on his Twitter bio , told New York Magazine that he had helped find the videos and get them to Mr. Corn. He is credited with "research assistance" on the Mother Jones Web site. Mr. Romney has repeatedly compared Mr. Obama to President Carter, suggesting both were failures. In an audio clip posted online from the same fund-raiser, apparently by the person who gave the videos to Mother Jones, Mr. Romney is heard joking that he would have an easier time winning the election if his father had been born to Mexican parents. "My dad, as you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company," Mr. Romney says in the audio clip. "But he was born in Mexico , and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this." But the most striking part of the video is Mr. Romney's characterization of nearly half of the country. His assessment of the "47 percent" echoes a line of conservative thinking that is championed by his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin . Mr. Ryan has long argued that nearly half of the people in America are either "dependent" or "reliant" on the federal government. Mr. Romney's figure of 47 percent comes from the Tax Policy Center , which found that 46.4 percent of households paid no federal income tax in 2011. But most households did pay payroll taxes. Of the 18.1 percent of households