How many times in Hollywood have we seen a good movie, a really good sequel and then the third installment is a dud? It happens all the time and it’s just happened in the Mitt Romney for President movie. 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.
“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
For the last two years, as more than half of the country has been dissatisfied with President Obama’s performance, people have been telling Romney what a good president he would have been. His party thoroughly dominated the 2014 mid-term congressional elections. It’s likely that if Romney had had another crack at Obama in 2014, he would have won. So of course it was tempting for this man, who believes in his heart of hearts that he is ideally suited for the job, to re-consider.
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? 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. Bush, the popular former governor of Florida and the son and brother of former presidents, is a natural “establishment” candidate for the GOP and a formidable presence in the chase for big-dollar donors. 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. 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.
Shortly after taking these pre-emptive moves, Bush started scooping up strategists, campaign staffers and most importantly, wealthy donors. Romney clearly saw this as a threat. 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’s momentum.
So why did Romney change his mind so quickly? Well, let’s just say that the third time was not a charm. There was not the avalanche of support that he would have hoped for. While all of the polls showed him as the preferred nominee among Republican voters, it was hardly an overwhelming endorsement. 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. 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 “No” while only 43% said “Yes.” Now, let’s remember that this poll was taken just after Obama’s State of the Union Address, which almost always gives a positive bump to the sitting president. Still, it had to be disheartening result for the Romney camp.
In a terrific book about the 2012 campaign (Double Down: Game Change 2012), authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann recount and remind us about the rollercoaster ride of the Republican race three years ago. The authors referred to a “dating game” 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 “looking for the one,” the anti-Romney. 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. Perry was clearly unprepared for a presidential bid, which he later acknowledged and, once he had his “oops” moment in one of the debates, was finished. When Gingrich was the flavor of the month (the critical month of December 2013), on the strength of his superlative debate performances, the pro-Romney super-PAC “Restore Our Future” savaged him with negative TV ads in the first caucus state of Iowa. The ads sent Gingrich’s numbers plummeting, which allowed Santorum to sneak up as the conservative anti-Romney and gain a near-flatfooted-tie in the Hawkeye state. 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.
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. In 2016, this would not have been the case. Bush is a formidable force. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, although weakened by his bear-hug of Obama during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and also “bridge-gate,” also has the potential to be a fund-raising behemoth. As the chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2014, he supported many victorious gubernatorial candidates and oversaw a GOP blowout. It was the beginning of the rehabilitation of his public image. He should not be taken lightly. 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.
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 governors in Midwest states (Scott Walker and John Kasich) and several headline-grabbing senators (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio). Cruz in particular would have trained his rhetorical fire on Romney. The bottom line for Mitt: this would have been a more difficult run to the nomination than he had four years ago. I’m sure he would love to run for president again, I just don’t think he wants to run the GOP nomination gauntlet again. The one 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. It’s 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.
More likely, the role that Romney now holds is a potential king-maker. He still retains respect and sway in the donor class; you can bet that virtually every candidate will be looking for his endorsement. I think there is zero chance Romney will side with Bush. That’s because I believe that Romney’s entrance into the race a few weeks ago was meant to blunt Bush’s momentum as much as his own desire to give it another try. Regarding Christie, it’s more complex; Christie was an early supporter of Romney in the 2012 cycle. On the other hand, Romney has the right to feel betrayed, that Christie was a little bit too bi-partisan with his photo op-laden bear-hugs of Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
In today’s conference call, he hinted that he is not looking to back Bush or Christie.
“I 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. In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.”
The Republican field for 2016 has a lot of interesting candidates and nobody should expect a Romney endorsement early in the process.
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? This is a tough call but I’m inclined to say that he wouldn’t. Recent polling provides a mixed view on a potential matchup between Romney and Hillary Clinton, who everybody assumes will be the Democratic nominee. The calculus of the Republican strategists needs to prepare for a GOP-Clinton matchup. In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, Clinton soundly defeats Romney 55%-to-40%. She also bests the other Republican candidates by similar numbers but the poll is less meaningful for all the others because Clinton’s name recognition dwarfs the others in a way that it does not dwarf Romney’s.
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%. If you sense a bias here, remember that the same Fox News poll had 50% of the respondents saying that Romney would not have done a better job as president than Obama so if there’s any bias, it might be from the ABC/Post poll. My guess is that the true number lies somewhere in between, with Hillary besting Mitt.
Romney’s 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. This is why the polls kept showing a new flavor of the month in 2011, leading up to the 2012 primaries and caucuses. Whether it’s 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’t like him and won’t vote for him.
Look at the results in the popular vote in the 2012 election:
Barack Obama 62,611,250 50.6%
Mitt Romney 59,134,475 47.8%
Now let’s look at the results in the “Hope and Change” election of 2008:
Barack Obama 69,492,376 53.0%
John McCain 59,946,478 45.7%
Note that Obama lost nearly 7 million votes in four years. This is not surprising, many idealistic voters from 2008 felt less enthusiastic after watching the fantastic candidate morph into a struggling president. But Romney actually received over 700,000 fewer votes than McCain did! Remember, McCain was handicapped by the financial collapse of 2008, which wasn’t his fault but was linked to his party and his predecessor George W. Bush. Ronald Reagan reincarnated could have beaten Obama in 2008. The only explanation as to why Romney would have actually gotten fewer votes than McCain is that Republican voters stayed home. Rather than cast anti-Obama votes in 2012, millions of Republicans didn’t cast a vote at all.
Mitt Romney would be a fantastic president. Unfortunately, he is a just not a great candidate. 18 more months is not going to change that. 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