Posted on 02/16/2014 8:11:17 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Ask Mitt Romney if he would run for president a third time, and he will deny it every which way.
“I’ve had my turn,” he told CNN.
“We’re so ready to watch the next person step up and take that nomination,” his wife told Fox News. “Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no,” Romney told The New York Times.
But in recent weeks, a strange thing has happened: Some supporters and donors, pollsters and pundits are starting to suggest — without irony — that the former Massachusetts governor run for president in 2016.
“Once a month, someone would e-mail or call and say he should run again,” said Ron Kaufman, a longtime Romney adviser. “Now I get it every day — from the grass roots, and from donors. I get it every day.”
Kaufman made clear that there was no behind-the-scenes maneuvering to persuade Romney to run again. A second Romney adviser said he was also approached frequently by former supporters and donors, asking him to persuade Romney to run again in 2016.
Those close to Romney say he is giving the talk little thought, and party operatives in key states and some of his former advisers say they cannot imagine a scenario in which he would run.
“He’s made it pretty clear he will strongly support whoever the 2016 nominee is,” Romney’s oldest son, Tagg, said in an e-mail to the Globe. “This isn’t something we are spending any time thinking about. Chatter is just chatter.”
And yet the former candidate who rarely gave interviews during the 2012 campaign and laid low for the year following his defeat is now suddenly everywhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
Yep. He’s probably out on the left with Jon Huntsman—but he was a far less effective governor.
Dean would probably be more fiscally conservative than Romney—and he was a better governor. He’s also better on Obamacare.
King would then ask if anyone in the audience had that day's newspaper, or any newspaper. On being given a paper, King would turn to the obituaries and start reading them out. The punch line would be that again and again, when a man died old, the obituary described that he was "survived by his widow."
To some degree at least, might Romney have been liberal because that was the price of being governor of Massachusetts? Careerist business types are often like that, putting on their politics like calibrating the right suit for a business occasion. If so, as to Romney, that means getting him pinned down to a conservative reformist platform that he commits to and campaigns on.
That graphic: “If you think everything will be okay once obama is out of office ... you don’t understand the problem,” is RIGHT ON.
He was out there the last couple of weeks for two reasons. One was for his opinion of the Olympics in Sochi, as he did such a great job with the Olympics when he came in and saved ours and actually ended up financially in the black. He also did a fine job with the safety aspects of the U.S. winter Olympics when he ran it, so they were questioning him about Sochi safety. The other reason was because the documentary movie “Mitt” was coming out, so he was around for PR purposes also. So relax folks, he wasn’t out there because he’s running again. Some people can’t take no for an answer.
“He’s also older than Hillary.”
Mitt sure looks a heck of a lot better. Hillary is a dog.
Blow your daddy’s money myth... NEVER AGAIN OLD BOY!
SBVFT are still around and old lurch will not like it.
No, he was a supporter of liberal Democrats before he ran for office and had to paddle vigorously to the right just to run as a GOP candidate in MA. Then, of course, as soon as he was in office he not only did absolutely nothing to support GOP candidates down-ticket from him—he governed as a liberal Democrat while in office.
He tried to enact a couple of rightish-leaning acts that never were even actually implemented before he stepped down in order to help him run as something of a Republican for president.
He was plotting to run for president back from when he first ran for office. He first ran against Teddy Kennedy in a race for which it wasn’t expected he’d win, only that he’d establish name recognition. But MA had a string of three Republicans governors before him, and not only did running against Kennedy give him a chance to have the support of his party, it enabled him to supposedly posture as a more credible eventual national candidate from MA. Then, he was able to run outwardly as a continuation of the string of GOP governors that went back to William Weld.
The dude was a liberal, soulless corpus of ambition through every step of his political (and business) career.
On the other side, he obviously has been a good and dedicated provider to his family and a model citizen within his Mormon community, within which he has done a number of good acts.
You are reminding me in a quite cogent manner of why I had such misgivings about Romney in 2012. Who do you want in 2016? Or at least see as credible conservative candidates?
