Posted on 11/07/2012 10:26:27 PM PST by Steelfish
Life After Defeat For Mitt Romney: Public Praise, Private Questions
By Philip Rucker November 7
BOSTON — Mitt Romney began his retreat from public life Wednesday at a private breakfast gathering with a couple hundred of his most loyal and affluent campaign benefactors. The former Massachusetts governor, humbled by the thumping that ended his six-year pursuit of the presidency, reminisced about the journey and tried not to cry.
Romney waxed about the roaring crowds in the campaign’s closing days and the feeling that he was winning, said donors in attendance. He commended Stuart Stevens, his chief strategist, as well as his senior aides, and then went around thanking donors one by one.
“Mitt was vintage Mitt,” said L.E. Simmons, an oil investor on Romney’s national finance committee. “He was analytical, no notes, spoke from the heart and was very appreciative.”
But Romney’s top aides, who only a couple of days ago were openly speculating about who would fill which jobs in a Romney administration, woke up Wednesday to face brutal recriminations.
Some top donors privately unloaded on Romney’s senior staff, describing it as a junior varsity operation that failed to adequately insulate and defend Romney through a summer of relentless attacks from the Obama campaign over his business career and personal wealth.
“Everybody feels like they were a bunch of well-meaning folks who were, to use a phrase that Governor Romney coined to describe his opponent, way in over their heads,” said one member of the campaign’s national finance committee, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I forget that some people don’t know this stuff, Mitt reregistered republican in October of 1993.
Romney had to give up his hope of running for reelection as governor, and left that office with 34% approval, not normally the thing that makes a party want to make you president.
Mitt Romney, was the anti-Reagan. He also spent five years trying to convince people that Reagan had been “adamantly pro-choice” in an effort to explain away his own pro-abortion positions.
“I think Bill Weld comes as close as anyone,” Romney said when asked whom in his party he aligned with.
“I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush,”
“I’m not a partisan politician. My hope is that, after this election, it will be the moderates of both parties who will control the Senate, not the Jesse Helmses.”
Yes! A bit how Gingrich did it except for one thing. Gingrich appeared to be angry (a liberal may also claim he acted “mean”) but Reagan could do it and turn it into a humorous event that just happened.
Groucho Marx and William Buckley
Rove is greatly overrated.
We tried pointing out -- over and over again for 4+ years -- that picking somebody like Romney to run in this multi-cultural environment vs. Obama -- was ludicrous and would result in a loss.
Yeah, Obama "had" the minority vote...but Romney didn't need to even split it to win...
Instead, the GoP establishment picks somebody who at age 31, belonged to a church where if you were black, you couldn't get married in their temple...Or be a member of their priesthood -- somebody they gave/(& still give) to 12 yo white boys.
This lack of "cultural vision" inevitably played out on this turf -- if only even sub-consciously in many voters' minds...
That was entertaining. I love Groucho in Duck Soup, but don’t think I’ve ever seen him interviewed before.
Great clip, thanks for posting it. Groucho is so funny. I had no idea of his political views.
I actually worked on a senatorial campaign in 1980(a college semester credited project) and I can tell you Jimmy Carter couldn’t inspire a cat to walk out of a paper bag... pretty much any other of the top Republcans who ran for the nomination including George HW Bush in 1980 would have beaten Carter in 1980.. all it took was a decent showing in a debate and Carter was done.. Romney (of 2012) would have destroyed Carter too.... 53% of the electorate were not ready to toss out Obama yesterday no matter who would have run against him..
If McCain/Palin total vote-tally was greater than R/R's, could it have been due to the womens' vote? (...and turnout...)?
Whatever. Like I said, he won 49 states in 1984. I don’t GHWB could have done that. And maybe Romney would have beaten Carter. But that still doesn’t make Obama Reagan. Let’s see how his second term goes, and then we can start comparing him to Reagan. It’s not going to happen.
My own sense is that Romney's Mormonism had a negligible effect on the election.
Obama's voters vote for reasons of tribalism, government dependency and cultural brainwashing.
I would bet most Obama voters didn't even know that Romney was a Mormon, or even what a Mormon is.
Heck, I think they would be doing well if even 50% of Obama's voters could even correctly name his own running mate if asked. I bet most could not name the senators of their own state. And I bet most could not name their own congressman.
