When someone writes the inevitable "Inside the Romney Campaign" book, there are two things I want to know…
One is how and when the decision was made to hide Paul Ryan as much as possible. Romney picked him, established street cred with the Tea Party wing, then we watched Ryan appear less and less and less. Did they even let him near a swing state the last week or two? The day before the election, they had him in Alabama, a state Romney couldn't have lost if he'd started robbing liquor stores. I understand Romney realized he had to move to the center in order to have a shot at winning but did he intend, if elected, to dump the Ryan agenda as he did the man himself? My guess is that as Mitt struggled to keep his own plans and proposals vague, he regretted not picking instead someone like Tim Pawlenty who would also have thrilled the Tea Partiers but who had fewer actual proposals out there.
Then to what extent did the Romney campaign really think they had it won? I understand how you have to say "We're going to sweep" no matter what you expect. You can't let your supporters down because that will suppress your vote totals and you also want voters of your party to turn out and vote for other offices. I also understand why a Dick Morris would tell his audience what they wanted to hear, though perhaps not why he wouldn't leave himself more wiggle room.
But did Mitt think he had a lock on 300+ electoral votes? They said their confidence was based on "internal polls." As we mentioned here, when a campaign says their internal polls are stronger than the public ones, that's usually a lie. We now have anonymous folks near Romney saying he was genuinely stunned he didn't win…so did they really have internal polls that said what they said they said?
And it won't be in any book about Romney but I'm curious as to what kind of offers Nate Silver will be getting. He's really our first Superstar Statistician now and I'll wager one or more of the TV networks will throw money at him to be part of their election coverage next time. Maybe not Fox News because they wouldn't want him on their station predicting any Democrats are likely to win…if indeed that's the case next time. But I can sure imagine the other places wanting him.
I can also imagine a political campaign trying to engage him to supervise their polling and their analysis of others'. Why, if it was Nate Silver leaking their favorable internal polls, they might even be accurate.