Author Topic: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney  (Read 74155 times)

Soul Crusher

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #175 on: December 20, 2012, 10:30:33 AM »
Post some proof of this claim or you are nothing more than a pathetic LIAR

Drinking publicly all the time - CHECK 

Admitted coke use and gay lover said he did coke w obama - CHECK

Choomer Wagon - CHECK

whork

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #176 on: December 20, 2012, 10:35:16 AM »
Drinking publicly all the time - CHECK 

Admitted coke use and gay lover said he did coke w obama - CHECK

Choomer Wagon - CHECK
[

Yeah but who do you want to party with?

O-pimp choomer coke drunk fiend
or
An awkward Mormon

?

Straw Man

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #177 on: December 20, 2012, 10:36:41 AM »
Drinking publicly all the time - CHECK 

Admitted coke use and gay lover said he did coke w obama - CHECK

Choomer Wagon - CHECK

your personal delusions and fantasies are not proof

post some proof or you are a pathetic LIAR

BayGBM

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #178 on: December 20, 2012, 12:06:14 PM »
Drinking publicly all the time - CHECK 

Admitted coke use and gay lover said he did coke w obama - CHECK

Choomer Wagon - CHECK

You're still here?  Please follow your leader and exit stage right.  ::)

Straw Man

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #179 on: December 20, 2012, 12:07:41 PM »
You're still here?  Please follow your leader and exit stage right.  ::)

The LIAR can't stay away

blacken700

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #180 on: December 20, 2012, 12:16:16 PM »

Primemuscle

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #181 on: December 20, 2012, 12:28:43 PM »
Post some proof of this claim or you are nothing more than a pathetic LIAR

He's just unhappy and delusional, that is why he makes up shit about our President. Lucky for 333386 that there is still freedom of speech in the U.S. In some places, he'd be hauled off to jail for his remarks about the Commander-in-Chief.

Straw Man

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #182 on: December 20, 2012, 12:31:00 PM »
He's just unhappy and delusional, that is why he makes up shit about our President. Lucky for 333386 that there is still freedom of speech in the U.S. In some places, he'd be hauled off to jail for his remarks about the Commander-in-Chief.

I'm fine with him saying whatever he wants

Too bad we don't all have the same freedom of speech on this board

kind of ironic too, given the right wing leaning of this board and the constant talk about "freedom"

Soul Crusher

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #183 on: December 20, 2012, 12:31:04 PM »
He's just unhappy and delusional, that is why he makes up shit about our President. Lucky for 333386 that there is still freedom of speech in the U.S. In some places, he'd be hauled off to jail for his remarks about the Commander-in-Chief.

Obama and most politicians like him are wortheless scumbags, leeches, parasites, thugs, sludge, slime, and criminals, as are those worshipping them. 

Primemuscle

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #184 on: December 20, 2012, 12:38:57 PM »
Obama and most politicians like him are wortheless scumbags, leeches, parasites, thugs, sludge, slime, and criminals, as are those worshipping them. 

Shall I forward your comments to the White House, or will you be doing this?

Soul Crusher

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #185 on: December 20, 2012, 12:39:53 PM »
Shall I forward your comments to the White House, or will you be doing this?

Go ahead.   I could care less.  Obama is a pile of dog feces as far as I am concerned, 

240 is Back

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #186 on: December 20, 2012, 12:48:05 PM »
Can you imagine electing a President who kept his money in the Caymen Islands, Swiss bank accounts, and god knows where else offshore?  When he was on the scene, George Romney insisted that candidates should reveal 10+ years of tax returns because recent returns could be prepared and doctored specifically in anticipation of a run for office.  Mitt (who frequently spoke of his father's example) balked at that particular suggestion and declined to share his tax returns.  ::)

people hated obama so much - they would have accepted anything from romney.

he had SO MANY moments that should have sunk any campaign.  it was the hate for obama that kept Romney a viable candidate.