I’m 55 and I hate to break to you but you are the one who is wrong.
In 1980 Magnus won the election with 55-56% of the White Vote.
Blacks voted as usual and latinos were a non issue as were orientals
Tuesday Romney got 59-61% (depends which exit poll) of the white vote and lost.
Hispanics voted 72-75%...for Obama
Blacks 93-95%...for Obama
The nation was 88% white in 1980
Now it’s 73%
There it is dear...it ain’t rocket science but no....Reagan would likely have lost too.
But we’ll never know will we.
Reagan would have had to pull 62-65% white vote...as good or better than 2010
and given northern and west coast liberal whites unlikely...
now where I come from 90% of whites vote GOP...God the irony of that lol..and they are rioting right now at my alma mater
and freepers fret about “wassism”
lord....the pitiful that be here
struck down with a captive bolt in the hands of the teeming non white masses on a mission of vengeance and still totally oblivious to what is happening
no wonder we lose and lose and lose..with nary a fight...just a whimper
hey I’m not talking about 1984 now... he was unbeatable then...totally different story.. but nobody in 1980 could have imagined what a great President RR would become.. some of us thought of him as highly as the koolaiders think of Obama but we never worshipped him and the country cetainly didn’t know he’d turn out to be the greatest President in the 20th century.. I first knew he was something special when he warned and then fired the PATCO air traffic controllers.. that’s when the country started to understand what a very special leader he was.. the left never thought he had the stones to do it... and they never forgave him for bouncing their boys....
That is the weakness of Romney, he lacked the ability to change anyone’s mind about anything during his years of running, Reagan formed the electorate to fit him, for when that election day came.
The good candidate decides what election day looks like, he inspires his own party deflates the other party, and converts voters to his agenda and his leadership.
“I hope we never hear from him again.”
He’ll be persistent as herpes.
More nonsense, millions of us were already seeing Reagan as a man of destiny, a world shaker, he had earned a reputation as a hard core right winger, and he had to convince the public that they could risk voting for him in exchange for a chance to neuter the Soviet Union, and save the world.
In 1980 there was an element of fear and tingling involved in voting for Reagan. We knew that things were going to be very, very, different, if we gave the presidency to the famous, fire breathing, already legendary, "Ronnie Raygun".
To this day, nobody even knows what Mitt's beliefs or politics are, or why he was so obsessed with wanting to be president.
Even on this politically sophisticated site, the pro-Romney points were, "He isn't Muslim", and "Anybody but Obama" mixed in with "no, he reversed all those positions in 2006".
“Actually, Romney has been a political animal all of his life”
Multi-generational too. Mother was for abortion and father admired Saul Alinsky. People forget that. Or pretend to.
Well what frickin’ seasoning did Barry have before he ran in 08????
Ding Ding Ding!!!! We have a winner!!!
Romney deserves to be trashed every bit. He had an opportunity to tell the world just who zero is and he decided to be the gracious loser which was exactly why he was chosen. No one else could have or would have done that. We all sat and watched an election stolen in broad daylight and no one did a thing. Navel gaze all you want but facts are a “difficult thing”. The GOP won’t do a damn thing about it either because if folks realized there ain’t any reason to mail them checks then the honey stops. Sad to say but people make mistakes and sometimes they make them in groups. Mistakes have consequences that, like gravity, can’t be turned off. Over the last couple decades we missed a couple opportunities to maybe blunt the impact or spread out the pain but we let “him who stalks the Earth” confuse and confound us and we just plain missed those opportunities. Sometimes being able to see what is really going on ain’t a blessing.
Barry read Rules For Radicals. If you want to win and that is all that is important play for a team that wins regularly. If you want to win what matters, well that is a different game.
Also base their pay on how well they deliver their precincts/districts,
Also base their pay on how well they deliver their precincts/districts,
Mitt Romney is a class act, a good man and a great candidate. He lost because as Rush said yesterday, it's hard to campaign against Santa Claus.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Mitt for President. Voted for him, and will give him credit for the hard work he did put into the campaign. Let’s be honest, he was covering a lot of ground and had to battle the MSM who completely ignored: Fast & Furious, Benghazi, and the list goes on. I read or heard somewhere that some of the analysts were claiming Mitt was too scripted. When it comes to being scripted, Obama is king.
