Cut past the spin to downplay Mitt Romney’s comments about the 47% of “people who don’t pay taxes” and are “dependent on government” and two issues stand out to damage Mitt Romney that are more than a matter of “inarticulate words.”

The first scares the GOP and ruins his main brand effort.

Through a long and back-to-back series of gaffes, missteps and bad team hires, Mitt Romney has shown that the self-proclaimed turnaround artist can’t seem to turnaround a presidential campaign competently. A campaign where he’ll have more direct control, leadership and effect over people under him than being the president of a massive bureaucracy like the United States government.

Romney’s comment about ignoring this 47% of Obama voters and cobbling a majority based on scraping together independents fall into the narrative he’s tried to avoid about Bain Capital. Instead of trying to fix a company, he merely rigs it to gain personal benefit. In this case, instead of loading a company with debt to draw money that pays him consultant fees, he sets up the electorate math to get elected rather that develop a plan that solves the enterprise (known as the United States) problems.

The second is: the takeaway from his 47% speech is that it reinforces what he’s being trying to get away from. Being seen as an Ayn Rand plutocrat. A rich person who only seems to care about or value those that create wealth over products or services. A man showing distain for people who can’t show wealth creation that can be taxed. Distain for groups that would include people that work long hours like fast-food workers. People who work but don’t make enough to be taxed like those who get the earned income tax credit. Or those whose income comes for what they’ve put to social security. Yet Mitt Romney seems to causally thrown them into the category of being dependent. The same way Ayn Rand calls those that don’t create parasites.

The additional irony of this is Romney’s own tax strategies. By using tax advantages afforded to someone with his resources to not pay some or even any federal income tax, Romney may have tax years that put him into the same category as the people he looks down upon. So even by his own standard and low tax rate, either he has to admit low tax paying is not immediately indicative of dependency or he’s a government dependent parasite.