Mitt Romney and Ann Romney Reflect on Election Loss In First Interview in Four Months

Ann Romney joined her husband, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for an interview with Fox News -- their first since President Obama's resounding victory in last year's election.

Though Mitt has popped up in candid photos at gas stations and amusement parks in the last few months, Ann hasn't been seen much since her teary departure from the national stage on Election Day.

Now the Romneys are able to reflect on the campaign with the benefit of hindsight, and they have very clear ideas about why they lost.

The current narrative in the media says Ann Romney blames the press for her husband's loss. This is mostly true, but journalists get touchy when they're charged with bias.

Ann did say the media didn't give her husband a chance to show the "real Mitt," but she made no mention of his gaffes -- most notably his infamous "47 percent" remark -- which furthered his reputation as a wealthy and aloof plutocrat. Perhaps Mitt shouldn't have been so real when he didn't think the cameras were on.

The Romneys did admit Obama had a better ground game than they did. The Republicans made great strides in reaching out to rural white voters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, but the Democrats increased turnout for their constituents even more, besting their record levels from 2008, an outcome the Romneys admit they never saw coming.

Certainly they were the victims of bad advice at the very least. They say they believed until the very end that they would defeat Obama, a result that virtually no polls were showing in the final weeks of the race.

But while they offered to shoulder some of the blame for the failed campaign, they neglected to fault their policies, which polls continue to show are not popular on the national level.

Republicans in Congress are experiencing a similar blind spot. They held on to the House of Representatives because local elections can be won on a platform of limited government, lower taxes, less corporate oversight, harsh penalties for undocumented immigration, restrictions on abortion and slashed social services.

But in a presidential campaign, it's a lost cause. Over 90 percent of African-Americans voted for Obama, as well as 73 percent of Asian-Americans and 71 percent of Latinos. An 18-point gender gap haunts the Republicans, and no amount of media coverage or canvassing would have overcome those deficits.

Romney says sequestration wouldn't have gone into effect if he had been elected. That's unlikely, since a President Romney would have to deal with an intractable Democratic Senate.

But at least this time around, no one really cares if Romney is right. The pressure is off.