals about modern conservatism.

And on that last point in particular,

we are very excited to be joined by special guest David Corn,

DC Bureau Chief for Mother Jones,

which is the Progressive Magazine, and author of the new book,

American Psychosis, a historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy.

In it, he writes about this moment uh... David welcome to the show and

congrats on the new book thank you so much it's great to be with you and uh...

in having you on i'm realizing that we've we haven't done an episode on mother jones and so put it on the list we're going to do an episode of another jones

not the magazine but the you know the activist at some point uh... we will get to that but with us as always are Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and Kelly

...