David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter and longtime critic of the party’s lurch to the right, held up Romney’s latest comments as emblematic of his failed campaign.

“Mitt Romney was very wrong to see 2012 as a referendum on ‘stuff,’” he wrote in a blog post. “It was a referendum on the question, which candidate would do a better job promoting prosperity and creating jobs. That was the referendum that Romney and the Republican party lost. We lost both because voters did not believe in the job-creating magic of upper-income tax cuts - and because voters were unpersuaded that the GOP even cared that much about job creation, as opposed to wealth preservation.”