Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Dan Balz of the Washington Post Will Swallow Anything Weblogging
Dan Balz:
From doubts to confidence to defeat: In December 2010… [the Romneys]… were in Hawaii…. When the family members took a vote, 10 of the 12 said no. Mitt Romney was one of the 10 who opposed another campaign [in 2012]. The only “yes” votes were from Ann Romney and Tagg Romney….
Eventually, after looking over the field of potential GOP candidates, Romney decided he was the right candidate for the time….
Whatever doubts Romney harbored about running, his political advisers never lacked for confidence that he was in the race. They had been mapping the campaign for many months. On Dec. 9, 2010, just weeks before the family vote in Hawaii, Romney gathered his senior advisers at the family’s oceanside home in La Jolla, Calif., for a full-scale discussion of a 2012 bid. The team was full speed ahead, and Romney had done nothing to slow the machinery…
If a lot of people are working very hard for you for free, doing something they believe you really want to happen, and if you are in fact ambivalent and may well pull the plug, then you tell them that you are ambivalent and may well pull the plug.
The word in the fall of 2010 was that Romney was in.
A reporter without a bullshit detector is useless.