In the end, repubs were just too $#%*@#^% LAZY to show up to vote Romney.   Obama had almost 10 mil fewer votes than in 2008... but Romney had 2 million fewer votes than Mccain.   Repubs were just too LAZY to get up and vote out obama.

blacken700

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #187 on: December 20, 2012, 12:50:46 PM »
people hated obama so much - they would have accepted anything from romney.

he had SO MANY moments that should have sunk any campaign.  it was the hate for obama that kept Romney a viable candidate.

In the end, repubs were just too $#%*@#^% LAZY to show up to vote Romney.   Obama had almost 10 mil fewer votes than in 2008... but Romney had 2 million fewer votes than Mccain.   Repubs were just too LAZY to get up and vote out obama.

in the end that number of 10 mil was far less

240 is Back

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #188 on: December 20, 2012, 12:53:32 PM »
in the end that number of 10 mil was far less

true, i guess youre right. 

REpubs can never blame obama - obama would have lost if they had just bothered to show up to vote.  They didn't.   

Romeny ending up with 47% of the popular vote is one of the great historical ironies of our time.  If repubs hated obama so much, they should have voted him out.  They didn't bother.

LurkerNoMore

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #189 on: December 20, 2012, 12:56:47 PM »
Obama and most politicians like him are wortheless scumbags, leeches, parasites, thugs, sludge, slime, and criminals, as are those worshipping them

Like you worshiping :

Palin
Trump
Perry
Cain
Bachmann
West
Romney


Nice self analysis you got going on there.

Straw Man

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #190 on: December 20, 2012, 12:58:10 PM »
Like you worshiping :

Palin
Trump
Perry
Cain
Bachmann
West
Romney


Nice self analysis you got going on there.

kind of funny that it's primarily one person on this board who starts the "adoration" threads

Benny B

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #191 on: December 20, 2012, 01:51:44 PM »
I'm fine with him saying whatever he wants

Too bad we don't all have the same freedom of speech on this board

kind of ironic too, given the right wing leaning of this board and the constant talk about "freedom"

QFT
!

Benny B

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #192 on: December 20, 2012, 01:56:26 PM »
Like you worshiping :

Palin
Trump
Perry
Cain
Bachmann
West
Romney


Nice self analysis you got going on there.
add

Thune
Pence (this dude used to ALWAYS be on tv (FOX, CNN, & MSNBC) flapping his gums...As my Latino brothers often say, "Wha' happen"? ???)
etc.
!

Primemuscle

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #193 on: December 20, 2012, 05:32:22 PM »
people hated obama so much - they would have accepted anything from romney.

he had SO MANY moments that should have sunk any campaign.  it was the hate for obama that kept Romney a viable candidate.

In the end, repubs were just too $#%*@#^% LAZY to show up to vote Romney.   Obama had almost 10 mil fewer votes than in 2008... but Romney had 2 million fewer votes than Mccain.   Repubs were just too LAZY to get up and vote out obama.

Which people? Almost all of the people I spoke with during the campaign were avid President Obama supporters. Romney remained a candidate only because he was the Republican party pick. As to how viable he was....well, the results of the election should be enough to answer this.

Alex23

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney
« Reply #194 on: December 20, 2012, 05:37:08 PM »
This loss has got to hurt--bad!  Everyone knows Romney has been running for President for at least six years.  I think it is safe to say no one in recent memory wanted to be President more badly than Mitt Romney.  The look of defeat and resignation in their faces...  Their transition teams were already in place... practically measuring drapes for the White House and to have it end with such finality.  Wow!  I almost feel sorry for them.  :'(

true that.
®

Primemuscle

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney
« Reply #195 on: December 20, 2012, 05:50:21 PM »
This loss has got to hurt--bad!  Everyone knows Romney has been running for President for at least six years.  I think it is safe to say no one in recent memory wanted to be President more badly than Mitt Romney.  The look of defeat and resignation in their faces...  Their transition teams were already in place... practically measuring drapes for the White House and to have it end with such finality.  Wow!  I almost feel sorry for them.  :'(

I don't feel sorry for anyone. Folks shouldn't "count their chickens before they hatch."

