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 ...
Rove's specialty was GOTV. What we need is a year round 365-days a year equivalent of Democratic machine politician ward heelers - but paid personnel (instead of corrupt part-time fixers) who do constituent service like potholes, college recommendations and so on, thereby giving constituents a personal reason to go out and vote for a candidate. It would be expensive, but not doing so would merely leave the field to the Dems.
Nonsense. Bachmann and Newt would have gotten eaten alive by the media. Even though i like both of them they had no chance. Sure we place Reagan as our model , but where is the next Reagan? I seen thousands and thousands of enthusiastic Romney supporters 20000, 30000 at many appearances. He was far a far better candidate than Obama. Romney lost and like all losers he will be kicked while he is down. I am proud to have voted for him and wish him well. He tried his ass off.
I think that’s a great idea.
Agree. Although his chief campaign strategy must take responsibility for sitting on a load of cash and not answering and rebutting the DNC attempt to define Romney as an evil Bain capitalist, for concentrating solely on the economic issue and not bringing up ads about the Rats booing God at the DNC and issues of Obama’s support for gay marriage. These issues may have either turned off some independents or they may have stayed home..
The future of the USA looks like a mixture of Mexico drug gangs, Liberian Warlords, and some tinpot Eurotrash Socialist dictator.
Sorry. But you let those people in, and now they will outbreed and rule you.
Then there are these folks, 2,186,986 strong and devoted to not voting for Mitt Romney, (for some reason, so they gave us Satan)
http://www.votingforjesus.com/
Agree wholeheartedly. Romney made a huge mistake penning that op-ed. It killed him in the rust-belt. He may have even captured MIchigan but too many blunders like that cost him bigtime!
Thank you for your post.
With the exception of Ross Perot, Romney is a far more successful man in his private endeavors than just about every individual who's ever run for the presidency in this country's history. But what makes someone a better candidate is not his resume - it's the political knowledge gleaned from years of experience in the field. There are many political judgments that can't be outsourced. Because Romney lacked the (election-winning) experience to know any better, he chose the wrong advisers, and they lost the election for him.
It's true.
Romney wins white vote by same margin as Reagan did in 1980 landslide
Carter won 83% of blacks, Obama 93%. Hispanics were only 2% of the population in 1980.
Reagan could not be elected governor of California with today's demographics. And that's not a knock on his political skills.
One thing I clearly remember being said about Mitt is that he can’t close the deal. He was very successful closing in business, but not in politics. From what I’ve read, he was never interested in politics, instead devoting his life to doing missions for his church.
Oh well, not much we can do about anything now. Obama owns this - the people who voted for him - own this and the only one obama can now blame for the last 4 years is himself.
Demographically true, but I disagree. What Reagan would have done (and W. did to some extent) was to recognize the demographics and silence the nativists. America's problem is not hardworking people wanting to come and live in America - which is the case for the overwhelming majority of illegals. They are not bad people and most people know that and the Latino citizens (natural conservatives) take great offense at their persecution.
I am most certainly all for enforcing the law, but the law, in this case, is broken. Thus, we need tobe clear that the GOP will NEVER AGAIN win the White House until it makes peace with the Latino community and comes up with a plan for dealing with the illegals that doesn't involve deportation or splitting families.
My sense is that the guy is a problem solver. You only need closers when your product is no better than the next guy's. Romney is a highly-competent captain of industry who's always let his clearly superior results do the talking. His lack of closing experience is the reason for his gaffes - a closer's emotional antenna are exquisitely tuned to his audience's. Based on some of his gaffes, Romney has no emotional antennae that I can detect.
LOL, Reagan would have swept us to a landslide and the Senate, and defeat of a lot of these measures that passed, Reagan would have wiped the floor with Obama.
Reagan would have been speaking to the people, and leading them for months, by Tuesday.
Romney was a disaster, and he has been a loser his entire 20 years of running for office.
In 2008 he spent 150 million dollars to get beaten by two guys with no money, called McCain and Huckabee, and in 2012, Mitt got stomped by Jimmy Carter.
We know Romney’s liberal past. Just watch the debate with Kennedy. I’m actually surprised this was not used against him in the campaign. I like Romney as a person so I’m not going to kick him while he’s down. But I was wondering. As we all know, Romney is far from being a right-winger. He’s not a conservative. Now there are some that claim he’s the same as Obama. I do not even come to come close to agreeing with that.
But suppose the moderates look at Romney and see only the liberal in him and they look at Obama and are blind to the socialism that we all see in him.
What are the chances that the moderates look into Romney’s history and concluded that there really is no HUGE gap between the two on issues and since there’s already someone with similar stances in the White House, perhaps it’s better to keep the one that’s already established?
Obama wasn’t Jimmy Carter to them no matter what you think of him.. Obama was Jesus Christ to half of his voters and FDR to the other half.. it’s not 1980 no matter how badly you want to believe it.. 90% of Obama’s voters practially worship the guy.. they voted yesterday for big government and more class warfare and they knowingly and enthusiastically would do it again next week no matter who the Republican was..
Actually, Romney has been a political animal all of his life, starting as a republican intern in his early teens, attending the 1964 convention, being an activist in college, participating in campaigns and political interviews all of his life (including the 1960s), leaving the republican party because of Reagan in 1979, donating to campaigns, becoming a supporter of democrats and a democrat fund raiser and voter, and running for office for the last 20 years while spending about 55 million of his own funds and breaking spending records in multiple campaigns.
Even Ann has run for political office.
The ground game was huge. I talked to them, I watched them, I participated.
They, the blacks, Hispanics and Asians proved that racism is thriving in the US.
Please stop this absurdity.
Obama was Carter, and Romney is not fit to even be mentioned with Ronald Reagan.
Mitt is the anti-Reagan, and truly was just that, what a disaster that whack case is.
To this day no one really knows what his politics are, and his SECOND presidential run is over.
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