Daniel Lippman tells us Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says. Team Romney was so convinced he was going to win that Romney did not even bother to prepare a concession speech and Romney and his entire entourage including Paul Ryan and wives were stunned as it became clear that they had lost this election say anonymous advisors.
"He was shellshocked," one adviser told CBS News.
Another unnamed senior adviser explained that as returns came in and battleground states went into President Barack Obama's Electoral College column, they felt their paths to potential victory narrowing. CBS reports that the campaign was unprepared for this in part because it had ignored polling that showed the races favoring Obama. Instead, it turned to its own internal "unskewed" polls, which it believed more accurately reflected the situation on the ground. They didn't. ...
And Jan Greenburg, of CBS writes Adviser: Romney "shellshocked" by loss, reports that Team Romney started getting its first clues that something was amiss earlier in the afternoon when their campaign workers started reporting massive turnout in Democratic areas of Ohio and Florida.
After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.
"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."
Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.
The Boston Globe reported the Romney campaign was sufficiently sure of their impending victory they they had hired Atlas Professional Fireworks Displays to put on an eight minutes fire works celebration in Boston.
Thu Nov 08, 2012 at 11:33 PM PT: How a Race in the Balance Went to Obama
On Tuesday night, a crestfallen Mr. Romney and his family watched as the television networks showed him losing all but one battleground state.
Even as the networks declared Mr. Obama the winner, Mr. Romney, who had earlier told reporters he had written only a victory speech, paused before the walk downstairs from his hotel room in Boston. It was 11:30 p.m., and Romney field teams in Ohio, Virginia and Florida called in, saying the race was too close for the candidate to give up. At least four planes were ready to go, and aides had bags packed for recount battles in narrowly divided states. Bob White, a close Romney friend and adviser, was prepared to tell the waiting crowd that Mr. Romney would not yet concede.
But then, Mr. Romney quietly decided it was over. “It’s not going to happen,” he said.
As Ann Romney cried softly, he headed down to deliver his speech, ending his second, and presumably last, bid for the White House. Four decades earlier, his father and inspiration, George Romney, a former Michigan governor failed in his own such quest.