BayGBM

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #196 on: July 28, 2013, 10:31:36 AM »
From doubts to confidence to defeat
By Dan Balz

Adapted from “Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America,” by Dan Balz. The book is due out Aug. 6.

Mitt Romney sat in an armchair at his home in Belmont, Mass., dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt. It was late January 2013, almost three months after voters rejected his bid for the White House, and the next hour and a half marked the first time he had talked to a reporter about the campaign. I asked him what made him want to be president and why he thought he didn’t become president.

“I wanted to be president because I believe that my background and experience and my perspective and point of view would be helpful to get America back on track, to keep America the economic powerhouse it’s been and the champion of freedom here and around the world,” he said. “I happen to believe that America is on a course of decline if it continues with the policies we’ve seen over the last couple of decades, and we need to take a very different course, returning to more fundamental principles, if you will.”

I asked whether part of his decision to run was an effort to fulfill an ambition that his father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, never did. “I love my dad,” he said. “It’s fair to say that I probably would not have thought of politics had I not seen my mom and dad involved in politics. . . . But my decision to run for office was really in no way a response to my father’s campaign. It was instead a recognition that, by virtue of a series of fortunate events, I was in a position to run for president and potentially become president. And I felt if I didn’t do so, given that opportunity, I would have been letting down my country, my family and the future.”

Romney’s confidence about his reasons for running masked considerable ambivalence as he was preparing for the 2012 campaign. Based on what he told family members in private conversation, there were times when he seemed anything but certain about his commitment to running or his confidence of winning.

At Christmastime in 2006, he and his family — his wife, Ann; five sons; five daughters-in-law; and many grandchildren — had gathered at their home in Utah. They were there to make a final decision about a 2008 presidential campaign, which Romney had been pointing toward for more than a year. A video of their activities showed Romney energetically shoveling snow off the deck of their home, him sledding with his grandchildren, children sliding down stairs on mattresses, the general chaos of a house filled with people and constant activity. The video concluded with the family seated in the living room discussing the pros and cons of Romney running for president, with the prospective candidate taking notes on a pad of paper.

Family members cajoled and flattered. “If people really get to know who you are, it could be a success,” Craig Romney said. Tagg Romney, the oldest son, said: “I don’t think you have a choice. I think you have to run.” He added, “I look at the way your life has unfolded. You’re gifted. You’re smart. You’re intelligent. But you’ve also been extraordinarily lucky. So many things have broken your way that you couldn’t have predicted or controlled that it would be a shame not to at least try, and if you don’t win, we’ll still love you.”

“Maybe,” Romney interjected, to chuckles from his family. “Maybe.” Tagg picked up again: “The country may think of you as a laughingstock, and we’ll know the truth and that’s okay. But I think you have a duty to your country and to God to see what comes of it.”

At that Christmas gathering, the family took a vote on whether Romney should run. The five sons voted yes, their wives voted yes. Mitt and Ann Romney voted yes.

Four years later, in December 2010, when they gathered for their Christmas holiday, they faced a similar decision. This time they were in Hawaii and they sat together on a balcony one evening to share their thoughts about a second campaign. This time there was no video of the meeting, and the vote would have shocked a political community closely monitoring the preliminary maneuvering for the 2012 race. Even some of Romney’s closest political advisers might have been surprised. When the family members took a vote, 10 of the 12 said no. Mitt Romney was one of the 10 who opposed another campaign. The only “yes” votes were from Ann Romney and Tagg Romney.

Some of the reservations were personal. All of them knew how disruptive and invasive a presidential campaign would be. “None of us were looking forward to the process,” Tagg Romney said. “We’re a pretty private family, to be honest with you. Having that privacy yanked away was not going to be fun. That was an underlying reason — but not the driving reason. You tasted the bitter pill once, you didn’t want to go bite into it a second time.”

