Romney actually BELIEVED he was going to win

[CatWoman]

I can't help but think he was set up.

The GOP lied to him and strung him along to the very end.

[Speck Tater]

1. Because he lived in a virtual reality world

where Fox is News and his victory was inevitable.

Think of it as the Republican version of an online role playing game. It's looks pretty realistic, but in the final analysis it has not connection to reality.

[Kolesar]

2. Sunday was his "holy day"

Meaning that the polling told him that he could lose the election and he said "holy s#!t".

[SoonerPride]

3. Well, to be fair, he also thinks tax cuts to billionaires create 12,000,000 jobs

Because, you know, he's an idiot.

[patrice]

10. No, that's one he was going to make good on with 10 million job terminations, replaced with

6 million temporary replacement jobs that launder, rinse, and repeat at least 2 times . . .

or something like that.

[Obamamama44]

11. Lol! nt

[ann---]

4. He had only prepared a victory speech

I think that's kind of arrogant.

[HipChick]

6. A victory Fireworks display was setup

[ann---]

55. OMG! For real?

[LynneSin]

7. He had his transition website ready to go too

[patrice]

5. My personal conspiracy theory is that we just did some financial house-cleaning for them ....

NOW, to get PAID!!!!!

????? ~

[Blue4Texas]

8. Or GOP actually thought they were going to win

[cali]

9. I think he believed it because he believed he was destined to be President

In coming days I think we'll find out. The leaking from his inner circle has already started.

[Pab Sungenis]

21. "White Horse" prophecy

anyone?

[shrdlu]

12. A life prize...

I take Col. Pat Lang's view that Romney thought the office an appropriate reward for his wonderful life and splendid accomplishments. He could not believe he would be denied.

[Happyhippychick]

13. His grandiose sense of entitlement bit him squarely on the butt nt

[SammyWinstonJack]

16. I hope he is off licking his wounds somewhere, with no plans to step onto the

political stage ever again!

[Happyhippychick]

20. Me too! And I hope he takes his plastic wife with him!

[CatWoman]

35. LOL

"It's our turn"

[Faux pas]

31. + tax

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Every candidate believes they are going to win

This is not Romney, people do not run to lose.

[CatWoman]

15. yeah

but one must eventually face reality somewhere along the way.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/how-conservative-media-lost-to-the-msm-and-failed-the-rank-and-file/264855/

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Usually as votes come in

It is rare that a candidate will do this before. It matters little if this is county commissioner or POTUS.

[CoffeeCat]

28. Steve Schmidt said they knew three weeks before the election, that McCain would lose...

Schmidt has publicly said that McCain knew it too.

Come on, if Mitt Romney didn't know--it's because people manufactured a reality around him that prevented him from knowing. They were doing internal polling, for Pete's sake.

I saw the polling, looked at all of it--and knew that Romney's chances of winning were very slim. All of the evidence pointed to Obama beating him--because he was leading in most of the critical swing states.

What drives me nuts--is that the scientific evidence was there! I'm a stay-at-home mom from the suburbs, and I knew this. But we're supposed to believe that polling experts, campaign managers and seasoned political experts couldn't have told Mitt Romney what so many of us knew.

It is bizarre that nearly 30 percent of this nation lived in a make-believe fairy world throughout this campaign. It is frightening.

People discuss how Romney may be imbalanced. His family members have discussed how they have to calm him down and Ann said she worries about his mental instability. Maybe they worried that he would come unglued if he knew the truth--so they felt the need to manufacture a bubble. I don't know.

It is disturbing if you ask me to watch a good portion of the country and a man who came very close to the presidency--residing in a place that is not reality. It's damn near frightening!

[nadinbrzezinski]

46. And he also mentioned

That they still hoped they got a miracle at the last minute.

My lord...sorry if I cannot see the world through partisan glasses. Perhaps it's doing actual political analysis like for real, and covering these people.

[Ter]

42. Did Mondale on Election Eve 1984?

He had to have known.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. I will put it to you this way

some candidates "know" but they do not want to believe it, until the actual votes happen.

A few, they are rare birds indeed, know before, and are ready.

But those are very rare birds indeed.

[WinkyDink]

17. He wasn't "set up": he BELIEVED the PROPHECY.

[StarryNite]

18. I wonder if he kept the receipt

for his magical underpants? Maybe he can still take them back because they didn't work.

[socialindependocrat]

19. I think they figured that $ = votes

All their dollars equated to was ad time.

We proved that there is a saturation point when it comes to ads and phone calls.

I think they figured they'd buy the election and the Kochs would have a bought
president who would do what they told him to and they could rule the world.

Now they only own congress

Thank the lord for Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren!

They didn't want Eliz. Warren to fight for consumer protection!
Now she can fight for anything she wants!

[jwirr]

22. We are forgetting that he was raised by his family to believe that he was to be the great Mormon

savior of America according to prophecy.

[CoffeeCat]

24. I'm so glad that you made an OP about this...

Because seriously...I started so many posts pre-election about the Republicans living in fantasyland. Sure, we all want to believe that our guy will win, but the Republican delusion was horrifying to me.

I kept posting about their eventual break on election night, because they were being sold that Romney was definitely going to win. I was on Free Republic, I watched Fox News--they thought they had it in the bag.

It was disturbing for me to watch and to read. I kept saying that it wasn't smart to lie about Romney's assured win, when the loss would be like plunging them into icy, polar waters. I worried that these types would be violent or come unhinged.

I will NEVER understand it. I have worked in PR for nearly two decades. The Republicans built a bubble around the Romney campaign. They had fake polls, fake predictions from Karl Rove, Dick Morris and Michael Barone--and manufactured stories and news pieces. I could see through all of it!! All you had to do what look at the non-partisan polls, make your own electoral map on CNN.com and work it out for yourself. Obama was leading in nearly all swing-state polls. The truth was there, for those who wanted to see it.

