David Corn:
Romney to Business Crowd: An audio recording of a private Mitt Romney fundraiser…. On March 27, as Romney was still fighting for the Republican presidential nomination, he and Ann attended a fundraiser in Irvine, California, at the home of Michelle and David Horowitz… $1,000-per-plate outdoors luncheon…. Romney… took only three questions….
[T]he Republican candidate noted that he had been pushed into his second campaign for president by his wife:
David, you mentioned Ann, and the fact that she insisted that I get in this race. That is the truth. I wanted to talk it over with her. And every time I'd say, "Let's talk about the pros and cons," she'd say, "Talk to the hand, talk to the hand. We're just doing this. We've got to do it." And so she absolutely insisted that I get in this because she was convinced that I was the only one that had the capacity to beat President Obama.
Romney then asked Ann to say a few words, and she explained that she had been so insistent because she did not consider Obama to be a "grown-up":
You know—the ship's going over the waterfall, it's almost there. And we look what's happening in Greece, and we look what's happening around the world, we look what's happening internationally. This is a frightening world, and we need a grown-up, and we need someone that understands the economy. So I'm glad… Mitt is grown up to you all.
(This remark was not a one-off)….
Romney… claimed that Obama and his supporters were opposed to success…. Romney, who possesses not one but two graduate degrees from Harvard, blasted Obama's economic policies for being crafted by Ivy League experts:
What they have in their mind is a vision of America dominated by government, by individuals they respect, people like themselves: highly educated, spent a lot of time in the faculty club at Harvard….
He dramatically cast the election as a black-and-white contest with Obama waging a "war on business and economic freedom."… During the brief Q&A, Romney… denounced the new START treaty Obama negotiated with the Russians as kowtowing to Moscow…
