Romney: A Reckoning

Mitt gave everyone on his campaign team a copy of a master’s thesis, “George Romney in 1968, from Front-Runner to Drop-Out, an Analysis of Cause.” Mitt was determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes. He chose loyal team members who were near him and took extra care to speak deliberately rather than off the cuff. He would not pursue his father’s “righteous crusade,” but would lead a data-driven campaign (75). He praised his father’s integrity but hoped that he would demonstrate more political savvy. 

In 2006, televangelist Franklin Graham told Mitt that he would not support his gubernatorial run because Mitt had named two gay judges to the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Other Republican evangelicals were skeptical about the Romneys’ Mormonism. Mitt was determined to show them that he was “a real conservative” (78). 

The first debate of the Republican primaries took place in 2007 at the Reagan Library in California. Romney debated Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain, and he came out looking favorable. 

Romney’s campaign became more aggressive to combat notions that he was too moderate. He realized that in order to ingratiate himself to Republican voters, he would have to become a more outspoken advocate of party policies. That summer, he won the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa—an unofficial indicator of electoral momentum. 

As he gained traction around the country, he also incurred criticism from evangelicals for his Mormon faith. Even John McCain’s 95-year-old mother went on MSNBC to decry Mormonism (McCain apologized to Romney for this).

In December 2007, he appeared at the Bush Presidential Library in Texas to deliver “Faith in America.” He officially suspended his campaign in February 2008 and endorsed John McCain.

In December 2010, Romney’s top political advisors gathered in his La Jolla mansion. The evangelical movement was forming alliances with Christian nationalism and white supremacy, and Romney felt no sympathy for the new Tea Party. Romney hoped that an ironclad economic strategy would win people over. One of his advisors pointed out that Mitt was a “Yankee, Mormon, and wealthy” candidate pursuing the votes of a “southern, evangelical, and populist” base (96). The Romneys voted on whether he should run again for president, and only Ann and Tagg supported another campaign. Mitt wanted to run again to improve upon the mistakes he’d made in 2007. 

Donald Trump was generating rumors about Obama’s birthplace, a debacle that Mitt wrote off as “a sideshow” (98). He hoped to court Tea Party voters while maintaining his ideals. 

Romney began keeping a journal in hopes of one day writing a memoir. Rick Perry entered the race and climbed to the top of the primaries. Romney, seen as too liberal for evangelicals and too conservative for moderates, was not polling well. Spencer Zwick suggested that he accept an endorsement from Trump, which Romney did not want. He wanted the endorsement to be as invisible as possible; Trump wanted the opposite. Trump’s team wanted Romney to push the racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the US. 

In October 2011, Romney attended the Values Voter Summit, where he was displeased to learn that he’d be sharing the stage with a right-wing extremist named Bryan Fischer. Herman Cain gained traction, then Newt Gingrich. Mitt realized that his strategy of rationality mattered little to Tea Party voters, who enjoyed being angry and had no interest in policy discourse. 

Mitt returned to Ames, Iowa, where he again won the straw poll. He needed to win South Carolina in order to clinch the nomination, but his religion was still a problem there. Mitt was disheartened when evangelical voters ignored allegations that Newt Gingrich had been unfaithful to his wife. He felt deflated by the polls and wondered if he should consider retirement. 

In February 2012, he traveled to Vegas to publicly accept Trump’s endorsement. He was not pleased to be forced to do this, and Trump’s team was displeased that Mitt was not more enthusiastic.

Romney was surprised to see that he gained popularity after clinching the nomination. Rick Santorum tried to negotiate what Romney would offer him if he dropped out. Gingrich dropped out soon after. The campaign had a lot of work to do and far fewer resources than President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign; Romney’s campaign had 72 staffers and Obama’s had 690. 

He began to feel pressured by the constant scrutiny and lack of privacy, as well as the constant hacking of his personal accounts. He needed to pick a running mate, and his team decided that the best contenders were Chris Christie, Rob Portman, Tim Pawlenty, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan. Romney and Ryan liked each other. Ryan was more conservative, which ingratiated Romney to the Tea Party. 

Romney tried to discern how to best establish a private and public relationship with Trump, who was hard to handle and turned every campaign event that he attended into an opportunity for self-promotion. The Obama campaign viewed this relationship as demonstrating Romney’s sympathy for the right-wing extremists who praised Trump. Romney’s campaign struggled to court wealthy Republicans, Trump fans, and moderate liberals. 

Romney accepted the party’s nomination, beginning “one of the pettiest, most forgettable presidential elections in modern history” (126). He struggled with his campaign’s desire to create attack ads, frustrated that his main selling points were perceived as anti-Obama rather than pro-Romney.

Romney kept making himself look bad. An anecdote about him strapping the family dog to the roof of the car circulated widely as a condemnation of his unfeeling character. This was the first election in which Twitter played a key role, memorializing Romney’s many gaffes—what Coppins calls “verbal typos.” His staff tried to keep him away from cameras unless appearances could be completely planned and choreographed. 

The Obama team’s goal was to portray Romney as “a cold-blooded, out-of-touch plutocrat” (132). Attack ads tackled his private equity career. Senate majority leader Harry Reid claimed that Romney went a decade without paying taxes. A sound bite of Romney saying “corporations are people” circulated widely, stirring anger among liberals in the wake of the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United decision. In front of the cameras, Romney was listening to small business leaders; behind the cameras, he was courting donations from titans of industry. 

As he fell in the polls in swing states, it became clear that he was going to lose. He began to dislike Obama and considered him too arrogant to be president, but as Coppins wryly notes, “He had no idea how much worse it could get” (137). 

At every fundraiser, Romney was bombarded by advice. In September, a surreptitiously recorded video of him disparaging democratic voters leaked to the media, likely dooming his campaign. He became very depressed and realized that his political trajectory now mirrored that of his father. He seriously considered dropping out of the race six weeks before the election. 

On October 22, Trump announced that he had something incriminating on Obama. The final sprint of the campaign was exhausting, and as it appeared clear that he was going to lose, he felt guilty about disappointing everyone who had worked hard for him. In late October, a massive hurricane hit the east coast, effectively halting Romney’s campaign. Trump began Tweeting.