Why Was This Graphic Bloomberg Businessweek Cover of Romney Canned?

There have been plenty of magazine cover controversy over the last year. There was Michele Bachmann's Newsweek cover, the other recent Newsweek cover story on Obama's "dumb" critics, and now Mitt Romney is the center of a one involving Bloomberg Businessweek.

It focuses on a rejected (I repeat: rejected) cover showing a bloodied, bruised, and beaten-up Romney:

That's certainly eye-catching. But why didn't the cover ever run? Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel explained in an email to Buzzfeed that the magazine usually prepares several covers for an issue and decides on the the one that best fits the "way the zeitgeist is blowing:"

Each week we design a few cover possibilities for the upcoming issue. We see where the news is going and make a final decision about the image on Wednesday afternoon. Two weeks ago (January 16 issue, on stands January 13) we had two great pieces in the magazine: Ashlee Vance's profile of Steve Ballmer and his efforts to reboot Microsoft, and Peter Coy's Opening Remarks about how the GOP had turned on Mitt Romney and Private Equity. In the end,we went with Ballmer since the Romney story seemed to have already hit its peak. A lot of times these decisions are about all of us putting our finger in the air and trying to figure out which way the zeitgeist is blowing. It's what makes the job so fun and so challenging.

So if it was rejected, how did it make it out into the public? Well, Bloomberg designer Richard Turley tweeted the image out (in response to a NY Mag cover):

What do you think of it?