How many times in Hollywood have we seen a good movie, a really good sequel and then the third installment is a dud?\u00a0 It happens all the time and it\u2019s just happened in the Mitt Romney for President movie.\u00a0 For the first 26 months after losing to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, Romney was emphatic that he was not going to give it another try in 2016 but, a few weeks ago, he changed his mind and tossed his hat back into the ring until today when, on a conference call with supporters, he announced that he would not seek the Republican nomination again.<\/p>\n
“I feel that it is critical that America elect a conservative leader to become our next president. You know that I have wanted to be that president. But I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president.” — Mitt Romney<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For the last two years, as more than half of the country has been dissatisfied with President Obama\u2019s performance, people have been telling Romney what a good president he would have been.\u00a0 His party thoroughly dominated the 2014 mid-term congressional elections.\u00a0 It\u2019s likely that if Romney had had another crack at Obama in 2014, he would have won.\u00a0 So of course<\/span> it was tempting for this man, who believes in his heart of hearts that he is ideally suited for the job, to re-consider.<\/p>\n
So what was the impetus for Romney to jump back into the fray a few weeks ago and what caused him to exit so quickly?\u00a0 I am absolutely convinced that the impetus for Romney to declare himself a candidate again was the early entry of Jeb Bush into the field.\u00a0 Bush, the popular former governor of Florida and the son and brother of former presidents, is a natural \u201cestablishment\u201d candidate for the GOP and a formidable presence in the chase for big-dollar donors.\u00a0 Bush formed a presidential exploratory committee, resigned from all of the boards of directors on which he served, and apparently is preparing to release a full ten years of tax returns.\u00a0 Remember, the tax return issue was a big one for Romney in 2012 when he had to be bullied by Newt Gingrich into releasing just two years of returns.<\/p>\n
Shortly after taking these pre-emptive moves, Bush started scooping up strategists, campaign staffers and most importantly, wealthy donors.\u00a0 Romney clearly saw this as a threat.\u00a0 If he was on the fence about running in 2016, he must have figured that he had better let people know and, essentially, throw a wrench into Bush\u2019s momentum.<\/p>\n
So why did Romney change his mind so quickly?\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s just say that the third time was not a charm.\u00a0 There was not<\/span> the avalanche of support that he would have hoped for.\u00a0 While all of the polls showed him as the preferred nominee among Republican voters, it was hardly an overwhelming endorsement.\u00a0 A recent Fox News poll showed him as the preferred candidate for 21% of the electorate, the most by 10% but a really low total considering that he is by far the best-known of all the potential candidates.\u00a0 In that same poll, in a surprising result, when asked if they thought Romney would have done a better job as president than Barack Obama, 50% of the respondents said \u201cNo\u201d while only 43% said \u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Now, let\u2019s remember that this poll was taken just after Obama\u2019s State of the Union Address, which almost always gives a positive bump to the sitting president.\u00a0 Still, it had to be disheartening result for the Romney camp.<\/p>\n
In a terrific book about the 2012 campaign (Double Down: Game Change 2012)<\/span>, authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann recount and remind us about the rollercoaster ride of the Republican race three years ago.\u00a0 The authors referred to a \u201cdating game\u201d as Romney was consistently topped in the polls by candidate after candidate: Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum all took turns at the top of the polls as the evangelical and conservative wings of the Republican party kept \u201clooking for the one,\u201d the anti-Romney.\u00a0 Well, with the exception of Perry, none of the other candidates had the potential financial clout that could even come close to Romney and the super-PAC that supported him.\u00a0 Perry was clearly unprepared for a presidential bid, which he later acknowledged and, once he had his \u201coops\u201d moment in one of the debates, was finished.\u00a0 When Gingrich was the flavor of the month (the critical<\/span> month of December 2013), on the strength of his superlative debate performances, the pro-Romney super-PAC \u201cRestore Our Future\u201d savaged him with negative TV ads in the first caucus state of Iowa.\u00a0 The ads sent Gingrich\u2019s numbers plummeting, which allowed Santorum to sneak up as the conservative anti-Romney and gain a near-flatfooted-tie in the Hawkeye state.\u00a0 But Santorum had run his campaign on a wing and a prayer and did not have the organization or financial resources to ultimately defeat Romney in the rest of the primaries.<\/p>\n