The more fundamental reason so many were opposed was that they feared the campaign would be as brutal as it would be uncertain. “The basic reason was I think a lot of them thought, looking at it, saying, ‘This is going to be a really tough primary campaign to win,’ ” Tagg Romney said. And if his father were to win, he would face an incumbent with $1 billion, much of it used to attack and attack and attack.

Mitt Romney had other reasons to think that not running might be the wiser choice. Winning as a moderate from Massachusetts who happened to be Mormon was always going to be difficult. “A lot of the thinking on the part of my brothers and my dad was, ‘I’m not sure I can win a primary given those dynamics,’ ” Tagg Romney said. The prospective candidate also knew the sheer physical and family toll another campaign would take. “He’s a private person and, push comes to shove, he wants to spend time with his family and enjoy his time with them,” his son said. “Even up until the day before he made the announcement, he was looking for excuses to get out of it. If there had been someone who he thought would have made a better president than he, he would gladly have stepped aside.”

In our interview, I asked Romney why he cast a “no” vote that day. “I knew how grueling the process was, and I felt that there may be others who could be more effective in actually winning and then getting America on course,” he said. “And I thought, for instance, if someone like [former Florida governor] Jeb Bush were to have run, that he might well be able to do what was necessary to get the country on track. I got into this out of a sense of obligation to the things I believed in and love for the country, but not because it was something I desperately wanted so that I could feel better about myself.”

Eventually, after looking over the field of potential GOP candidates, Romney decided he was the right candidate for the time.

“I didn’t think that any one of them had a good chance of defeating the president . . . and in some cases I thought that they lacked the experience and perspective necessary to do what was essential to get the country on track.”
 
Whatever doubts Romney harbored about running, his political advisers never lacked for confidence that he was in the race. They had been mapping the campaign for many months.

On Dec. 9, 2010, just weeks before the family vote in Hawaii, Romney gathered his senior advisers at the family’s oceanside home in La Jolla, Calif., for a full-scale discussion of a 2012 bid. The team was full speed ahead, and Romney had done nothing to slow the machinery. In fact, he had done everything a likely candidate needed to do. He had spent the previous year helping to elect Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat in Massachusetts of the late Edward M. Kennedy; meeting with prospective donors; promoting his book “No Apology”; campaigning around the country for and giving money to Republican candidates.

As with all front-runners, no matter how strong or fragile, Romney’s struggle would be a familiar one. He was starting off in an enviable position: better funded than his rivals, his message honed and sharper than in his first campaign, the confidence and serenity that come with having run before. He understood the pace of a campaign better than his rivals. But could he truly rally this new and more conservative Republican Party behind him? Or would he find himself in constant conflict over Massachusetts’s health-care law, his conservative convictions and his authenticity? Even Romney’s family put his chances of winning the nomination at no better than 50-50.

Romney confirmed to me that at one point in the spring of 2011, he was so pessimistic about his chances that he called Tagg early one morning to say he thought he would not run after all. He was being hammered by conservatives, in large part over the idea that the health-care reforms he passed as governor of Massachusetts would hurt Republicans’s ability to attack the president for the controversial “Obamacare” law that had fueled GOP gains in 2010.

Tagg Romney, who was heading to the airport for a 6 a.m. flight to New York, got a message from his father. The prospective candidate was scheduled for a conference call with his staff at 7 a.m. to discuss a Wall Street Journal editorial that skewered him on health care. Romney told his son, “I’m going to tell them I’m out.” “He said there’s no path to win the nomination,” Tagg Romney told me. “At that moment, he thought his chances were zero.”

Tagg Romney was alarmed by his father’s statement. He remembers thinking, “This can’t happen.” He believed that he and his mother were gradually winning the battle to make his father fully comfortable with running again. Now his father was somehow convinced that the party he sought to lead would never accept him as its nominee. Here was the most conservative major newspaper in the country bashing him and calling him a liberal. He didn’t see how he could win a primary under those conditions. Why waste everybody’s time and money?