Did anyone see that Obama cried during his last campaign speech in Iowa? Free Republic and other right wing sites, as well as right-wing radio and Fox News--insisted that Obama's tears were because he knew it was over.

Ok, I was THERE...at that Des Moines campaign speech. Twenty five thousand of my closest friends were there too. Obama shed those tears when he talked about how far our nation had come since he was first elected and how we were going to carry the unfinished work forward. He wasn't sad and saying goodbye. It was just the opposite!! He knew he was winning. I left that speech knowing that we would win.

Ok, I'm not anyone special. I'm not a mind reader or a pundit on a major network. However, I knew that Obama was far ahead and probably going to win. If I could figure it out--how in the hell can an entire Republican infrastructure not know???

Seriously. Something is really wrong here. I agree CatWoman. They seemed to concoct an alternative bubble for Mitt to play around in. It was very bizarre and there is much, much more to this story.

[CatWoman]

25. wonderful post, CC

just wonderful

[RevStPatrick]

26. "If you're so smart, you'd be rich!"

I just love that old canard, because, no, you don't need to be particularly smart to get rich.
All you need to do is know how to buy low and sell high.
It really seems like Mittens convinced himself that since he was able to get rich, that he must be super-brilliant.

I have never seen a dumber candidate in my life...

[lutefisk]

37. I think Palin is dumber

Or maybe they're just dumb in different ways.

[Atman]

27. Blame it on the Rove.

Vulture capitalism at its finest! They fed off each other. It was all just about making money. Rove promised shit he couldn't deliver, just keeps the checks coming! This is the model of the GOP marketplace. Every man for himself. Romney didn't spend a dime of his own money, of course. He just sucked up the cash of "supporters." He'll go home and ride the car elevator up and down, and yell and Ann at Seamus to STFU. No loss, except time. And damn...now he might actually have to pay some tax.

[CoffeeCat]

29. LOL!!

That is a very vivid image of Mitt in his car elevator--telling Ann and Seamus to STFU. LOL!



Reminds me of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction when she's turning on and off the lamp on her bedside table. Frightening!

[Michigan Alum]

44. Yep - you got it. But Rove is a narcissist who thinks he has a "golden touch" and believed it too.

[Taverner]

30. He rented Fireworks for Boston harbor

Didn't get to use them tho

[CatWoman]

36. and we the taxpayer would have footed the bill

[boxman]

32. No surprise

This is a man who, for his entire life, has had everything he wanted handed to him on a silver platter. This was one toy the little kid couldn't take by force.

[Marr]

33. They didn't string him along-- they all believed it.

They live in a fictional world, and have their own media that tells them nothing but things they want to hear. In their fantasy world, Romney had the election locked up.

Unfortunately for them, sometimes it isn't enough to simply insist a thing is so. Sometimes reality insists.

[spinbaby]

34. This is a very Republican flaw

They think that if they "believe" something, it will automatically be true.

[obamanut2012]

38. White Horse Propehcy and thought OH and FL would be stolen

Remember, Romney believes the ends justifies the means. He thought OH and FL would be given to him, and that Obama would lose ALL the swing states, plus a couple more (Michigan?).

[cecilfirefox]

39. Actually, I picked up on this to very quickly,

what with how long it took him to concede, with how he looked when he gave the speech, how his family looked. They weren't jus t bsing and presenting a good face earlier in the night, they genuinely though they were going to win, and constantly they were talking about polls and scientific data that just.... Was wrong. Did they make it up? Did they deliberately voter and data mine information that would result in a beneifical outcome for them? It's jaw dropping- that election was clearly swinging in Obama's favor going in but they just ignored it.

They literally live, and this has been a bit of a liberal meme the past two years I admit, in an alternate reality. Bullshit mountain, Stewart called it, and he couldn't be any more correct.

[Michigan Alum]

40. They believed it too, I'm sure. They prob. only listen to Faux News and had some effed up pollsters.

It's easy to have a bias when you want something to happen really badly. They had some asshat doing their polling.

[B Calm]

41. All my RW co workers thought so too. Too

much FOX news and AM radio. I been telling them for some time that they need to watch regular news channels. . . Oh well

[WinkyDink]

47. My friend, also. I should've told her to relax and await the Obama blow-out.

[Michigan Alum]

43. I bet they were listening to "Boss Rove" who was either in la-la land or thought they stole it.

They were saying that Rove was the new "boss" of the party. We saw how Rove was acting election night and all the other "experts" on "faux" news.

[LynneSin]

48. Don't forget the fireworks - Romney had them planned too!

http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/11/08/mitt-romney-planned-boston-harbor-fireworks-show-that-was-scotched-election-loss/qmgtVKPq4zNnDyb9FbLWeJ/story.html

[kentuck]

49. They all believed they were going to win.

They were over-confident that they were going to win.

[adirondacker]

50. I'm really not that sure about this "belief". NBC was reporting that Mitt's own exit polls were...

they were down by 5% in Ohio. Hard to imagine that they believed they could pull it off without Ohio.
I do think, however, that they wanted to keep their base alive for a while during the evening hours. It pulled in a lot of viewers onto Clearchannel stations, that's for certain.

[Solly Mack]

51. I don't understand why anyone thought he would win.

[applegrove]

52. It used to be that candidates were not told their numbers if they were

bad. Don't know if it is still true.

[nadinbrzezinski]

53. Locally it is still true

[Tennessee Gal]

54. He got out foxed by Fox!!!!!

They lied to their own candidate ........ and he bought it! Oh, the irony!

ROFL!!!!

[graywarrior]

56. It's the "Bubble" factor