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There is accumulating evidence that Mitt Romney's not much of a team player: He mocked advisers for thinking their work is "very, very important"; he has delegated the task of thanking staff and volunteers after primary victories to his wife; and his campaign fired his debate coach last week not because he did a bad job, but because he was getting too much credit for doing a good one.
Just before the Florida primary, talking to Matt Lauer on the Today show, Romney mocked his advisers for thinking they had a lot to do with taking down Newt Gingrich. "I think you can expect advisers to think that the work of advisers is very, very important, but frankly, I think if you're to go back and look at where the sentiment changed, it was with the debates," Romney said, responding to a New York Times story about the campaign's strategy. And even though Romney was widely seen as a changed, more aggressive man in those debates, and even though the major tangible change was a new debate coach, Romney wants sole credit for those performances, according to Politico.
After the primary, there were headlines like "The Coach Who Revamped Romney's Stage Presence," and "Mitt Romney’s new debate coach may have been Florida primary game-changer." They were about Brett O'Donnell, the former Liberty University debate coach and aide to Michelle Bachmann. O'Donnell started getting warnings that he was getting too much credit, Politico's Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman report. Then last week, on a campaign conference call, "a clear message was delivered -- Romney pulled himself back from the brink after South Carolina, and no one else did it for him," Politico reports. O'Donnell was let go.