“I recognized that by virtue of the realities of my circumstances, there were some drawbacks to my candidacy for a lot of Republican voters,” Romney said. “One, because I had a health-care plan in Massachusetts that had been copied in some respects by the president, that I would be tainted by that feature. I also realized that being a person of wealth, I would be pilloried by the president as someone who, if you use the term of the day, was in the 1 percent. Being Mormon would obviously be a challenge for some evangelical voters. I didn’t know whether that would persist or whether that would go away during the primaries. I think it was [top strategist] Stuart Stevens who said, ‘You know, our party is more Southern, and you’re from the North. It’s more evangelical, and you’re a Mormon. And it’s more populist and you’re a rich guy. This is going to be an uphill fight.’ ” Romney laughed. “And so I didn’t want to get into the race and make it more difficult for the leader of our party to beat the president. And so for me the gating issue was: Am I the person best able to defeat President Obama and therefore get the country on track?”

On the call, his advisers were insistent, Romney said. This will pass, they said. Be patient. This is part of the process. There will be good days and bad. You don’t need to worry about it. At the end of the call, Romney accepted their advice. He told me that he never shared the private thoughts he had expressed to his son.

“There were many other times between December and May where my dad had made up his mind not to run,” Tagg Romney said. “He was hoping for an exit. I think he wanted to have an excuse not to run.”

Romney acknowledged that there were also several times during the early stages of the 2012 nomination contest when he thought he might lose.

“Almost everybody was ahead of me at one time or the other,” he said. “And so I’d look at those and say, ‘Well, right now they’re more likely to get there, but I’m going to keep on battling.’ ” He said a betting person might not have put much money on him at those moments, although he always had confidence that he eventually would prevail. “But I think for certainly two or three weeks there — maybe longer — I thought it was more likely that Rick Perry would be the nominee, or even Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich.” He paused. “I have to tell you that, in the discussions I had with my senior staff, people like Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer said, ‘Look, Newt is not going to be the nominee. I don’t care what the polls say, he’s not going to be the nominee.’ I was far less sanguine about that.”

Eventually each of Romney’s Republican competitors had seen their moment, burned out and fallen by the wayside, and it was clear that he would be the nominee. Even before the process was finished playing out, Obama and his campaign were making Romney the focus of their attacks, targeting his record at Bain Capital, questioning his consistency on key issues and his ability to relate to middle-class Americans.

The bruising race ebbed and flowed, with Obama maintaining a lead in polls that appeared insurmountable at one point in September but would then become a much closer race. Romney began to believe he could win.

“There are so many things you could point to as being decisive,” he said. “For instance, I had a lousy September; I had a great October.”

His great October began in Denver, at his first debate with Obama. Not surprisingly, he remembered that night as the high point of the year. After months of Romney being pounded in ads, voters finally saw him stand face to face with Obama.

“People would get a chance to see that I was not the person that President Obama had been portraying me as being, and the things he was saying about me and my positions were wrong. I mean, his ads were not accurate. His ads were just pillorying me, saying things that were simply not true, and so I recognized this as a chance for people to see who I really am, and understand what I really believe.” When I said he seemed to reappear in that debate as “moderate Mitt,” he offered this interpretation of what happened: “People saw the entire me as opposed to an eight-second clip of me. . . . And if people watched me on the campaign trail and heard my stump speech, what I said in my stump speech was the same thing I said in that debate. I’m the same guy. But in the debate, they saw the whole thing.”

Romney believed the debates produced a fundamental change in his relationship with the party’s rank and file. “What had begun as people watching me with an interested eye had become instead more of a movement with energy and passion,” he said. “The rallies we’d had with larger and larger numbers and people not just agreeing with me on issues, but passionate about the election and about our campaign — that was something that had become palpable.”

As a result, he woke up on Election Day thinking he would win. “I can’t say 90 percent confident or something like that, but I felt we were going to win. . . . The campaign had changed from being clinical to being emotional. And that was very promising.”