Essentially, in 2012, Romney was the heavyweight in a field of lightweights; he was the only candidate with the resume, the gravitas, the intellectual chops and the fundraising prowess to ultimately win the nomination.\u00a0 In 2016, this would not have been the case.\u00a0 Bush is a formidable force.\u00a0 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, although weakened by his bear-hug of Obama during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and also \u201cbridge-gate,\u201d also has the potential to be a fund-raising behemoth. \u00a0As the chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2014, he supported many victorious gubernatorial candidates and oversaw a GOP blowout.\u00a0 It was the beginning of the rehabilitation of his public image.\u00a0 He should not be taken lightly.\u00a0 If, when the Republican debates begin, he displays a fluency in national issues, he will no doubt be a heavyweight (no pun intended) in the 2016 field.<\/p>\n
Besides the potential fund-raising titans of Bush and Christie, the 2016 candidates may include a popular former of Arkansas (Mike Huckabee, who finished ahead of Romney in the 2008 primaries), popular current<\/span> governors in Midwest states (Scott Walker and John Kasich) and several headline-grabbing senators (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio).\u00a0 Cruz in particular would have trained his rhetorical fire on Romney.\u00a0 The bottom line for Mitt: this would have been a more difficult run to the nomination than he had four years ago.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure he would love<\/span> to run for president again, I just don\u2019t think he wants to run the GOP nomination gauntlet again.\u00a0 The one<\/span> possibility that could see a Romney 2016 bumper sticker would be if, at the end of the primary season, none of the GOP candidates have the necessary 50% of the delegates, which would lead to a brokered convention.\u00a0 It\u2019s unlikely but possible, if the surviving candidates are rhetorically bloodied and beaten by the primaries that the convention could choose to draft Romney back into service.<\/p>\n
More likely, the role that Romney now holds is a potential king-maker.\u00a0 He still retains respect and sway in the donor class; you can bet that virtually every candidate will be looking for his endorsement. \u00a0I think there is zero chance Romney will side with Bush.\u00a0 That\u2019s because I believe that Romney\u2019s entrance into the race a few weeks ago was meant to blunt Bush\u2019s momentum as much as his own desire to give it another try.\u00a0 Regarding Christie, it\u2019s more complex; Christie was an early supporter of Romney in the 2012 cycle.\u00a0 On the other hand, Romney has the right to feel betrayed, that Christie was a little bit too<\/span> bi-partisan with his photo op-laden bear-hugs of Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s conference call, he hinted that he is not<\/span> looking to back Bush or Christie.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well-known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee.\u00a0 In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Republican field for 2016 has a lot of interesting candidates and nobody should expect a Romney endorsement early in the process.<\/p>\n
The last question to tackle today: would Romney have won the general election in 2016 if he was the nominee for the second straight time?\u00a0 This is a tough call but I\u2019m inclined to say that he wouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Recent polling provides a mixed view on a potential matchup between Romney and Hillary Clinton, who everybody assumes<\/span> will be the Democratic nominee.\u00a0 The calculus of the Republican strategists needs to prepare for a GOP-Clinton matchup.\u00a0 In a recent ABC News\/Washington Post poll, Clinton soundly defeats Romney 55%-to-40%.\u00a0 She also bests the other Republican candidates by similar numbers but the poll is less meaningful for all the others because Clinton\u2019s name recognition dwarfs the others in a way that it does not dwarf Romney\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Now, just to confuse matters, in the recently posed Fox News poll that I referenced earlier, Romney and Clinton were in a dead heat at 46%.\u00a0 If you sense a bias here, remember that the same<\/span> Fox News poll had 50% of the respondents saying that Romney would not<\/span> have done a better job as president than Obama so if there\u2019s any bias, it might be from the ABC\/Post poll.\u00a0 My guess is that the true number lies somewhere in between, with Hillary besting Mitt.<\/p>\n
Romney\u2019s problem now is the same as it has always been: he is just not popular enough with the evangelical and conservative base of the Republican Party.\u00a0 This is why the polls kept showing a new flavor of the month in 2011, leading up to the 2012 primaries and caucuses.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s his Mormon faith, his flip-flop on abortion or his creating of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, there is a significant portion of Republican voters who just don\u2019t like him and won\u2019t vote for him.<\/p>\n
Look at the results in the popular vote in the 2012 election:<\/p>\n
Barack Obama\u00a0\u00a0 62,611,250 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a050.6%<\/p>\n
Mitt Romney \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a059,134,475 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 47.8%<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now let\u2019s look at the results in the \u201cHope and Change\u201d election of 2008:<\/p>\n
