We may now know why Mitt and Ann Romney have been so reluctant to appear on late night talk shows.

In secretly recorded audio published Monday by Mother Jones, taken from a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser the couple attended in March, Mitt strangely contradicts a tale he and his wife have been telling since 2008, reported to be a “favorite family story” of the Romneys.

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Speaking to supporters at the Irvine, California home of private equity fund owner David Horowitz, Romney responded to remarks about Ann when he explained:

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 and then to get the country on the right track.

However, Romney’s claim about Ann’s never-gonna-question-it resolve appears to contradict what the couple has been telling audiences since 2008 — the most recent instance of which came during an interview Ann sat for last month with NBC host Jay Leno.

“Four years ago I made a video tape,” Ann told Leno. “On the video tape, I looked into the camera and I said, ‘Mitt, this is for you, sweetheart. I’m never doing this again,’ I showed it to him and he looked at it and he said, ‘You know, Ann, you say that after ever pregnancy.’ Which is true.”

It’s not the first time Ann has recounted that pivotal decision, either. The Los Angeles Times described the tale in August as a “favorite family story” for the couple, quoting her saying virtually the same thing she told Leno, and Mitt responding in the affirmative.

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Other audio taken from the event features Ann implying that President Obama is a child by saying that there needs to be a “grown-up” in the White House, and Mitt telling the crowd that he really does believe that Obama views business as a “necessary evil — and maybe not so necessary.”

Of course, that’s a bit of a hard sell even for Romney, what with corporate profits being up 77.9 percent since 2009 and all.

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