His last hours on the trail, especially the arrival at the Pittsburgh airport on the afternoon of the election, where he was greeted by a spontaneous crowd of supporters, gave him added confidence. “We were looking at our own poll numbers and there were two things that we believed,” he said. “We believed that some of the polls that showed me not winning were just simply wrong, because they showed there was going to be more turnout from African American voters, for instance, than had existed in 2008. We said no way, absolutely no way. That can’t be, because this was the first time an African American president had run. Two thousand eight — that had to be the high point. . . . We saw independent voters in Ohio breaking for me by double digits. And as a number said, you can’t lose Ohio if you win independent voters. You’re winning Republicans solidly, you’re winning independents, and enthusiasm is overwhelmingly on your side. . . . So those things said, okay, we have a real good chance of winning. Nothing’s certain. Don’t measure the drapes. But I had written an acceptance speech and spent some time on the acceptance speech. I had not written a concession speech.”

Once Romney landed back in Boston, a different reality set in as he joined a conference call with advisers to review the early exit polls and turnout patterns. “We’re seeing much more turnout from groups that we thought would not be voting in as large numbers. The enthusiasm gap is not playing out in who’s voting as we might have expected. . . . This is not the picture we had expected.”

I asked Romney about the comments attributed to him on election night, that he was now deeply worried for the country. “I’m fearful that unless we change course, if we keep borrowing $1 trillion a year, this is — we’re walking along a precipice. I can’t tell you we’ll fall over it. Maybe we just walk along it for a year and the private sector will be able to pick up the gap and things will work out. That’s possible. But as a guy who’s occasionally walked the mountains, I don’t like to walk along the precipice. I like to walk back from the precipice.”

When Romney had mentioned his “lousy September,” it was an evident reference to what may have been the low point of his campaign: the “47 percent” video. He was in California and said at first he couldn’t get a look at the video. His advisers were pushing him to respond as quickly as he could. “As I understood it, and as they described it to me, not having heard it, it was saying, ‘Look, the Democrats have 47 percent, we’ve got 45 percent, my job is to get the people in the middle, and I’ve got to get the people in the middle,’ ” he said. “And I thought, ‘Well, that’s a reasonable thing.’ . . . It’s not a topic I talk about in public, but there’s nothing wrong with it. They’ve got a bloc of voters, we’ve got a bloc of voters, I’ve got to get the ones in the middle. And I thought that that would be how it would be perceived — as a candidate talking about the process of focusing on the people in the middle who can either vote Republican or Democrat. As it turned out, down the road, it became perceived as being something very different.”

You mean that you were insensitive to a whole group of people? I asked. “Right,” he responded. “And I think the president said he’s writing off 47 percent of Americans and so forth. And that wasn’t at all what was intended. That wasn’t what was meant by it. That is the way it was perceived.” I interjected, “But when you said there are 47 percent who won’t take personal responsibility — ” Before I finished, he jumped in. “Actually, I didn’t say that. . . .That’s how it began to be perceived, and so I had to ultimately respond to the perception, because perception is reality.”

Scanning his notes on an iPad, he began to read a long quotation, offering commentary as he read. At one point, he focused on the question posed at the Florida fundraiser. “Audience member: ‘For the last three years, all of us have been told this, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.’ How are you going to do it in two months before the elections, to convince everyone you’ve got to take care of yourself?’ And I’m saying that isn’t my job. In two months, my job is to get the people in the middle. But this was perceived as, ‘Oh, he’s saying 47 percent of the people he doesn’t care about or he’s insensitive to or they don’t care — they don’t take responsibility for their life.’ No, no. I’m saying 47 percent of the people don’t pay taxes and therefore they don’t warm to our tax message. But the people who are voting for the president, my job isn’t to try and get them. My job is to get the people in the middle. And I go on and say that. Take a look. Look at the full quote. But I realized, look, perception is reality. The perception is I’m saying I don’t care about 47 percent of the people or something of that nature, and that’s simply wrong.”

I asked whether he thought that video helped to crystallize another issue he faced: Was it possible for someone with his biography and background and wealth to win the election at a time when there were widespread feelings that struggling families were being left behind while the rich were doing just fine?

