I could swear, I heard the voices of readers crying out for a bite-sized rundown of the Politico e-book’s revelations. Here were the on-the-record quotes and moments that stood out immediately.
“I think it may be a couple of election cycles premature for anything like that.” - Jon Huntsman, admitting that he thought about running as an independent.
“I endorsed him heavily in Florida – I helped him a lot in Florida.” - Donald Trump, occasional TV personality, in an interview. Trump endorsed Romney on February 2, four days after the Florida primary.
“This is impregnable. We will never lose in Colorado.” - Rich Beeson, Romney’s political director, on a February 6 conference call. Romney lost Colorado’s non-binding caucuses to Rick Santorum.
“You have to do it or you’re done. You’re completely done if you don’t have the balls to do it.” - John Weaver, telling Jon Huntsman to attack Mitt Romney in a debate while dispensing some non-medical testicular consultation.
“It’s not going to be Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan, a ticket they could really love. It’s probably Huckabee-Palin or Palin-Huckabee.” - a “fund-raiser” on Romney’s team, explaining how the hand-wringing donor class realized that it could not get an acceptable nominee from a brokered convention.
“Standing outside the MSNBC studio of Morning Joe, a well-known New York editor asked a foreign policy bigwig who counsels Romney why people don’t seem to like Romney. ‘Because he’s not likeable,’ came the answer.” - The authors, making an accidental joke about when and when not to assign anonymity. Why not just say (my theory) that it’s Jon Meacham, who edits the e-book?
Other anonymous characters: A friend, one campaign insider, one Obamaite, two Obama operatives, one Romney adviser, a close adviser to Romney
