For the last few weeks, the scuttlebutt in the political world has been that Mitt Romney got bounced off the list of prospective running mates for John McCain because McCain's handlers saw something toxic in Romney's tax returns. Well, Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager, told HuffPo that definitely wasn't the reason why Romney didn't get the nod. Nope, it was because--wait for it--Mittens was too rich.
"I get the political hyperbole and all, but that’s not the way the decision was made," Steve Schmidt told The Huffington Post. "We never sat around having a discussion about Mitt Romney's taxes through the prism of a liability if he were chosen" for the ticket.
But he added that Romney's wealth was seen as a liability - "Sen. McCain got caught flat-footed answering a question about how many houses he owned. In fact, they were Cindy McCain's properties but that distinction was lost in the political optics and we knew it would be a big liability that the presidential and the vice presidential candidates together owned more than a dozen homes. It was like something out of a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. I mean, come on."
This appears to confirm a story
HuffPo ran in March. According to an anonymous campaign staffer, McCain speechwriter Mark Salter objected to Romney as a possible running mate because "we couldn't go to the country with a Republican ticket that owned 14 houses between the two of them." McCain owns eight houses, Romney owns six.
And they think WE'RE elitists?