This election came down to a mass of people, I won’t even call them Americans, that were more concerned with either race or handouts. I fear it really is that simple. What does concern though is the exit polling and the number of military Obama received.
The even larger issue is that the RNC doesn’t embrace a conservative message, and is incapable of explaining what that really means.
So he spoke the truth, tangentially about the rule of law and how it was destroyed by this bankruptcy and he looses OH? No, the question should be why is OH and MI as dumb as a box of rocks. Beam me up Scotty we have an uninformed electorate...
Ha, That's complete B.S.! In fact most conservatives would have beaten Obama!
I find it ironic to be in the position of defending Mitt given my opposition to him. Mitt ran a competent campaign. It’s convenient to try to attach blame to him, but the reality is that he did his job. He also put himself wholly into it and made a genuine effort to win, which couldn’t be said about McCain.
American voters had a stark choice between a radical socialist and a moderate. Between a candidate that offered jobs and one that offered a welfare check. They picked the radical socialist and a welfare check. The culture has shifted and the voters aren’t buying what we’re selling.
Uh, illegal immigrants are by their very illegal nature somewhat persecuted and that what I was talking about. Not Latino citizens.
The hard line taken during the primaries with”self-deportation” or a rougher equivalent of otherwise hardworking, good people is the problem citizen-Latinos appear to have. Otherwise they are very family-values oriented.
The gay marriage aspect is totally out of the picture. It’s a lost cause so give it up. The majority of Americans support it and so it is no suprise that Latinos as a subset do too.
As an admitted fiscal Republican, I just don’t give a flip about what people do in the privacy of their own homes and if two people want to get married so be it.
We need to come to the realization that the full GOP platform simply does not appeal to enough Americans. Individuals within the tent are welcome to be more conservative than others, but if the party actually wants to get in power and stop the liberal tide, we may just have to accept that certain issues need to be abandoned for the time being. Purity of belief may be the way into heaven, but it is surefire loser in democratic politics.
Mitt should Get a JOB!
I’m not surprised to see some of the “conservative” anti Romney types trashing him now that the election is over. Heck, some of you did that for the last six months, trying your best to convince others to not vote for him. Maybe it worked. Maybe some who post here on the premiere conservative website decided to vote for Obama, who knows. Maybe you were successful.
America has spoken. The majority of the voters want the society to be ruled by the “have nots”. The country has changed, media has changed. The illiterate thugs who spend time on their twitter accounts (on the “Obama” phones that you and I pay for) are also in your corner.
All in all, nothing changed in this election. The White House is occupied by a democrat, the House is republican, the Senate democrat. I think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and I’m saddened beyond belief, my child will end up paying for all of this debt for the have nots, however, since this family isn’t lazy, we’ll continue to be part of the producing class, even if we have less cash as a result. We’ll cut back on something, maybe a dinner out, and the illiterates won’t realize that cutting back on a dinner out, times a hundred and you all of a sudden have 5 fewer jobs. It’s okay though, they’ll just get an Obama phone and a twitter account and they’ll be on your side, trashing Romney.
I’m still on America’s side. There will be primaries in three years and you can get your complaints ready ...........he or she isn’t conservative enough!!!! oh, who’s my candidate you’ll be asked, well it’s not that guy or woman!!!
And you supported, campaigned for and voted for..........?
Please read post 63. That says it all. No where is it written that you have to vote for someone based on the color of their skin — even though that probably applies to most blacks today. A good candidate, and a good leader, would take demography into account. And I believe Ronald Reagan would have found a way to convert enough Hispanics to his way of thinking into a victory. Reagan was a bit of a genius. But like I think he said before. He had the killer instinct. He fired the PATCO people. Romney didn’t have that. He would have demolished Candy Crowley if he did.
Herr Freiiheit, wake up Mitt needed more white voters: http://www.vdare.com/articles/romney-white-share-falls-short-of-2010
“Romney’s White Share Fell Short Of 2010, So He Lost
Only one metric really matters in the close 2012 Presidential race: according to CNN’s exit polling (scroll down), Mitt Romey’s share of the white a.k.a. American vote was just 59%, for a twenty-point lead over Obama among whites. That’s at the high end of the mediocre post-Reagan range, and four points above the hapless John McCain in 2008, but just not enough—as VDARE.com repeatedly remarked during the campaign as we prised white share data out of relectant MSM polls. (Counting is not complete as I write this, and the Pacific Coast results may reduce Romney’s white share and some other details).
In comparison, the Congressional GOP got a 60% white share in 2010. Ronald Reagan got a 64% white share in 1984. George W. Bush won, narrowly, with a 58% white share in 2004...”
The fact is, fewer people voted for the GOP candidate this time around than they did last time. I considered not voting for Romney because he is not a conservative, but as decision time drew nearer I couldn’t stomach the idea of not doing something to oust Obama so I voted for Romney. But your argument is specious. A true conservative, like Reagan, can articulate why a conservative system works better than what we have now. Romney couldn’t articulate that, because, in addition to a lot of other problems, he’s not a true conservative. And please, before flaming me, know that I also live in swpa. So we’re coming from the same place, in that sense.
Apparently a lot of “conservatives” allowed 0bama to win.
The real problem, and this is demonstrated across FR, that the republican party is an amalgam of people who stretch from center right to far right who are willing to accept people left of center right as presidential candidates. This applies to McCain and Romney. The far right people flame you if you’re not conservative enough, and the center right people flame you if you’re not liberal enough All we do is argue with other. What does that accomplish, especially now? The only thing that binds us together is certain conservative beliefs, and they’re different for everybody. So we need a true conservative on the ballot — someone who will demonstrate the difference between himself/herself and a candidate like Obama.For whatever reason, Romney failed to do that for enough people
Yeah, WTF does that tell you if you're intelligent enough to realize it! I'll post this until someone stops me from posting it:
Here's what the republican party has foisted upon the conservative element:
Dole - Rino - Loss
McCain - Rino - Loss
Romney - Rino - Loss
And Bush got ever so LUCKY against Gore! FGS, if the Republican party just would "TRY" a conservative candidate for once just to see what happens they'd have nothing to lose.
As far as I'm concerned the republican party can GFT!
If you had to be TOLD that another four years of Obama would be a continuation of a disaster, honestly, I don’t want you anywhere near the voting booth. With the economy going down the toilet, more people are on the government dole, and who knows, the working members of this family might be among those soon, since I rather doubt that any of our employers are going to pay for Obamacare. If that becomes the case, I’ll collect my government money, paid for by you and your family, and I’ll post to the premiere conservative website, telling everyone that the candidate isn’t good enough! I’ll work to convince others that they can’t possibly vote for him or her, why they’re not Ronald Reagan. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll offer nothing but complaints about the candidate, claiming they are not Ronald Reagan( even though I am of the belief that Ronald Reagan would not have been able to defeat Obamaphones on Tuesday).
In fact, let’s all become a nation of havenots. You don’t mind supporting us all, do you? At least you won’t be forced to vote for a non Ronald Reagan.......
I know its early but I am predicting Karl Rove,Ann Courer,and most of Fox News back Romney for President in 2016.
Morons.
Do you have a link for that other than Huffington Post?
That simply isn't so. Romney campaigned for it, but he didn't fight for it. He totally disengaged from any discussion of Benghazi, the scandal of our lifetime. He avoided that real discussion of budget and ObamaCare that he promised with the nomination of Ryan. For all practical purposes, Ryan became a prop on stage, his mouth taped shut.
But Romney's most egregious ommission was Benghazi. He had a winning hand dealt to him and he refused to even play it, thinking he could just run out the clock on the strength of his first debate performance.
Reagan wouldn’t have beaten [0]bama yesterday..
So, then why not run a Reagan ...you know just for kicks? Since we didn’t have a chance anyhow?
His basic strategy was wrong. It was all jobs, jobs, jobs without any sense of the danger of following the big government path. There was no urgency. It was Obama is over his head, not that his policies would destroy the country hurting the poor and single women the most. There was nothing on foreign policy and the danger and destruction caused by Obama's policies. He couldn't agree fast enough with Obama. There was the cowardice in refusing to attack Obama.
Mitt ran his campaign great. Unfortunately, that campaign could not win, because its strategic premises were wrong. Running the traditional Republican campaign was old when George Bush I did it. It's a joke now.
