I don't buy this for one second. It sounds like college fans who don't get a recruit and suddenly proclaim 'we didn't really want him, anyway.' In other words, a total rationalization. Mitt Romney wasn't going to waste millions of dollars of his own wealth trying to lose.
"He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life,” Tagg Romney told the Boston Globe. “If he could have found someone else to take his place . . . he would have been ecstatic to step aside.”
You assume he lost and that the presidency was his goal.
If you have $350 in your pocket right now, you’re driving to work and you decide you are REALLY thirsty, What to you do?
Stop at the quickstop and spend $1.50 on a Pepsi. Because you can.
If you have $350,000,000 in your bank account and decide to help your buds play power games with the planet, you spend a couple million to make it happen for entertainment.
Because you can.
I don't think the idea was that Mitt set out to lose. It was more that at some level he didn't have the fire in the belly -- the passion and drive to make his wish a reality. If you've got a lot of money you can throw it away on goals that you really don't have the energy or drive or focus to attain. That's pretty common among rich people whose heads get turned by so many opportunities that they don't concentrate their energies on just one.