Feb. 8, 2008
The Realist In Romney Saw A Path Too Steep
Washington Post: Grim Outlook Convinced Former Governor To Drop His Presidential Bid
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Play CBS Video Video Romney Suspends Campaign "CBS News Raw": Mitt Romney suspended his presidential campaign saying that he did not want to aid in "a surrender to terror" that he says would happen if the Dems win.
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Video GOP Torn Over Romney Departure After disappointing results on Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney voluntarily suspended his presidential campaign, leaving a void conservatives are divided over who will fill. Chip Reid reports.
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Video Romney Puts Campaign On Ice Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is stepping aside, all but surrendering the GOP nomination to John McCain. What will happen to the conservative vote? Susan Roberts reports.
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Republican presidential hopeful, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, leaves the back entrance of the Omni Shoreham Hotel with his wife Ann, left, after pulling out of the presidential race in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008. (AP)
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Photo Essay Mitt Romney He turned around companies, and the Olympics and ran for president pledging to turn around the country.
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Quiz Candidates Quiz Test your knowledge of the presidential contenders.
From Our Partner:
Some on Romney's staff were thrilled. Brownback had attacked Romney repeatedly in the days leading up to the straw poll, and his third-place finish signaled that the end was near for the senator. Others in Romney's inner circle were worried. Huckabee's unexpected showing -- the result of a patchwork coalition led by home-school advocates, "fair tax" supporters and evangelical Christians -- was a sign that trouble was brewing on the conservative right, a key voting bloc.
The results "kept the guy that could do the most damage to us in Iowa alive," one senior Romney official said yesterday.
Inside the campaign, disagreements soon raged about how to handle Huckabee. Some insisted that he must be directly confronted with hard-hitting direct mail and television ads. Others resisted, arguing that the first campaign to go negative would be punished by Iowa voters, who dislike the rough-and-tumble of national campaigns.
The group urging discretion won out for months. It wasn't until late November, when public polls showed Huckabee surging to the top in Iowa on the strength of his appeal to evangelical Christians, that the campaign began sending out hard-hitting mail pieces. And, just before Christmas, Romney decided to take on Huckabee with television ads that accused the former governor of giving parole to murderers.
It was too late. Huckabee had solidified support within the evangelical community and unified conservatives behind his candidacy, robbing Romney of the foundation he had hoped to build for himself in Iowa. Huckabee won a surprisingly large nine-point victory, a setback for Romney that forced a radical rethinking of his early-state strategy.
"The theory that we had built it on was the rolling snowball," said senior Romney strategist Tom Rath. "Iowa begat New Hampshire. Every time we got a shot at McCain, one on one, we always had Huckabee on our flank."
Key Battles Lost
Huckabee kept Romney from using Iowa as a springboard into New Hampshire five days later. Without a bounce, Romney watched as McCain resurrected his campaign with a win in the state that had jump-started his 2000 presidential bid.
Then came South Carolina.
Romney had long identified this as a key state; it had, after all, sunk McCain in 2000 when he failed to convince the state's conservatives that he was one of them. Romney had been running an active campaign, led by well-regarded political operative Terry Sullivan, in the Palmetto State for the better part of a year. He had also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television ads. But he still lagged as conservatives rallied around Huckabee. Romney, whose Mormon religion was the subject of ugly e-mails, ran a distant and disappointing fourth.
Florida was the next -- and, in retrospect, the last -- major battleground for Romney. Giuliani was making the state his firewall and seemed likely to fracture McCain's center-left coalition.
But as Giuliani faded, Huckabee's surprising resilience kept Romney from coalescing conservatives behind him and claiming the victory he so badly needed heading into Super Tuesday.
The final days of the Romney campaign had a surreal quality as the candidate flew from one sparsely attended event to another in an effort to find a breakthrough victory. Some of the stops, such as in St. Louis and Nashville, were in states where he ended up placing third.
