Quotes of the day

A new poll suggests that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush stands to gain the most from Mitt Romney’s decision not to run for president for the third time.

A Fox News poll released Thursday before Mr. Romney’s decision was announced found that Mr. Bush was the second choice of many who favored Mr. Romney, and would lead the field in his absence.

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Although Mr. Romney would have led the field with 21% of Republicans surveyed by Fox, the poll found that in his absence Mr. Bush rose to No. 1 spot with 15%, followed by Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky tied with 13% each.

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The campaign to deny Mr. Romney another chance began almost immediately after he mused to donors at a Friday get-together in New York City on Jan. 9 that he was open to the possibility of another run. By that Sunday afternoon, William Oberndorf, a prominent California investor who supported Mr. Romney in both of his previous presidential campaigns, had emailed a group of 52 powerful Republicans, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, the investor Charles Schwab, Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois and the Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos with a blunt message: we need to support someone else

“Of everybody I contacted, I only heard from one person who thought Mitt should give it another shot,” said Mr. Oberndorf. In the weeks after he expressed renewed interest in running, Mr. Romney contacted some of his most loyal supporters. But often, he found Mr. Bush had gotten there already…

The former Florida governor’s supporters were not as gentle as they made the case to Mr. Romney’s former backers. They argued that, because of his awkward persona and business background, Mr. Romney could not win a general election, had no rationale for a third campaign and would not be as strong as Mr. Bush in such battleground states as Florida and Colorado…

On Sunday, Mr. Zwick flew to Utah and delivered the message to Mr. Romney: Yes, the team believed Mr. Romney had a path to the nomination, but he faced far more challenges than in 2012, and needed to make up his mind this week. By that point, Mr. Romney and his wife Ann had already decided against another bid, but wanted to “sit with it for a few days to make sure.” By Thursday night, Mr. Romney was ready, phoning his closest friends, family and advisers to tell them what he would make public the following morning: He would not run.

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Some of his closest longtime associates, including Boston-based advisers Eric Fehrnstrom and Peter Flaherty, were pushing him to run. His wife Ann was also supportive, sources told CNN, though anxious about putting themselves through the grueling process of a national campaign once again. And one source close to the family says that a donor — on his own — did some “in-depth private polling and the results were shocking” about how strong Romney was running.

Others in his camp expressed wariness of another campaign against a much stronger field than the cast of gadflies, flameouts and polarizing conservatives that Romney faced in 2012. Romney was told that while his old grassroots supporters and field organizers in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire maintained deep respect for him, they were not enthused about a third campaign…

“The takeaway was, there is enough wood here to build a fire,” said another close Romney adviser who joined the meeting. “We thought it was was possible. But it would be hard. Last time we had all the winds at our back and this would have been difficult, but absolutely doable. Look, if people like Rick Santorum can get in, then it’s a no brainer that the governor could have done it, and done it well.”

Said the adviser: “The polls had him up. That was residual name ID. But he can’t carry that for a year. It would have been a fight.”

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“Today indicates a strong level of self-awareness,” said someone who has worked for Romney in a senior role. “He did a gut check, and it just wasn’t there,” said another. “It’s not like in 2012 where you have to run to save the country from these clowns,” a third person said, referring to the less-than-stellar GOP field four years ago. “There are serious people in this race.”…

Another donor and friend said she was in touch with Romney as recently as last weekend and came away from the conversation certain that the former Massachusetts governor would make another run. “Then I began to have queasy feelings about it in the middle of this week. I don’t know why,” the donor said.

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One key adviser said Romney, 67, has been thinking a lot about electability. “If the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton [who is also 67], which it looks like they’ll do, and you’re setting up this narrative that Hillary is the past and she’s got old ideas, was he going to be in the best position to set up that contrast and to make that case?”

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Tagg Romney, who for months had been urging his father to mount another presidential run, later gave a fuller explanation, saying his father began to realize how brutal the campaign would be.

“It’s as much of a gut thing as anything else,” the younger Romney said in an interview. “Yeah, he could win the nomination, but all of the guns were going to be trained on him. And coming out of it, we would face Hillary Clinton.

“She’d be the first female nominee, have a lot of money coming out. Given how tough the primary would have been, his calculation was he would emerge not in a position of strength to take her on.”…

Still, some Romney loyalists said they have been unimpressed with Bush and insisted he was “not high on our list of people we were concerned about.” They viewed Bush’s positions on immigration and Common Core education as disqualifying. One source close to Romney called Bush “basically a lighter version” of Romney.

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Another Mitt Romney adviser said, “He went into it intellectually knowing he would have to earn it again — not that he’d forgotten it. But memory had blurred some of those sharp edges and it came into sharp relief.”…

The Romney camp suffered a major defection this week with the news that David Kochel, Romney’s point person in Iowa, would be joining Bush, likely as national campaign manager.

The Kochel decision shook some in the Romney campaign — and stung as well. According to Romney sources, he was on a number of strategy conference calls with other Romney senior advisers and had encouraged Romney to run again. One Romney associate said the team sees Kochel’s defection as a Benedict Arnold moment.

