New details of Mitt Romney's postmortem explanation for why he lost the election are emerging with the release of audio recordings from a conference call with his donors, in which he said President Obama won by giving away 'free stuff' to women and minorities. 'It's a proven political strategy, which is give a bunch of money to a group and, guess what, they'll vote for you,' he said, according to audio of the Wednesday afternoon call, which was published by ABC News. Referring to Obama's appeals to Hispanics, he added: 'Immigration we can solve, but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with.'
Republicans are distancing themselves from Romney after his remarks.
'I absolutely reject that notion,' Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising star within the Republican Party, said on a conference call with donors on Thursday. 'I don’t think that represents where we are as a party and where we’re going as a party. And that has got to be one of the most fundamental takeaways from this election.'
During Romney's call with donors a day earlier, the failed Republican candidate argued that Obama won by specifically targeting Hispanics, blacks, young people and women with 'gifts.'
'What the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked,' Romney said.
Romney tried to make the point that Obama's 'gifts,' from Obamacare to government forgiveness on student loans, would cost a lot of money down the road -- money that Republicans didn't want to spend.
'What I would do if I were a Democrat running four years from now, I'd say, you know what, dental care will be included in Obamcare...and Republicans will say, no, that's going to cost a trillion dollars, and the Democrats will say, that's fine, you know, we'll pay it,' Romney said. 'So this is a challenge we've got on how to deal with this is a real issue.'
In a directive to the party, Romney said Republicans must find a way to win the Hispanic vote going forward.
'Clearly we have to have an immigration plan,' he said. 'This idea of just kicking this down the field until every four years the Democrats use it as an issue to hit us over the head with is nuts.'
Romney said Democrats won the Hispanic vote because of Obamacare, as well as the president's program that granted temporary amnesty to children of illegal immigrants who met certain requirements, such as clean criminal records. The amnesty program, which Obama announced in June, resembled the DREAM Act that had long been stalled in Congress.
'With Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus,' he said. 'But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called DREAM Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.'
Romney chided Obama over the summer for waiting so long to address immigration reform, charging that his amnesty program was politically motivated.
'He saves these sort of things until four-and-a-half months before the general election,' Romney said in June on CBS' 'Face the Nation.' 'I think the timing is pretty clear. If he really wanted a solution that dealt with these kids or illegal immigration in America, then this is something he would have taken up in his first three-and-a-half years, not in his last few months.'
Romney won 59 percent of the white vote, while Obama was backed by 93 percent of black voters, 71 percent of Latinos and 60 percent of voters younger than 30, according to exit polls.
Later on in the call, Romney claimed that former president Bill Clinton phoned him after the election and said Obama would have lost without Hurricane Sandy.
'I spoke with president Clinton the day before yesterday, he called and spent thirty minutes chatting with me,' Romney said. 'He said, ''a week out I thought you were going to win.'' And he said, ''but the hurricane happened, and it gave the president a chance to be presidential, and to look bipartisan, and you know he got a little more momentum.'''
Clinton added that he had considered joining the Republican Party after watching Ann Romney speak at the Republican convention, according to Romney.
'So he may have just been effusive with generous comments as he chatted,' Romney said. 'He said they were surprised by how strong we were in Ohio and in other states with middle-class voters -- they did exceptionally well with minorities, but white, middle-class voters, we really cleaned up with and that caught them by surprise.'
But Republicans lost young people and women, he said, because of Obama's 'gifts' to those groups, which includes a requirement that most employers provide health insurance covering birth control and government forgiveness on some student loans.
'With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift,' Romney said. 'Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people.
'They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008,' he said.
Similarly, Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, blamed the Republican ticket's loss on high turnout among 'urban' voters.
'I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,' Ryan told a television station in Wisconsin. 'When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, and those ones coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.'
Romney told his finance team that the sting of his loss was still too strong to begin mapping out his plans going forward for himself and for the Republican party.
'I am very sorry that we didn’t win,' he said. 'I know that you expected to win. We expected to win… It was very close, but close doesn’t count in this business.'
He added: 'And so now we're looking and saying, "O.K., what can we do going forward?" But frankly we’re still so troubled by the past, it’s hard to put together our plans from the future.'
