Mitt Movie: Documentary Shows How Romney Campaign Came Unraveled


A Mitt Romney movie set to be released this month takes an inside look at the Republican’s failed campaigns for president, pinpointing exactly how the man once viewed as the GOP’s best hope saw his campaign come crashing down.

The movie, Mitt, comes from filmmaker Greg Whiteley, who was granted unprecedented access to Romney starting with his campaign in 2006 and running through his defeat to Barack Obama in 2012. Whiteley had promised Romney that the movie would not air until after his presidential run, or if he was successful until after his presidential term ended.

Whiteley said the Mitt movie was not intended to have a political message, adding that he has no affiliation with Romney one way or the other. The point of the movie, Whiteley said, was to show the extreme stress a family undergoes during a presidential run.

“When you’re making a movie about a particular presidential candidate, you run the risk of alienating at least half of your potential audience,” Whiteley said. “I really felt very strongly that this movie was not about a political agenda, but this movie was about a family and the father of this family who is running for president.”

In one scene, Mitt and his family bemoan the fact that he can’t seem to make headway in a tight race.

“This is why we don’t get good people running for president. What better guy is there than my dad?… And yet, we keep getting beat up,” Josh Romney says.

The Mitt movie also showed how quickly a campaign can turn, Whiteley noted. It highlighted how Romney made a dramatic jump in the polls after a strong showing in the first debate against Barack Obama, but came unraveled at other points.

“There were so many instances in which things could just turn on a dime so quickly,” Whiteley said. “You have a relatively small portion of the electorate determining a party’s candidate, and how often in a moment, things would change.”

He added that the campaign seemed to come down to “a combination of campaign resources and luck,” which was not on Romney’s side.

For many, the Mitt movie will give insight into how Romney lost a race that many on the right seemed assured he would win. Obama had sinking approval ratings, abysmal among conservatives, and despite the president maintaining a lead in the polls sources within the Romney campaign said their own internal polls showed Mitt with a lead.

The Romney camp was so confident of their chances that they reportedly had celebratory fireworks purchased and queued up for election night.

“We were optimistic. More than just cautiously optimistic,” one campaign staffer said at the time, noting that when Romney lost, “it was like a death in the family.”

The Mitt movie is premiering in Salt Lake City on Friday as part of the Sundance Film Festival.

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