welcome back to hardball. boston globe reporting michael kranish has written why romney lost the campaign this year. it includes access to insiders on the record including romney s oldest son tagg who says of his father, quote, he wanted to be president less than anyone i ve met in my life. he had no desire to run. if he could have found someone else to take his place, he would have been ecstatic to step aside. he is a very private person who loves his family and his country but doesn t love the attention. former huckabee manager chip saltsman is with us too. this is fun. this is joyful today. i love to know motive and reason. but i find it hard. i was never a big romney fan. i didn t have a personal problem with him, but i never thought of him as authentic. the one time i caught him in iowa signing people s posters and it was a rainy day. i said to him can you say let them eat cake in french. it s the ultimate side of being
welcome back to hardball. boston globe reporting michael kranish has written why romney lost the campaign this year. it includes access to insiders on the record including romney s oldest son tagg who says of his father, quote, he wanted to be president less than anyone i ve met in my life. he had no desire to run. if he could have found someone else to take his place, he would have been ecstatic to step aside. he is a very private person who loves his family and his country but doesn t love the attention. former huckabee manager chip saltsman is with us too. this is fun. this is joyful today. i love to know motive and reason. but i find it hard. i was never a big romney fan. i didn t have a personal problem with him, but i never thought of him as authentic. the one time i caught him in iowa signing people s posters and it was a rainy day. i said to him can you say let
boston globe reporting michael cranish has written why romney lost the campaign this year. it includes access to insiders on the record including romney s oldest son tagg who says of his father, quote, he wanted to be president less than anyone i ve met in my life. he had no desire to run. if he could have found someone else to take his place, he would have been ecstatic to step aside. he is a very private person who loves his family and his country but doesn t love the attention. former huckabee manager chip saltzman is with us too. this is fun. this is joyful today. i love to know motive and reason. but i find it hard. i was never a big romney fan. i didn t have a personal problem with him, but i never thought of him as as thentic. the one time i caught him in iowa signing people s posters and it was a rainy day. i said to him can you say let them eat cake in french.
focus from his secretly taped remarks, mitt romney woke up to some tough headlines this morning about a week from hell, challenges getting back ontrack, and about his comments costing him precious time. well, he s fighting back. the president s view is one of a larger government. there s a date that just came out today where the president sang he likes redistribution. i disagree. i think a society based upon a government centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money is the wrong course for america. i m joined now by former huckabee campaign manager chip saltsman and democratic strategist chris covinas. good to see both of you. good to be with you. are we making too much of this, chris? no. this is bad. by any objective standards i don t care whether you re democrat or republican if you re in the campaign business this has been a really tough few weeks for the romney campaign. the problem with the tape is it
campaigns, although you know, when folks just like omit entire sentences of what you said they start kind of splicing and dicing. i think the president made an error coming in to office and deciding that the economy would take care of itself and he focused his energy on a series of liberal plans that he and his friends have been working on for years. let s go ahead and bring in our news nation political panel, talk show host michael smerconish, and chip salsman, former huckabee campaign manager. good afternoon to both of you. michael, i will start with you. is it too soon to return to campaigning as usual? no, i don t think that it is. i think that colorado, those unfortunate events in colorado, brought to a close a particularly negative chapter of the campaign that, frankly, the