I think the only Republican to win the nomination the first time he ran was GWB, at least since 1964. To be next, a Republican usually has to run a fairly strong losing nomination campaign. That’s been true for Reagan(second to Ford in 1976), Bush 41(2nd to Reagan in 1980), Bob Dole(2nd to Bush in 1992), and John McCain(2nd to Bush in 2000).
I don’t think the guy who is “next” will come from the 2012 pack though, becuase I don’t think there was a clear second choice. A lot of guys got an opportunity to take down Romney and none of them succeeded. So the 2016 nomination, assuming Romney loses, should be open to anyone promising.
WHEN Romney loses, he will return to his first love: making money for Mitt Romney. He’ll quickly file an amended return to recoup the tax deductions he passed on for hypocritical political reasons this year, if he hasn’t already done so. He can go back to hiring undocumented workers for his yardwork. He can go back to raiding pension funds and cheating widows and orphans out of their money. He can go back to being the secretive little bitch that he is and stay the hell out of the public eye. Hell no he doesn’t run again. The only possible interest he will have in politics is hoping that someone with an “R” for an initial runs so that he can sell him that gaudy R logo that he loves so much.
If the best hope the Republicans have for 2016 is a man who won’t have held public office for 10 years and is best known as being the brother of the man who screwed the pooch so badly that today’s GOP prefers to pretend that he didn’t even exist, then they may as well close up shop now.
I can’t find any evidence that Kerry formed an exploratory committee, announced his intention to run (notwithstanding a comment made in 2004 about it being possible), made any campaign speeches or ads, or even raised any money at all.
Clinton had raised $36 million in the fiscal quarter that Kerry announced he wasn’t running for president, Edwards raised $14 million that quarter, Obama raised $26 million. Kerry didn’t raise anything.
Saying Kerry must have been in the race because he announced he wasn’t running is not evidence that he entered the race. But I do want to say to my fellow Americans, I will not seek my party’s nomination for the office of the president of the United States. Perhaps now I can refer to myself as a “former presidential candidate.”
The Republican establishment does not like Romney. They didn’t like him in 2008, and they don’t like him now. He went through primary season with basically 22% of the vote which means that 4 out of every 5 Republican voters would have picked someone else.
They picked him because he was the best of a weak field. They’ll vote for him because he’s the only Republican option (or they won’t bother voting at all). And if (when) he loses, he’ll be forgotten.
He’s not going to get another shot at this because the Republican power brokers won’t let him, he won’t get the funding to finance his campaign, he won’t want to put his own money into the pot, and, most importantly, there will be much stronger opponents who have purposely stayed out of this race who will blow Romney out of the water in 2016.
It’s extremely unlikely he would run again and there’s no chance he would win. He couldn’t argue that the base or any large wing of the party loves him and he couldn’t make that argument nationally either. And consider the sheer amount of time he would have spent in losing twice: ran one type of campaign in 2007-08, spent most of the next four years getting ready to run again, and ran a different (more conservative) campaign this time and got the nomination, and loses again. All of which would make it obvious that the party should go with someone else.
This is not how political parties work. These decisions are made by the candidates, not the party.
Agreed. The supposed Democratic heavyweights all sat on the bench in 1992, thinking George HW Bush was unbeatable. Bill Clinton knew better. I’m sure most of the GOP would give either a testicle or an ovary to beat Obama in 2012, but they had to choose among the candidates they had, not the candidates they wish they had.
And to a lesser degree I think that also happened this year - not because the potential candidates felt Obama was unbeatable but because they felt it was not the right electoral cycle for them. If you were a moderate Republican and not named Mitt Romney, you probably felt you’d have a better shot in 2016.
I disagree. I think Gore is a good man and all, but …no.
I don’t think Romney will get the nomination again if he loses this time. Both he and Gore would have the stink of loser on them. Neither is charismatic enough to overcome it.
To all appearances Gore is done with politics and is focused on environmental issues, Current, and other things. I don’t think he’ll run in 2016 or any other time. But if you want an interesting piece of trivia, he is a year younger than Mitt Romney.
The Republican voters did not much like Romney. The Republican establishment liked him better than the other losers who were running, and were always pretty much behind him.
But I agree he won’t run again. The Tea Partiers will blame him for not being a true blue reactionary, and will be sure that one of them could have done better.
I agree. I think many potential candidates felt that Obama, as an incumbent, was going to get re-elected. So they decided to wait until 2016 rather than running and losing in 2012.
Romney was in a position where he couldn’t wait. His biggest asset was that it was “his turn” after coming in second place in the 2008 Republican race. If he had passed in 2012, somebody else would have run and taken his spot for 2016.
Palin, as the 2008 VP candidate, was the other person who could have made a valid presumptive claim on the 2012 spot. But she did pass on it and now she’s history and the party has moved on to new people. If she tries to run in 2016 she’ll find she’s now behind people like Ryan and Santorum.
Gingrich serves as an example of what happens to a candidate when he tries to run after his moment has passed.
Ryan can make a claim to it, but I don’t think it’ll go to him. I think his best move is to find a way to wrest control of the House from under Boehner, who’s barely keeping it together as it is.
Santorum will try, and he’ll get a surprising amount of support. But what he won’t get is money and his campaign will fizzle in the home stretch in the same as it did this year.
Rubio will try as well. Probably just because he’s pissed about being snubbed as the VP this year. Part of me wonders how that will play out, when certain members of the Republican party spent 8 years fighting a foreign Kenyan Muslim and now they’ve got to support a Hispanic? But he’s too new to the national scene and doesn’t have a huge following yet to sweep him through the primaries. Not impossible, but I don’t see it.
Frankly, with the approval rating of Congress, getting any Rep or Sen into the office of the Presidency is going to take some doing in 2016. For my money, it’s going to come from a Governor. Rick Scott, Jan Brewer, Bobby Jindal, and Bob McDonnell are out. Chris Christie is a strong possibility though. Maybe Tom Corbett. Hell, maybe Nikki Haley but even that’s a longshot. But I’m going to say right now that 2016’s Republican nominee will be a current or former Governor.
In real life nobody cares about this “turn” stuff. Romney won the nomination this year because he learned from his failure in 2008 and spent a lot of time building a better primary campaign and enlisting support inside the party. Those were major advantages. Without that and his fundraising, he would not have been able to beat the pack of nitwits and lunatics who ran against him this year, and that’s saying something. 2016 will be better by default, and it’ll be that much better if guys who can at leas t pretend to be consistent and interesting (Crist, Rubio, etc.) make a run. Nobody is going to care if Ryan or Santorum or anyone else can claim it’s his turn; they may have advantages in name recognition at the beginning of the process but that often translates to nothing at all.
If Romney loses, Obama will be at the end of his second term. Then 2016 will either be an open election on the Democratic side, or Biden will run for President. Either way, that raises the odds for a Republican win, which should attract a higher level of candidate. One can hope.
We won’t see Gore running for office again anytime soon. I don’t know how much everyone followed it, but his personal life got real messy there for a while. It would haunt him too much in a campaign.
