Romney lo tenía todo calculadísimo desde 2002

The Boston Globe:

The revelation that Mitt Romney’s top gubernatorial staffers bought their office computer hard drives and his administration wiped out its e-mails before his term ended as Massachusetts governor in 2007 is the coda on his efforts to lay the groundwork for his 2008 White House campaign and his 2012 reprise.

In truth, Romney has been running for president almost since he returned to the state from the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City and announced his campaign for governor.

And the payoff for that sustained, multifaceted effort - next year’s Republican presidential nomination - is now within his grasp, all appearances aside.

Recall that Romney was sworn in as governor in January 2003 and, by 2004, was already running for vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association. By claiming that office in 2005, he was, by tradition, in line to ascend to the group’s chairmanship in 2006 - a high-profile midterm election year.

Romney then took advantage of that perch to travel the country, building the contacts, developing the chits, and constructing the fund-raising network that melded into his 2007-2008 presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, as the Globe has reported and The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted, by 2005, Romney was beginning the ideological shifts that positioned him for a conservative presidential campaign.

That same year, Romney made an eyebrow-raising announcement: he would not seek reelection in 2006, saying “there was very little to do for a second term that I could realistically accomplish.”

(...) Today, the Globe reported that as Governor Deval Patrick and his administration are peppered with public records requests from the media for documents relating to Romney’s only stint in elective office, they cannot find electronic ones because the virtual paper trail was eliminated before his predecessor left office.

“All told, 11 Romney administration aides bought 17 hard drives from the governor’s office, paying $65 for each one, according to copies of canceled checks they wrote and members of the current administration,” the Globe reported.

It also reported that the Romney administration’s e-mails were all wiped from a computer server.

A Romney spokeswoman said the aides did nothing wrong and complied with executive branch practices, while Secretary of State William Galvin said the state Records Conservation Board approved some record destruction.

The Romney spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, accused Patrick of doing the Obama administration’s “dirty work” by publicizing the moves because he is close friends and a political ally of his fellow Democrat.

Yet eliminating electronic records of potentially embarrassing conversations and decisions appears to be just one part of the Romney team’s efforts to prepare for its future campaigns.

Flashback: Romney anuncia su candidatura a Gobernador de Massachusetts, en marzo de 2002.