The End of the Romney Campaign

And I won't be sorry to see it go! Buh-Bye, folks!

New York Times: Career Options

After three decades of remarkably seamless career hopping — from Bain Capital to the Olympic Games, from governor of Massachusetts to constant candidate for president — Mr. Romney is now a restless chief executive with no organization to run.

. . . At a breakfast on Wednesday for top advisers and donors, Mr. Romney marveled at the Obama campaign’s ability to turn out such a large volume of voters on Election Day, though at times by using strategies that he said had unfairly maligned him.

He did little to hide his frustration and pique: he bemoaned attempts by the president and his allies to characterize him as an enemy of women, singling out advertisements that claimed he opposed contraception and abortion in all cases. That, Mr. Romney said, is simply untrue, according to those at the breakfast.

He even took a gentle swipe at the news media, mocking what he said were inaccurate articles suggesting that his oldest son, Tagg, had staged an intervention to fix a tottering campaign and was playing a heavy role in shaping political strategy.

“He will be sifting through this for quite a while,” said Kirk Jowers, a Romney friend. “The question is when the sifting takes a couple of hours a day instead of being all consuming.”

. . . “I know he will do something,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime Romney political adviser. “I just don’t know what it will be.”

Romney Transition Campaign Website That Won't Come True:


CBS News: Romney Wasn't Prepared to Lose

. . . it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.

After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

. . . Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

"There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."

. . . Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.

GQ: How the Secret Service Said Goodbye to Romney

At some point, early Wednesday morning, when Gov. Mitt Romney and family were tucked into bed, a quiet call went out on the radio channel used by his Secret Service agents: "Javelin, Jockey details, all posts, discontinue."

Of all the indignities involved in losing a presidential race, none is more stark than the sudden emptiness of your entourage. The Secret Service detail guarding Governor Romney since Feb 1. stood down quickly. He had ridden in a 15-car motorcade to the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston for his concession speech. He rode in a single-car motorcade back across the Charles River to Belmont. His son, Tagg, did the driving.

. . . When the race was close, agents would joke about the number of "j" words they'd need to come up with in order to give every one of his children, their wives, and all of their children code names. That's 29 people who would have received, if not protection, at least a protective survey and recommendations from the Service. Quietly, plans had already been put in place to assign protective details to all of them, just in case.