Mitt Romney has declined to run for President in 2016. He made the announcement Friday during a short conference call with supporters.
“After putting considerable thought into making another run for president,” Romney said, “I have decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee.”
Veteran political reporter Mark Halperin said Mitt, the “numbers guy” from Bain Capital, had looked at the odds and decided against running. Even though Romney may have had the best chance of winning the Republican nomination, there was the possibility of a long, tough, contested race with and Hillary Clinton which may have weighed heavily in Romneys final decision:
“He was torn about it, thought long and hard about it … but in the end, he felt like coming through the process he might lose again and his heart wasn’t in doing that.”
Many had expect Romney to continue moving toward an announcement for president given his consistent command of favorability within the countless polls taken for nearly a year among the growing list of potential GOP nominees. Romney had been showing very favorably in recent polls, as Halperin noted:
“The data, collected over an extended period of time in the first twenty states scheduled to hold caucuses and primaries in 2016, shows Romney with a huge lead across the board, and significantly better favorable/unfavorable ratings than the rest of the large potential field,” Halperin revealed.
There are no new polls without Romney as an option, but the averages look certain to favor Bush, who will gain access to most of the money and donors who would have been devoted to Romney. However, if poll trends continue, we may be in for a surprise.
