Mitt Romney Was Ready to Troll Boston with Fireworks If He Won

That wouldn't have gone over so well.

Image Credit: Merritt Boyd via Flickr

Mitt Romney’s campaign had a $25,000 firework show all ready to go in Boston Harbor should he have won the election Tuesday night, The Globe’s Glen Johnson reports. We’re fairly tickled by the counterfactual here, as it’s safe to assume that an eight minute display of noisy fireworks, timed to mark the moment Romney unseated President Obama, wouldn’t have been received super well by the good people of Boston. Suffolk County voted for Obama by a 57 point margin, meaning that about three in four voters here might have felt a bit trolled should their defeat have been greeted with a pyrotechnic display in the sky. Instead of a cruel kick-them-while-their-down Tumblr like “White People Mourning Mitt Romney” (which actually exists and is not the most gracious behavior we’ve ever seen from Democrats) we might have gotten a cruel kick-them-while-their-down tumblr from the right like “Bostonians cursing at the sky after Obama’s loss.”  

Also, we know it’s not much in the scope of campaign spending, but $25,000 still seems a lot to spend on a fireworks display when polls leading up to the election showed a fairly decent chance Romney would lose. When Romney said going into the day that he hadn’t even written a concession speech, it sounded like bravado designed to keep supporters enthusiastic. But as reports have noted in the days since the election, it wasn’t. He and Paul Ryan seemed to truly believe the polls were “skewed” to overestimate the numbers of minority and young voters that would show up to the election.  When it became clear that the had lost, Romney “hastily composed” some remarks, CBS’s Jan Crawford reports. At least the company running the fireworks show knew enough to hedge their bets. “With the possibility of a show being canceled or fireworks going unused, they are set up in a manner to safely remove any unused fireworks,” The Globe’s Johnson writes. “They are then taken back to the shop, inspected, and returned to inventory for use some other time.”