Romney over her thighness any day of the week,
The only two prospective GOP candidates who aren’t avowedly pro-amnesty are Cruz and Palin. Amnesty will be the end of a conservative majority in this country—and I don’t think Palin will win.
I actually think the GOP is such a complicit and corrupt party that it needs to be outright replaced. I’d love to see the tea party bubble up to coordinate state conventions, and maybe a national one, in order to nominate and get the conservative base behind a single candidate ahead of the primaries. (Then, if need be, it could mature into its own official party from 2020 on.)
As it is, the GOPe is way too effective in getting only go-only, squishy moderates in office—and then further corrupting them once they’re there. Even though they campaign more conservatively in districts that require it, most of them cave on critical issues. Just look at all of the ‘tea party’ candidates from 2008 who have since sold out.
One of the things that annoys me more than anything is the statement that we are a ‘center-right’ country. All that describes is how the media and the political establishment manage to cast what is actually the center of opinion in the U.S. as somehow off to the mean and stupid right.
I’m sorry, please forgive my venting so on a Monday morning!
Ha ha—a shingles upon our country!
To some degree at least, might Romney have been liberal because that was the price of being governor of Massachusetts?
________________________________________
No he ran for gov of MASS as a liberal...
He ran 10 years earlier in 1994 as a liberal against Teddy Kennedy for US Senate..
He was more liberal than Teddy in a debate so much so that Teddy was able to point that out and Willard could not deny it..
The moderator asked Willard about his pro-abortion stance and Willard agreed he was for Roe V Wade staying “the law of the land” He said “I sustain a woman’s right to have an abortion...I will never try to overturn Roe V Wade..”
He was asked about gays in the boy scouts...he agreed they ought to be..
Willard got very belligerent and was ugly about President Ronald Reagan...”I was an Independent during the time of Reagan..”
Willard also said he was proud of his mother Lenore for running for US Senate on an abortion platform in 1970..
This happened in 1994..
Then in 2002 during a debate for gov of MASS he declared that if the parents of an underage girl refused permission for her to get an abortion, then he, Willard, as gov, would order the judges to override their parental authority..
being gov of MASS didn’t make Willard into a liberal ...he was a liberal years before he came into office..
he was a good fit for liberal MASS...
meanwhile he knows pretending to “being Conservative” is “the price” of being elected to the office of the president..
So relax folks, he wasn’t out there because he’s running again
____________________________________
said by one of the leading RomneyBots who in the past has beaten up Conservatives in these threads on behalf of her boy Willard...
Hello, youre back Flaggie...
and just how is your Botoxed, dye jobbed matinee idol Mitty ???
Hes looking long in the tooth and ugly nowadays..
Looks closer to Bill Clinton than John F Kennedy...
C’mon, Willard, do it for Hillary ! She needs your help to win.
Mittens is a pathological liar and your basic politician. The overall tilt of his ideology is to the left. A Romney victory means the end of conservatism in America, and the establishment of a center-left country from here on out, which will go further and further left as time passes. Mittens only offers bandaids for Democratic wounds.
With a second Obama term, I think it might be too late to turn this ship around. Thanks to all those who sat out because we didn't have your perfect conservative candidate. I hope you are all proud of yourselves.
The Republicans are in deep trouble. Other than Romney, they have NOBODY in the wings at this time that can beat the Democratic nominee in 2016. We can all sit here on the Free Republic and delude ourselves into thinking that Sarah Palin will actually run. But it's not happening and while I still like her, I'm not falling for her tease again like I did in 2012. We all like Ted Cruz but he's got a better chance winning a gold medal as a figure skater. And who is left? Rick Santorum? Mike Huckabee? Jeb Bush? Rand Paul?
About the only good thing that happened to the Republican Party so far this year is that pretend-Republican Chris Christie self-destructed and now has zero chance to line up RINO dollars for any kind of national campaign.
It pains me to say this but Mitt Romney might be the only Republican capable of mounting a winning campaign in 2016. Show me an alternative, I'd love to see it.
The GOP is fixable. If the Tea Party cannot fix the GOP, it will hardly be up to the far greater task of forming a viable new party and then fixing the country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.