Within the campaign bubble, there was scant evidence that things were amiss. His staff added a flight to California, forcing Romney to fly from Georgia to Long Beach, spend a couple of hours there, and then fly through the night to West Virginia so he would arrive in time to address its GOP convention. He had barely three hours of sleep.
Romney himself seemed in high spirits. He showed little sign that he felt he was on a death march, though there were occasional glimpses of wistfulness. When he told reporters he had e-mailed New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady before the Super Bowl, he added, "I wish he'd sent me a couple of plays."
On Tuesday afternoon, news of Huckabee's surprise victory in West Virginia foreshadowed the end to come. The talkative Romney suddenly would not take questions from reporters after he cast his ballot in the well-heeled Boston suburb of Belmont. In a brief statement, with his wife at his side, he said that it was "fun" to see his name on the ballot -- and that he just wanted to get back home.
By Michael D. Shear, Chris Cillizza and Glenn Kessler
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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Add a Comment See all 25 Comments
- it does not matter what someone else believes, huck does and will not accept it because it is not putting money in hucks pocket with passing of the plate. he already said he wanted to pass the plate at one of the debate.
the constitution was created on the christian idea, to treat every one respectfully, kindness and equal to yourself, huck has already proved by his anti mormon statements he is incapable of following the constitution.
if huck is anti mormon, he will be anti budah, anti jew, anti muslim,ect.......
that means huck is war, hatred, war, hatred, war.....
ya know what is funny, the christians all say ''''''''''''''''do what jesus would do''''''''''''''''
but yet, they hate all that do not go to church with them. sounds kind of like a typical hypacrit. read the bible. more mormons read the bible than any other religion. i know, because my neighbors are mormon.
it does not matter if they read the book of picking your nose, they are more christ like than hypocrit hucky fans.
religious intolerance is unacceptable as the pres of america. - Reply to this comment
- "But he soldiered on, spending an estimated $50 million of his personal funds..."
$50 million of personal funds? Not so fast. He''ll probably write it off as job hunting expense, so it only cost him $25 million. The other $25 million is paid for by the stupid American taxpayer. Mutt gets the last laugh again. - Reply to this comment
- Romney made the right decision that''s for sure.
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- Mitt Romney for Mayor of Detroit!
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- The one BIG reason why Romney''s campaign was unsuccessful is the media. Romney spent so much of his resources just countering the onslaught of attacks from the McCain friendly media. Now that the media has their choice for the Republican nomination--McCain--the political bloodbath is about to begin.
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- Americans who support the Constitution and the Republic have one choice now--a Third Party!!
The treason and corruption that is the Demopublican party is no longer the kind of vehicle that any decent American can support! It supports open borders...it supports war without end...it supports a police state...it supports internationalism, big taxes and big government...and follows a corrupt leader who calls the Constitution ''just a G-- D--- piece of paper''.
Vote Third Party! - Reply to this comment
- singingrick - You hit the nail on the head. Romney was actually chasing corporate america.
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- SERIOUS QUESTION HERE....
Do the prez candidates that bail out eventually find a way to recoup their lost personal $$$$ spent on their failed campaigns? Is there a limit as to what they can get back? - Reply to this comment
- The big decision that the Paul campaign faces is when to declare as a Third Party candidate...Free men will not vote for dogs like McCain, Hucksterbee, Clinton or Obama... Free men will vote for peace...for ''leben und leben lassen''...we will not fight for Big Oil and the Drug Lords in Afghanistan...we will not vote for candidates who support the dissolution of our nation into the North American Union and persist in the lie that we are fighting a war on terror while leaving the border open and supporting amnesty for illegals.
No soldier or officer who upholds the Constitution or his oath will stand with this evil regime whose leader calls the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold and lay down their lives for, "just a G-- D--- piece of paper"!