Gut the RNC. Replace the lot of them.
(1) 0bama was black
(2) 0bama was a black socialist-marxist, therefore received every fawning, gushing, endorsement from the MSM which is still where 90% of the sheeple will get their news, if anything only from the headlines.
(3) Reasons 1 & 2 repeated over & over again.
In 2008 America elected a black socialist marxist communist muzlim pig 0bama based on an infatuation & whim of electing a so-called black man, and in 2012 now a MAJORITY over 50% of the voters reaffirmed that decision. Amerika (one nation under socialist-marxist government) in 2012 is no longer the America (one nation under God) that we used to be. We now live in a socialist-marxist-union-LGBT-pro Islamic, anti-Christian, anti-conservative, anti-Israel, anti-God nation.
As much as I admire & yearn for Ronald Reagan, he would not be elected in today's socialist-marxist Amerika. 0bama & his rabid surrogates & his 100% fawning partisan media would have ravaged Reagan without regard for any truth at all, just as they do to any Repub today running against a demoRAT. Isn't it amazing that only Republican so-called gaffes are reported & relentlessly hammered on by the media, and yet 0dumb0 & bite-me Biden are given a free pass to say anything out of their mouths and it will be instantly forgiven & forgotten. 0bama is guilty of the murder of border patrol agents with Fast & Furious, the murder of our Libyan ambassador, 2 former Seals, and a 4th America while our Security council sat & watched the massacre broadcast from one of our drones....and 0bama refused to send in military assistance. A Repub who would have done that would be attacked so viciously by the media prior to the election and yet only Fox News carried any of their prior to the election.
As someone wrote in a posting yesterday, America is dead. We are now the new Socialist States of Amerika.
“Silence the Nativists”!
What the Hell part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?
There are literally a billion people around the world who want to get into the USA.
We cannot let them all into our nation.
In the USA, our Congress sets the immigration laws and the Administration enforces those laws. For polticial expediency, Presidents have NOT been enforcing our immigration laws.
I AM OFFENDED that your attitude screams that Latinos are offended at Americans wanting our laws enforced.
You and they can go to Hell!
Uh, how is a population with a 53% illegitimacy rate "family-values oriented"?
If you really are a "fiscal" Republican then you should understand the tremendous costs on our system that are being triggered by the epidemic of single women having children out of wedlock. This is a big driver of the high rate of Hispanic use of government handouts.
He had 12 years in elected office, first as a state senator, then as a US Senator. Before that he spent pretty much all of his time since graduation thinking* about how to acquire power and what to do with it after getting it. And just what is a "community activist"? He was a ward heeler - a cog in a political machine. His time as a community activist gave him the experience he needed to win an Illinois senate seat against native black Chicagoans with sharp elbows.
In retrospect, Obama's no flash in the pan. In terms of political skill, he's the Democratic Reagan, a guy who patiently learned the political trade and ultimately defeated the Clinton brain trust during the 2008 primaries. And his strategy for re-election was to set up an expensive operation in battleground states that employed party cadres (aka community activists) to perform constituent service, thereby giving the locals a reason to turn out for him. This is retail politics at its most basic and used to be standard issue practice in most big cities, financed as it was via political corruption. These days, I assume it's financed by PAC and union money, to avoid career-ending FEC problems.
* This stuff is detailed in his books and the biographies - friendly and otherwise - about him. There a lot of rhetoric about how he's a moron, incompetent, and so on. I think that's wrong. He's not incompetent or a moron - he's an ideologue. The guy's raw IQ is probably similar to GWB's, and that would stand to reason, given his dad was a Harvard guy and his mom had a PhD, back when colleges had standards, and women PhD holders were as scarce as hen's teeth.
I beg to differ. Barack was a groomed, celebrated figurehead. He did nothing on his own accord.
It is because of individuals like yourselves that we lost so badly. I very much hope that you leave the party. Form something else and let the GOP’s tent grow. Thanks for going away.
Actually this “premier conservative site” has been telling the truth about the hard left weirdo, Mitt, for at least 6 or 7 years.
Mitt has always been a political loser and an enemy to Reagan and conservatism, no wonder people didn’t show up to support him.
Even today, no one has any idea what his politics are or why he was obsessed with being president.
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