Dear Commons Community,

By now, you should be aware that Mitt Romney in a call to major donors earlier this week stated that he lost the election because President Obama had given “gifts”  to various groups of people (minorities, young people, women).    However, what was not covered was the fact that he also blamed the media, the Republican primary process, and the debates.    Here is an excerpt from The Huffington Post:

“Mitt Romney slammed the Republican primary debates, and the media, in the same call to donors in which he made his infamous “gifts” comments.

Romney’s criticism of the debate process was obscured by his statements that President Obama beat him by giving “gifts” to key constituencies. But, as ABC News noted on Thursday, Romney said that the debates had hampered the GOP from the beginning of the campaign.

“We had 20 Republican debates, that was absolutely nuts,” he said. “It opened us up to gaffes and to material that could be used against us in the general, and we were fighting these debates for a year, and the incumbent president just sat back and laughed.”

Romney benefited from the primary debates more than, say, Rick Perry, but the forums became more well-known for elevating the Herman Cains of the party, as well as highlighting primary crowds that booed gay soldiers and applauded executions.

Romney also said that the networks that hosted the debates were working against the party. He said that next time, the GOP should “agree that we’re gonna do, you know, I don’t know, eight debates, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna do one a month, and we’re gonna pick stations that are reasonable, it’s not all gonna be done by CNN and NBC, alright, I mean we’re gonna try and guide this process so that it’s designed to showcase the best of our people as opposed to showcasing liberals beating the heck out of us.”

When one engages in any competition, there will be a winner and loser.  The person who wins or loses graciously is respected and goes on.  Mitt Romney with his post-election comments is coming across as a sore loser and one who did not deserve to be president.  The bottom line is that Romney did not run a solid campaign.  He had many gaffes, flip-flopped on  positions, and rarely went into any depth on issues.  He lost because of himself and his campaign managers.

Tony