Free men will not long stand idle while the imperiousness of jack-booted thugs and swarms of self-important bureaucrats impose themselves upon us... humiliate law abiding citizens and commit violence against them! We will not have our economy destroyed and our freedom ended for the sake of the balance sheets of the Oligarchs who have usurped our Federal government and are trying to destroy us! Down with the usurpers! Restore the Constitution and the Republic!! - Reply to this comment
Romney had at least two positions on every issue depending on who he was speaking to. The only reason that the neocons liked him was they knew that he could be easily bought.- Reply to this comment
- terrorislam is too stupid to know what the story is he is posting to.
Typical rightwing loon. - Reply to this comment
- Bush claims he was chosen by God (or was it the devil, a.k.a. Cheney? Oh well, close enough) to be president. Apparently the Angel Moroni does not have as much pull.
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- The scumbag in Romney claims to be dropping out for the "good of the party'' and to make America safe from Democrats.
The true realist in Romney couldn''t keep throwing his money away on a lost cause. The Machiavelli in Romney is hoping to make a comeback in 2012 after the GOP gets creamed in the fall. - Reply to this comment
- Remember that spamming Ron Paul guy "Prophet" who used to fill up entire forums with Ron Paul spam? All I have to say is this: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Told you so.
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- "Change" may once again be the matra of the sheeple who now inhabit this once great land, but what they really want is ''normalcy''...that indefinable since of ''more of the same...only different''. The candidates who offer profound change are not winning support for several reasons...
The Corporatist-controlled mass media translates reality...creates "momentums"...just as it creates fashion, fads and fans...they try to sell a product... failed with Giuliani...failed with Romney...succeeded with McCain...
Ron Paul didn''t get that build-up...the mass media tries to keep a lid on him--or, variously, tried to destroy him...He is the object of scorn...by a vile cowardly creature like O''Reilly...himself illustrative of the power of the media...a pervert who decries others as "whackos" is watched by those who promote "family values" and a "Christian America"...
Dumber-than-dirt Republicans who wanted "change" and strongly opposed the war...voted for John McCain in New Hampshire...not a particularly backward place or with an electorate so different from that elsewhere...
...they apparently saw no contradiction between their "strongly held opposition to the war" and John McCain''s promise to stay in Iraq for a hundred years if need be...this is a sign that many, if not most, Americans live in the ''propaganda matrix'' and cannot distinguish it from the real world.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19306.htm - Reply to this comment
- Ron Paul is strong not with the minnows he is catching.
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Romney''''s errors cornered him into "zero room for error ."
"I was pro-choice. Now I''''m pro-life."
"I was for gay rights. Now I''''m not."
"I did support stem-cell research." "Now I don''''t."
... et cetera ...
Posted by newz4i at 10:28 AM :
Yeah, like these bullchit "issues" are so important to running this nation.
It seems to me these issues are important in running a church.
I''m sick of stupid issues like these overshadowing the fact that this country is going to helll, or to china, (which are one and the same).- Reply to this comment
- Posted by cop12 at 09:48 AM
YOU MEANIES! YOU LEAVE RON ALONE! *WAH*
(lol.... Ron who?) - Reply to this comment
Posted by cop12: "CBS---you made the comment that now this is a two man race...You must mean Huckabee and Ron Paul?????? Right! Don''''t you dare try to shove your big money bosses hidden agenda''''s down our throats! RON PAUL IS STRONG WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!!!!GO RON PAUL!"
If CBS or any other media outlet suggested that this is a 2 man race between Huckabee & Ron Paul, I''d wonder what they had been smoking! Its time to give it up, Ron Paul isn''t going anywhere, except back to his district in Texas!
So cop12, don''t you and the other Ron Paul backers DARE SPEW MORE OF YOUR B.S down our throats!- Reply to this comment
- Romney''s errors cornered him into "zero room for error ."
"I was pro-choice. Now I''m pro-life."
"I was for gay rights. Now I''m not."
"I did support stem-cell research." "Now I don''t."
... et cetera ... - Reply to this comment
