But?

A TPM story about Romney's donors hoping he will make himself likeable had this odd sentence in it:

Romney rebuffed suggestions that he should help voters get to know him by appearing on television shows, but Romney insisted that “The View” was too “high risk” and said accepting an invite from “Saturday Night Live” would have made him appear un-presidential.

But? Why on earth "but"?

But is a contrastive or adversative conjunction; what follows it should contradict in some way what comes before it. Here, what comes after it amplifies what came before it, giving examples of his rebuttal.

This sentence cries out for a nice semicolon. Or perhaps a non-finite "insisting" and "saying".