Romney was in PA to go for blowout not backup plan

[King]

The campaign really subscribed to unskewed polling.  Amazing.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Chartist]

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

WHY would you not stay in the actual swing states just to make 100% sure that you are elected President if the unthinkable happens? WHY would you need to expand the map??

Has there been a more deluded Presidential campaign in history?

[Likely Voter]

The funny thing is that Romney is supposed to be a data guy and a technocrat and not a ideologue. The entire 'dont trust the polls' thing was entirely faith-based, and built on the notion that their campaign could actually stop the trend of the white vote decreasing every election. One would imagine they would at least game out the possibility that their assumptions were wrong. It's been said that on the Obama side, they actually did do different polling assumptions and they would look at the scenario where the white vote stayed constant. So at least they couldn't end up surprised.

[Maxwell]

Mitt Romney is a terrible, horrible, no good candidate and this seals that in our memory. Absolutely ridiculous.

[limac333]

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

WHY would you not stay in the actual swing states just to make 100% sure that you are elected President if the unthinkable happens? WHY would you need to expand the map??

Has there been a more deluded Presidential campaign in history?

I can see if ALL the polls are showing an easy win for you so far outside the margin that the outcome is not in doubt, and then you go for down ticket races, try to win some Senate seats, expand the margin in the House, and that will naturally expand the map.

So in their defense, there was a Senate race in PA, I don't believe that is how they campaigned when they were there.

270 is a win, the rest is just for ego.

[Yank2133]

Idiots......****ing idiots.

Did they really expect the electorate to look nothing like 2008? I mean come on, the electorate has become more diverse since 76.

[Comrade Funk]

Wow. That's pretty sad.

[Reds4]

What a ridiculous move.. why go for a blowout.. just try to get the win.. many of us (including myself) knew that Ohio would be more Republican than PA no matter what.. it was a waste... wasn't close enough to matter in the end, but it just shows that the Romney campaign was clueless. Obama campaign > Romney Campaign   by a lot.

[Yank2133]

I do love Matthew Dowd's response on twitter.

unreal. Nearly every piece of data for last 3 weeks pointed to Romney loss. Ray Charles could have seen it coming.

[old timey villain]

As pathetic as this is, it actually does make me feel more sympathy for Mitt.

I figured that in the final weeks of the campaign, Romney would have been optimistic but prepared for the possibility of defeat after looking at the swing state polls that showed him still trailing.

Turns out he and his entire campaign didn't even bother to take the polls at face value. They actually thought they had the race completely wrapped up. So yeah, he was probably taken completely by surprise on election night. Things have gotten really delusional when even the GOP nominee's campaign believes the unskewed polls nonsense.

[Yank2133]

Honestly, this is even worse then Obama thinking he won the first debate.

[Badger]

I've rarely been so disappointed in Romney.

As previously noted, the suppos3ed pragmatic technocrat had actually swilled the kool-aid of rejecting all the 'so-called experts and numbers' in exchange for the viewpoint of a grossly out of touch with reality cocoon.

Though I'm sure that mentality could never have caused problems if he had become president.

[anvi]

I don't know, this is pretty hard for me to believe, actually.  Are we really supposed to believe that every single one of those guys, all political pros, looked at wave after wave of relatively consistent polling data coming in and waving almost all of it off, saying to themselves: "aaah,  they're all overestimating Dem turnout. Let's go to Pennsylvania in the final week and really blow them out of the water"?  Who the hell actually believes that polls can game turnout? You can't game turnout, you have to produce it.  Sure, some poll samples are going to be off, but any reasonably adjusted sample proportion selection and size is going to give you roughly the right result, and then you play to the numbers you have.  Are we to believe they were similarly adjusting their own internals by tailoring them to their turnout guesses?  Seriously, what all these aids are giving Crawford here looks to me like some sort of "consolation spin" or something.  Just doesn't make sense.  Really, it just doesn't. 

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Reminds me of when Bush outspent Gore $11 million to $0 in California.

[Mehmentum]

This is the cost of living in the bubble.  It started out as just rhetoric to get viewers and consituents motivated.  But then Conservatives started to beleive their own lies, which is how they got in trouble.

They ignored anything that contradicted them and sealed themselves off in a bubble.  They started living in a paralell universe where everything they were saying was true.  Obama was hated by the majority of Americans, the pollsters are in the tank for Obama or at least wildly wrong. 

Until now, this hasn't really hurt Republicans.  2010 was a blowout because of conservative turnout, but as soon as the electorate went back to normal, Republicans were completely unprepared for the campaign.

They didn't court Hispanics, in fact they actively spurned them.  Why?  Because in their bubble, they didn't need them.  Turnout would be like in 2010 and Romney would win easily. 

Maybe if Romney had known the situation of the race, he could have run a more effective campaign.  At the very least, it would have helped for him to make decisions based on the real world and not what the conservative bubble beleived.     

[BM]

LOL Romney. This proves he was completely delusional, as stated in the thread about his fireworks spectacular.

[Speed of Sound]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Where does that all sound familiar? So very very very familiar?

[SPC]

One would imagine they would at least game out the possibility that their assumptions were wrong.

I guess Romney became accustomed to the moral hazard that came with accepting bailouts from the Federal government.

[DrScholl]

I thought it was all just a ploy to get Obama to spend money and time in Pennsylvania, not because Romney thought he could pull off a blowout. Their internals must have been light years from reality.

[Sasquatch]

That is delusional.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I really have a hard time believing it. I was absolutely sure that all this talk of Mitt's momentum and the polls being skewed was a facade put forth by the Romney team and conservative pundits in order to make sure the base doesn't freak out and preserve the meager chances of victory they had... BUT NO! It turned out they REALLY BELIEVED in this crap! Even Romney and his team?!?

Honestly, can I say it makes me feel even better about these results? Not only did we make reactionaries sad, we gave them a huge disappointments! These guys really thought they were living the new 1980, and instead ended up with a reverse 2004. This must have hurt.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Just makes me sadder.

[Averroës Nix]

Everyone who's been whining about epistemic closure and the Romney campaign in the fireworks thread should read this article about a non-trivial example of how the problem may have affected the Romney campaign. It's a devastating indictment, if true. I suspect that we'll hear more about the veracity of this claim over the next several weeks.

[BlueSwan]

This is the cost of living in the bubble.  It started out as just rhetoric to get viewers and consituents motivated.  But then Conservatives started to beleive their own lies, which is how they got in trouble.

They ignored anything that contradicted them and sealed themselves off in a bubble.  They started living in a paralell universe where everything they were saying was true.  Obama was hated by the majority of Americans, the pollsters are in the tank for Obama or at least wildly wrong. 

Until now, this hasn't really hurt Republicans.  2010 was a blowout because of conservative turnout, but as soon as the electorate went back to normal, Republicans were completely unprepared for the campaign.

They didn't court Hispanics, in fact they actively spurned them.  Why?  Because in their bubble, they didn't need them.  Turnout would be like in 2010 and Romney would win easily. 

Maybe if Romney had known the situation of the race, he could have run a more effective campaign.  At the very least, it would have helped for him to make decisions based on the real world and not what the conservative bubble beleived.     

Anti-science really is killing the GOP on all levels. Facts beats faith every time. It's high time they accepted that.

[Frodo]

Romney really was as deluded as his base...