“Well, clearly that was a very damaging quote and hurt my campaign effort,” he said. “I came back in October. I led in a number of polls. I think I could have won the presidency. We came remarkably close. Would I like to have been closer? Absolutely. But the number of votes that could have swung to our side could have made a difference. You have to congratulate the president on a very good turnout effort. We were not competitive on our turnout effort with his. So could I have won? Absolutely. And did I recognize that coming as a person who has a great deal of wealth that in that environment that would be an obstacle? Yeah, I recognized that. But I thought I could get over it.”

BayGBM

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #197 on: January 18, 2014, 11:58:43 AM »
‘MITT’ documentary offers rare, intimate look at Mitt Romney’s six-year quest for presidency
By Philip Rucker

SALT LAKE CITY — A few hours earlier, Mitt Romney was marveling at his big crowds and chewing over lines in his victory speech. But now, in a Boston hotel suite, the camera zooms in on a roomful of family and advisers. The would-be president is on the couch, an iPad on his lap, and asking, “So what do you think you say in a concession speech?”

Silence.

His wife, Ann, arrives and sits down next to him. “What’s going on?”

“We’re writing a concession speech,” Mitt says.

“It’s finished?” she asks.

“My time on the stage is over, guys,” the Republican nominee says.

Ann stares ahead, stricken. Their sons are in disbelief. The grandkids are crying. The nation, the Romneys are learning, had rejected them.

The dramatic collapse of Romney’s six-year quest for the presidency is revealed in a new documentary, “MITT,” a rare, intimate look into how a family endures the 24-7 psycho-drama that is a modern U.S. presidential campaign.

The film, which premiered here Friday night as part of the Sundance Film Festival and will be available on Netflix starting Jan. 24, provides a stark contrast to the stilted, robotic caricature of Romney the politician. It shows him as a three-dimensional figure — devoted to the Mormon faith that he played down on the campaign trail, capable of flashes of raw emotion and often harboring doubts about his political abilities.

The documentary captures the Romney family in moments of hopeful prayer and tearful anguish. There are glimmers of joy and celebration, but more often there are fatigue and frustration. “How many more debates do I have to go to?” Mitt blurts out at one point.

Filmmaker Greg Whiteley gained extraordinary access to the Romneys, capturing them during private moments — in hotel rooms, vans, planes, hallways and elevators — at critical junctures of Romney’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

In 2009, after viewing Whiteley’s footage from the first campaign, Romney’s campaign advisers would not allow him to release the film. But now that Romney has run his last campaign, the family gave Whiteley its blessing. Romney and his family convened Friday night at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center for the film’s first public screening.

The documentary reveals a human, sometimes playful side of Romney that his campaign largely kept buttoned up. He laughs and he cries. He kneels down to pray and he comforts his crying wife in his lap. He calls his large extended family “the gopher village” and scoops up his grandchildren in monster hugs.

He goes sledding wearing gloves held together with duct tape, and he places a hot iron to his wrist to straighten out his tuxedo shirt cuff. He bickers with son Tagg about whether the Delta Shuttle terminal at New York’s LaGuardia Airport contains a large food court. (Tagg was right; it does not.) As his face is applied with television makeup, he quips, “Be careful not to break my hair.”

In 2008, when adviser Beth Myers tells him he won the primary in his native Michigan, he’s wearing only a bathrobe. “We won one!” he exclaims. “Can you believe it?”

The film also shows Romney’s imperfections. On stage, he’s a sunny optimist (“Believe in America” was his slogan). But in private, he’s gloomier, predicting the worst outcomes. When he returned backstage following his second debate with President Obama — the one where he flubbed an answer about the Benghazi attacks — his family tells him he did a good job, but Romney rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“I’ll bet it’s 70-30 in the polls,” he says. “80-20? 90-10?”

Romney gets testy in 2008 when David Chalian of ABC News explains the “dining room table conversation” concept of that night’s debate. “A dining room conversation is among members of the family,” Romney says, getting hot. “These are all people competing for the same job, all right?”

