A new book shows that the Mother Jones scoop sent the GOP nominee into an emotional tailspin.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, when I obtained and posted a secretly recorded video of GOP nominee Mitt Romney deriding 47 percent of Americans as shiftless freeloaders who don’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” I assumed this scoop would have an impact on the election. With President Barack Obama and the Democrats striving to define Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat who made millions acquiring companies he could break up or downsize—which meant throwing employees out of work—here was hard-and-fast evidence, in his own words, of a demeaning attitude toward nearly half the country. And, indeed, this revelation did shake up the race and place Romney on the defensive in the final stretch of the campaign. But what I didn’t think about at the time was how this story might affect Romney personally. Now we know. According to Romney’s own account, revealed in a new book out this week, the 47 percent exposé sent him into an emotional tailspin and caused him to ponder dropping out of the race.