\u00a0Barack Obama\u00a0\u00a0 69,492,376 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a053.0%<\/p>\n
John McCain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 59,946,478 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a045.7%<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Note that Obama lost nearly 7 million votes in four years.\u00a0 This is not surprising, many idealistic voters from 2008 felt less enthusiastic after watching the fantastic candidate morph into a struggling president.\u00a0 But Romney actually received over 700,000 fewer votes than McCain did!\u00a0 Remember, McCain was handicapped by the financial collapse of 2008, which wasn\u2019t his fault but was linked to his party and his predecessor George W. Bush.\u00a0 Ronald Reagan reincarnated could have beaten Obama in 2008.\u00a0 The only explanation as to why Romney would have actually gotten fewer votes than McCain is that Republican voters stayed home.\u00a0 Rather than cast anti-Obama votes in 2012, millions of Republicans didn\u2019t cast a vote at all.<\/p>\n
Mitt Romney would be a fantastic president.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he is a just not a great candidate. 18 more months is not going to change that.\u00a0 Clearly, he realized this and will now focus his efforts on helping whomever he feels turns out to be the best voice for the party for the next generation<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How many times in Hollywood have we seen a good movie, a really good sequel and then the third installment is a dud?\u00a0 It happens all the time and it\u2019s just happened in the Mitt Romney for President movie.\u00a0 For the first 26 months after losing to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, Romney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,20,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-republicans","category-the-2016-race"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/MITT-ROMNEY-3.jpg?fit=4608%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rqzv-5x","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=119","url_meta":{"origin":343,"position":0},"title":"Why Women will Never Lose the Right to Choose","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"(written 9\/3\/12) \u00a0 Why a woman\u2019s right to choose will NEVER be taken away\u2026 If you\u2019ve been watching TV or reading about the presidential campaign, you may have noticed that there have been talking points about the Republican Party\u2019s \u201cWar on Women.\u201d It started early in the year with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Featured Posts"","block_context":{"text":"Featured Posts","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=22"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1412,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=1412","url_meta":{"origin":343,"position":1},"title":"Is the GOP Nomination Process Rigged?","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"April 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Even as he is poised to claim his biggest victory yet in Tuesday's New York primary, Donald Trump is back on the warpath, this time against the Republican National Committee and what he has described as a \"rigged\" and \"corrupt\" nomination process. 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Trump, billionaire real estate mogul, reality TV star and political novice, in his first foray into politics, will be the President of the United States. For months Trump told us that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/DONALD-TRUMP-WINS.png?fit=756%2C602&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/DONALD-TRUMP-WINS.png?fit=756%2C602&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/DONALD-TRUMP-WINS.png?fit=756%2C602&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/DONALD-TRUMP-WINS.png?fit=756%2C602&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1443,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=1443","url_meta":{"origin":343,"position":3},"title":"The Presumptive Nominee","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"May 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, it's been 10 days, time for the grieving process to end. 10 days ago, Donald Trump crushed his opponents in the primary vote in Indiana and within 24 hours his two remaining opponents suspended their campaigns, essentially crowning the billionaire businessman as the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/TRUMP-THUMBS-UP.jpg?fit=1180%2C842&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/TRUMP-THUMBS-UP.jpg?fit=1180%2C842&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/TRUMP-THUMBS-UP.jpg?fit=1180%2C842&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/TRUMP-THUMBS-UP.jpg?fit=1180%2C842&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/TRUMP-THUMBS-UP.jpg?fit=1180%2C842&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1693,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=1693","url_meta":{"origin":343,"position":4},"title":"Trump’s Poll Numbers Plummet","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"August 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A plunge. 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