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In Romney’s absence, Bush should move up in those polls, but his path to the nomination remains anything but clear. He could struggle in Iowa, where social and religious conservatives dominate, unless there are so many more conservative candidates in the race that the constituency splinters and leaves him a wider opening.

No one knows yet just how strong Bush will be in New Hampshire, a state where early handicapping is particularly treacherous and where voters are only too happy to spring a surprise in the final days before their first-in-the-nation primary.

The absence of a Bush-Romney race and narrative, which would have dominated the political discussions and cornered a significant amount of establishment money, now means the GOP more likely will be engaged in a debate about future vs. past, front-runner vs. a field of lesser-known candidates

The space Romney’s departure creates, however, can be a mixed blessing for the others now moving toward running. Had this been a Romney-Bush contest in the coming months, other, lesser-known candidates could have emerged more slowly. Now they, too, will be in the spotlight.

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In hundreds of phone calls that began even before Mr. Romney formally announced on Friday that he was foregoing a third bid for the presidency, allies of Mr. Christie and Mr. Bush began putting intense pressure on Mr. Romney’s supporters to pick a side. And now donors have nowhere to hide, since virtually every contender for the Republican nomination has established a leadership PAC or other fund-raising vehicle in recent weeks, and the candidates are leaning on them to make a commitment.

The next 48 hours, several donors said, could not only answer the question of whether Mr. Bush will face a serious challenge from Mr. Christie for the Republican Party’s establishment mantle. It may also demonstrate whether there is room left for anyone else in the first tier of Republican candidates. “I’ve already had three phone calls from various camps asking me to have them over to talk,” said John Rakolta Jr., a Michigan construction executive and a leading Romney fund-raiser. “I’ve told them I need a weekend to process this all.”

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In interviews, other top Republican donors, both committed and uncommitted in the 2016 race, said they believed a small group of other candidates besides Mr. Bush and Mr. Christie now had an opportunity to claim substantial establishment money. At the top of that list are Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

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For Mr. Christie, competing against both Messrs. Romney and Bush for donors would have been a grim task, particularly given the fundraising networks already in place for both—Mr. Romney from his last campaign, and Mr. Bush from those of his brother and father. Now that Mr. Christie’s field of competition has narrowed, he may have a better shot, donors said.

Ray Washburne, the outgoing Republican National Committee finance chairman who is now helping to run a political-action committee formed by Mr. Christie’s supporters, said he has gotten a flood of calls from Republican donors on Friday, many of them onetime Romney supporters.

“I’ve been working the phones since 7 o’clock this morning with donors who want to be on the Chris team early,” said Mr. Washburne, finance director of the PAC, called Leadership Matters for America. “There are a lot of people who hit the pause button. Now they are making decisions.”…

Mr. Langone said he plans to meet with Mr. Romney in coming weeks to try to win his endorsement for Mr. Christie, saying millions of voters would follow Mr. Romney’s choice.

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[I]t’s not surprising that he considered running for president again. The political vital signs were positive; he could raise the money for the primary and was winning in each of the four early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and even South Carolina, where in 2012 he lost to Newt Gingrich by 12 points. Most importantly, he did well with Republicans across the board, from those who considered themselves Tea Party voters and those who didn’t—a critical sign of broad-based support. Would he have won all four of those early states? No one on the Republican side ever has but given his base of support, he wouldn’t need to win or even compete in each; winning two of the four would have likely put him on a path to secure the nomination…

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Before his call Friday, most political observers were predicting Romney would move forward, which seemed the safe bet. (Though Romney had consulted with a wide range of people while considering the race, only a handful knew of his final decision.) It’s rare that someone who has a very good chance to win a nomination, particularly for an open seat, would pass on the opportunity. But it’s consistent with who Mitt Romney is: a good and decent man, remarkably centered in his family and faith, who really does want what he believes is best for the country. He’s not a candidate driven by some personal anger, desperate to prove himself. If in a wide range of candidates there is a chance for the nominating process to produce a very strong candidate, he doesn’t want to put personal ambition before that possibility.

Outside the intense partisan fire of the election, hopefully more people have been able to get a better sense of Mitt Romney as a person. Yesterday with a bit of graciousness in our “me first” culture, he gave us a little more insight.

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Every election cycle, the candidate most loved by the electorate tends to be the one who never entered the race. For Republicans in 2012, that was Christie. In 2008 it was Cheney or Condi or Jeb.

This year the phenomenon is certain to happen again. And therein lies Mitt Romney’s consolation prize. Now that he’s out, he’s free to actually do what he threatened to do in the primaries: be himself. He can speak out about whatever he wants. He can show up on Fox as it suits him. He can write funny tweets. He can referee the Republican race for the next year, as each of the candidates who spent that last few weeks quietly leaking against him all seek the honor of his endorsement. And as voters and reporters quickly tire over the actual candidates in the race, it is inevitable that sooner or later the very people celebrating Romney’s decision this week will muse about what might have happened if he had decided to run in 2016 after all.

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In that regard, the former governor left just the faintest breath of an opening this week, telling supporters it was “unlikely” he would reconsider a run for the White House. Unlikely, but not impossible. Let’s hope Romney realizes that in some games, it’s way more fun to stay on the sidelines.

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