Romney also is obsessed with his caricature from the 2008 campaign — “The Flippin’ Mormon,” he says over and over again. He solicits advice from his team. “I won’t fix the Mormon side,” he says. Of the “flip-flopper” label, he says: “There’s nothing I can do. ‘He was at Burger King last night, McDonald’s the night before.’ . . . It’s so damaging to me.”

But “MITT” is not a film about campaign strategy. Little time is spent on issues such as Romney’s “47 percent” comments and the ensuing damage to his campaign, although one scene shows Romney rehearsing lines about it as Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) stands in for Obama.

Mostly, the film is about the Romney family’s travails — starting around Christmas 2006, when Romney grabs a legal pad and convenes a family meeting around the fire at his Utah ski chalet to chart the pros and cons of running for president.

“You’d be bald in about a month,” son Josh says. Josh’s wife, holding a baby, says, “I think emotionally it would just be hard on everybody.”

Says eldest son Tagg: “If you don’t win, we’ll still love you. The country may think of you as a laughingstock, and we’ll know the truth.”

On Oct. 3, 2012, the night of his first debate with Obama, Romney whistles around his Denver hotel suite picking up trash after his grandkids. He scarfs down a bowl of takeout pasta. “Get a little something in your tummy,” Ann instructs him.

“So,” Romney asks her, “any advice?”

Ann takes a long pause. “Conviction from your heart as to why you’re running,” she says. “Conviction that this country’s on the wrong course and that you are able to put it on the right one. Conviction. Complete power from within your heart. That’s all.”

Son Matt asks whether Obama intimidates him. “Sure. Are you kidding?” Romney says. Ann interjects sternly: “You should not be intimidated by him. I’m not joking, Mitt. You should not be — at all.”

The debate later that night would become the finest moment of his campaign.

At a fundraiser, Romney raises his hand and makes an “L” shape over his forehead, a forecast of what might happen. “Loser for life,” he says. “Mike Dukakis — you know, he can’t get a job mowing lawns.”

Fast forward to Nov. 6, 2012, when Romney and his family gather at a Westin in Boston to watch their White House dreams evaporate, swing state by swing state.

Only a few hours earlier, Romney is so sure of winning that he reads aloud lines of his victory speech: “. . . that freedom so integral to the American experience will again propel us forward to new heights of discovery, to new horizons of opportunity and to new dimensions of prosperity.”

A wrenching scene plays out in the hotel suite that night. Son Ben is on a laptop in the corner studying vote tallies. Granddaughter Chloe breaks the news that Wisconsin is gone. “It’s down to Ohio, folks,” Romney concludes.

Campaign manager Matt Rhoades comes in to say that they’ve come up short there, too. He says adviser Ed Gillespie — now a U.S. Senate candidate in Virginia — called Karl Rove to tell him that the Ohio numbers won’t add up and to back down on Fox News.

With Romney pondering his concession speech, Stuart Stevens, the campaign’s chief strategist, suggests he play “a pastoral role, not a political role, and that part of what you’re [doing] I think is soothing people.”

Romney isn’t having any of it. “To get up and soothe is not my inclination,” he says. He is fearful the country will reach “the tipping point” and fall into decline under Obama. So he writes a quick speech saying that his “principles endure” and that he and Ann will “earnestly pray” for Obama and for the nation.

“We’re 593 words,” Romney says. “That’s about six minutes.”

Two days later, Mitt and Ann drive themselves home. They pull into the garage of their Belmont, Mass., townhouse, take off their jackets and head into the living room.

For the first time in forever, nobody else is around. Mitt just stares out the window, and Ann, looking at him, simply sighs.

LurkerNoMore

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #198 on: January 18, 2014, 03:35:07 PM »
No LANDSLIDE huh?

RRKore

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Re: Life after defeat for Mitt Romney & the GOP
« Reply #199 on: January 20, 2014, 12:11:08 AM »
The documentary sounds like it'll be worth a look. 

Pretty sure it'll show that you have to be a least a little bit mental to want to be president.