

Mitt Romney gave his first extensive postmortem interview Sunday after his 2012 election loss, appearing on "Fox News Sunday" alongside his wife, Ann.

Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Romney to explain what many saw as the downfall of his campaign — the leaked comments about the so-called "47 percent." In trying to explain them away, he might have revealed why he really lost.

Romney told Wallace that it was a "very unfortunate statement that I made."

"You know, when you speak in private, you don't spend as much time thinking about how something could be twisted and distorted, and it could come out wrong and be used," Romney said.

"But, you know, it did. And it was very harmful. What I said is not what I believe."

The American Conservative's Daniel Larison wrote that the last quote sums up Romney's career as a politician.

Larison writes (emphasis added):

[I]t never mattered whether Romney “really” believed what he was saying, because it became clear years ago that he would have said almost anything to win. In that case, it was a good bet that Romney was always more likely to lie to his audience than not, and for that reason he disqualified himself through sheer, overwhelming dishonesty. When in doubt, it was safe to assume that Romney was lying, and it was usually safe to assume the worst about his intentions. If there was a chance that he might cave in to hard-liners and ideologues in his party, there was no reason to believe that he would ever stand up to them. When the 47% remarks came out, it didn’t matter whether he believed what he had said, because he had been willing to say it and he had done so because he was so desperate to appeal to the worst elements in his party.

The New York Times' Ashley Parker, who covered the Romney campaign, tweeted that the line "epitomized one of the major problems" of his overall campaign and inability to connect with the American public: