In an interview this evening with NBC Reno, Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan was critical of comments Romney made at a private fundraiser in May, dismissing 47% of American as people who can will never “take personal resonsibility and care for their lives.”

Ryan said Romney’s remarks were “obviously inarticulate.” Asked if he thought Mitt Romney regreted his comments, Ryan responded “I think he would have said it differently, that’s for sure.” Watch it:

At a press conference last night, Romney called his comments at the May fundraiser “inelegant” but largely defended his remarks.

In a separate interview with a New Hampshire station Ryan was asked if he agree with Romney’s remarks at the fundraiser. He responded, “no.”

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) has been struggling to rebound from the outrage sparked by his claim that women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” In an apparent effort to win over women voters, Akin’s website features a large picture of the Senate candidate with three women under a banner proclaiming, “I’m A Women [sic] And I Support Todd.”

But the spelling isn’t the only mistake on the page. One of the women ostensibly supporting Akin in the picture is actually a Democratic operative:

The site displayed a large photo showing Akin standing with his wife and two other women. The headline over it read: “I’m a women[SIC], and I support Todd.”
The problem is, one of the women in the photo doesn’t—and his campaign apparently knew it.

Corinne Matti, who is pictured on Akin’s site standing to Akin’s left, is a “tracker” for the Missouri Democratic Party. Her job, which she does openly, is to attend Akin’s public events and report back to the Democrats. She has been doing it for more than a year.

“I suspect they were so desperate to find women that they had to borrow one of ours,” quipped McCaskill spokeswoman Caitlin Legacki.

The Akin campaign told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the webpage wasn’t meant to go public when it did and the photo could have been a stand-in. Akin has been essentially disowned by the GOP as other Republicans try to distance themselves from the offensive remarks. His opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is overwhelmingly favored by female voters.

Linda McMahon, the pro-wrestler-turned-Connecticut-senate-candidate whose race has been neck-and-neck for months, distanced herself from Mitt Romney on Tuesday, one day after his assertion that, “There are 47 percent of the people… who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims… my job is is not to worry about those people.” She is the first major Republican candidate to do so.

In a statement from her campaign, McMahon offered a strong indictment of Romney’s sentiment, saying that she disagrees with his “insinuation,”and pointing out that — presumably unlike Mitt Romney — her family has struggled in life:

I disagree with Governor Romney’s insinuation that 47% of Americans believe they are victims who must depend on the government for their care. I know that the vast majority of those who rely on government are not in that situation because they want to be. People today are struggling because the government has failed to keep America competitive, failed to support job creators, and failed to get our economy back on track.

I am sympathetic to the struggles that millions of Americans are going through because I’ve been there. As a young couple Vince and I lost our home and our car. With two small children it was not an easy time for my family.

Because McMahon is competing in a relatively moderate area, it may help her race to disavow her party’s candidate. But when it comes to her policies, McMahon’s outlook isn’t all that different from Romney’s own. Like Romney, she paid just 15 percent on her income of over $30 million, and opposes any tax increases on the rich that might change that. She also once said the federal minimum wage, whatever it was, needed to be lowered.

Paul Ryan didn’t directly address Mitt Romney’s comments that 47 percent of Americans are “dependent upon government” and see themselves as “victims” during his town hall in Dover, New Hampshire Tuesday afternoon. But the Republican vice presidential candidate did reiterate his claim that the “safety net” is “encouraging dependency” among the public:

RYAN: And so, this is what Mitt and I are talking about when we’re worried about more and more people becoming net dependent upon the government than upon themselves. Because by promoting more dependency, but not having jobs and economic growth, people miss their potential. We should not be measuring the progress of our social programs, of programs like food stamps based up on how many people receive them…. We don’t want a safety net that encourages more dependency because there is no economic growth behind it.

Later in the event, Ryan suggested that liberal philosophy considers people to be “victims of circumstances beyond their control” and argued that a Romney/Ryan administration would not see Americans “as some victim.”

Since Mother Jones published a video of Romney at a private fundraiser saying that nearly half of Americans are Obama voters who don’t pay taxes and believe that “the government has a responsibility to care for them,” the campaign has stood by the claims, despite their inaccuracy.

Most of the people who don’t pay federal income taxes still pay federal payroll tax, and state or local sales taxes, gas taxes, and excise taxes or benefit from tax credits for the working poor, the elderly, or students — tax credits that have received bipartisan support. Just 7 percent of the country is non-elderly and has no federal tax liability, and most of them make less than $20,000.

Republicans also argue that more Americans are receiving food stamps under Obama. Enrollment has increased since the Great Recession and the program has reduced the number of children living in extreme poverty by half. More than 3.9 million people were lifted out of poverty by food stamps in 2011.

Prompting gasps and boos, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) declared in a debate Monday night that President Obama, a married father of two, doesn’t believe in families.

“[We have] a Commander-in-Chief who disrespects this Constitution, doesn’t believe in free enterprise, doesn’t believe in life and families,” King said during a congressional debate with Democratic opponent Christie Vilsack in Hampton.

KING: Are we going to defend this Constitution that we celebrated tonight, or are we going to watch it be eroded by a Commander-in-Chief who disrespects this Constitution, doesn’t believe in free enterprise, doesn’t believe in life and families. They are core values in this country that we must defend at all costs.

Watch it:

Though King has made a career of controversial and outlandish statements, they’ve come at an increasing clip in the past few months as Election Day nears. In July, he hosted a tele-townhall where he defended dog fighting. During the same event, King suggested Obama’s parents may have telegrammed a fake Hawaii birth announcement from Kenya. In August, King expressed his agreement with Michele Bachmann’s anti-Muslim witch hunt against Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and others. He also bemoaned the existence of multicultural groups on college campuses, dismissing them as “people that feel sorry for themselves.”