We Won’t Have Mitt Romney to Kick Around Anymore
After weeks of giving every indication that he's running for president yet again, Mitt Romney has announced that he's not a candidate for 2016.
After weeks of giving every indication that he’s running for president yet again, Mitt Romney has announced that he’s not a candidate for 2016.
YahooNews (“Mitt Romney says he will not make 2016 White House bid“):
Mitt Romney wanted to go out on his terms.
The former Massachusetts governor and two-time presidential candidate pulled back from the brink of a third only after determining that he could position himself as going out on top.
“Two weeks ago it would have looked like he got pushed out,” said a campaign adviser from the 2012 effort.
Now, Romney exited the stage with the most recent opinion polls showing him leading the huge field of potential Republican candidates for president.
He has tried to rebrand himself as a man who cares about the poor, and delivered a highly publicized speech in Mississippi this week.
“The rich are fine in America. They’re fine almost regardless of who’s the president,” he said.
Many in the political world laughed at the idea that Romney would run again, but he, his family and his close advisers all believed firmly that he was the right man for the job in 2012, and remained so now. With the polling data especially being what it is, Romney can exit the scene saying he walked away from a likely victory.
“It’s the right thing to do at the right time,” said the former Romney aide.
Romney announced the news during a conference call with his supporters at 11 a.m. EST.
In October, Ann Romney told ABC News that her husband of 45 years had “moved on.”
Carry on, then.
Say what you want to say about the Bushes, they run one heck of a political operation. Romney made a Bush nomination difficult, and presidency impossible. Now, Romney is no more.
So, do the Repubs have anyone beside Jeb! likely to be a contender who _isn’t_ at risk of a federal indictment? Walker and Christie are both still dealing with investigations, aren’t they?
@legion:
The Koch Brothers’ footman, Marco Rubio.
On top of a pile of losing Republican Presidential candidates?
Should feel alot like positioning yourself to piss into the wind.
Romney might think he’s positioning himself to “go out on top”, but it looks more like someone realizing that nobody really wanted him around and Mitt 4.0 was going over like New Coke.
Dyam. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall in the meeting he and Jeb had yesterday. Does Jeb have blackmail dirt on Mitt, did he threaten to have his Saudi buddies sic jihadi assassins on Mitt, or did he just show Mitt the balance sheet for his own campaign.
He decided that the value of his car elevator was higher than his chances to win the general election.
I don’t know… We can keep kicking him around for a bit.
He represents everything wrong with America — sons of priviledge looking down on those trying to work their way up. The 47% comments really cement it, with a frothy mix of contempt and ignorance.
His latest RomneyBot 3.0 said stuff about income inequality, but was completely lacking in understanding of how he and his party was complicit in the growing inequality. Perhaps RomneyBot 4.0 will surprise everyone — if Bill Gates can turn out good, maybe Romney will too.
What does that even mean?
Are we to assume that neither of these chaps started out “good”?
You don’t buy into the “original Sin” meme do you?
My guess is his sycophants ran out of air.
@ernieyeball: Bill Gates brought Windows ME to the world — that was his sin.
Actually, most of the reports from inside Microsoft were that he was very difficult to work with, and he definitely presided over a company that used permatemps rather than employees to skirt labor laws. He showed little interest in making the world a better place, or doing anything of real value, until he left Microsoft.
And, now he is working on exterminating malaria.
Something changed, for the better. I would like to think that Mittens is capable of change too.
So what is Romney’s transgression?
No. It won’t be so… He will keep coming up for
airattention.We will always have a Zombie Romney.
@ernieyeball: Is making a living as a corporate raider good enough for you, or do you buy the objectivist nonsense that he was a “producer?”
Gus has a vision of Romney redeemed through good works a la Bill Gates.
Which of the worlds scourges can he battle to gain atonement?
The Romneys never seem to make it to the White House. The father, George Romney, was a far better manager and more substantial than the son. Several things derailed the son twice, including extreme issue flip flops as well poor campaign management. And for someone running for president, his opinions on foreign policy issues often seemed clueless.