So it seems that Mitt Romney, the “numbers” candidate, and his staff, are “shellshocked” about the election results because they believed all the Fox News types who kept saying the polls were “skewed” against Republicans (and that if you “unskewed” the polls, Romney was really winning nationwide by 11 points).

Even worse, Romney decided to use a pollster who skewed more to the right than all the normal pollster, so they actually thought they were winning in the days leading up to the election, and that’s why they wasted time and money in places like Pennsylvania.

From CBS News:

As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed – they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn’t reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night. Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks. Those assessments were wrong.

What kind of an idiot chooses a pollster who at best is spot on, and at worst is over-estimating your chances?

I talked to a senior aide on the Hill who told me that his boss always chooses the pollster who shows him lowest in the polls. That way, if anything, the campaign is scared into trying harder, rather than given a false sense of security that leads them to try to compete in Pennsylvania when they can’t even win Ohio and Virginia.

More from the folks at Unskewed Polls, who are the election version of “birthers”:

Our polls about doubly-weighted, to doubly insure the results are most accurate and not skewed, by both party identification and self-identified ideology. For instance, no matter how many Republicans answer our survey, they are weighted at 37.6 percent. If conservatives are over-represented among Republicans in the raw sample, they are still weighted at 68 percent of Republicans regardless. This system of double weighting should insure our survey produces very accurate results, not skewed either way for the Democrats or for the Republicans.

Not just accurate results, but “very” accurate results.

How’d that work out for you?

It’s one thing for Fox to try to sell the country a lie, that’s par for the course. But for Romney to believed it? As Chris wrote nearly two months ago, the skills that made Romney a good CEO do not necessarily make him a good president, or a good presidential candidate. But I took Chris’ argument one step further and wrote that it’s a myth that Romney’s even a good CEO.

Here’s a snippet from my earlier piece:

The idea that Mitt Romney is a “good manager” has now been proven false. The ongoing disaster that is his presidential campaign proves that Romney isn’t Mr. Fix-it, he’s Mr. Broke-it… Remember when Romney botched the religious right furor over his foreign policy spokesman being gay? It was clear that Romney mishandled the situation, but no one realized at the time that Romney’s poor management skills weren’t a gaffe, they’re a feature. Look at his foreign trip. His big chance to prove himself on the world stage. What did Romney do? He offended the British, insulted both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and thendesecrated a Polish holy site for good measure. By the time his trip was finished, all three countries were ready for Romney to self-deport asap. Then there’s the Republican convention, which Romney was in charge of. In addition to being incredibly boring, on Romney’s big night they let Clint Eastwood go on stage, unscripted, and wing it for 20 minutes. I don’t care how good an actor he is, no one gets on that stage without a pre-approved script. Who would permit such a thing on Romney’s big night? Mitt Romney isn’t a bad presidential candidate because he’s a good CEO. Maybe he’s a bad candidate because he’s a bad CEO.

Remember when, during the second presidential debate, Romney was asked what happens if the numbers for his $5 trillion tax cut for the rich don’t add up?

CROWLEY: If somehow when you get in there, there isn’t enough tax revenue coming in. If somehow the numbers don’t add up, would you be willing to look again at a 20 percent…

Do you remember how an indignant Romney responded?

ROMNEY: Well of course they add up. I — I was — I was someone who ran businesses for 25 years, and balanced the budget. I ran the Olympics and balanced the budget. I ran the — the state of Massachusetts as a governor, to the extent any governor does, and balanced the budget all four years.

And you were someone who believed the skewed truth coming from Fox News and the skewed polls from your own pollster, and now, as a result, will never be President of the United States. That alone should disqualify you from being President. And it did.