Here is an Australian point of view on Mitt Romney and the presidential election.
In the minds of many critics, Mr Romney’s comments about Mr Obama’s “gifts” reinforces the idea that he lacked empathy with voters to start with. Many Republicans were lukewarm about their candidate: he was seen as the best of a lacklustre field.
In September, Mr Romney suffered much political flak, including from his own side, when he was reported as having told wealthy donors in Florida that he did not care about the 47 per cent of Americans who considered themselves victims.
As Republicans turn on him, exit polls from November 6 tend not to support Mr Romney’s conclusions. Mr Obama won a slightly smaller number of young voters overall, compared with 2008. He won about the same number of African-American voters. More Hispanics voted for Mr Obama, but their vote counted most in battleground states.
Mitt Romney doesn’t act like he failed. He acts like he was betrayed or cheated. He ought to look in the mirror and ask himself why everyone in the United Kingdom hates his guts. He is a very unpleasant man. No one likes him. That’s the beginning point for understanding why he lost. He probably thinks he wasn’t enough of a jerk. After all, the only jump he ever got in the polls was a reward for a debate performance in which he treated the president with disrespect and told about seventy-five lies. His base likes it when people tell lies about the president. But his base isn’t big enough to win a national election. Mitt Romney lost for a lot of reasons, but the most glaring reason is that he is a dick.