Mitt Romney

What kind of day has Tim Pawlenty had? The kind where your value on the Intrade Republican vice-presidential future markets shoots up by more than 50 points -- while your chief opponent's stock plummets by 31. The Minnesota governor is now trading roughly where Joe Biden was just before word of his selection by Barack Obama broke.

Karl Rove apparently phoned Joe Lieberman last week and demanded that he withdraw his name from consideration as John McCain’s running mate, a request that the Connecticut senator ignored. (For what it’s worth, Rove – as is his wont – denies this.) This prompts the question: If McCain ultimately decides not to pick Mitt Romney for VP, might Rove’s intervention be the reason?

Rove has made no secret of his support for Romney as McCain’s VP. He is not alone in this among powerful Republican establishment figures, many of whom (whether openly or quietly) preferred Romney back in the primary season.

But why are they so adamant? A logical explanation: More than usual, this year’s Republican VP nomination is seen as a stepping stone to the 2012 nod – especially if the nod goes to Romney, who already laid a solid groundwork for a ’12 campaign this year.  read more »

On Tuesday evening, inside the Pepsi Center in Denver,  the Media Mob had a moment of clumsiness, involving Karl Rove's laptop computer.

It was a few short hours before Hillary Clinton was to address the delegates. The green room of the Fox News sky box inside the arena was buzzing with activity. Energy was high. The quarters were close.

The Media Mob was sitting on smallish couch conducting an interview with Fox News' dynamic anchor Megyn Kelly, who is reporting from the floor of the Pepsi Center, throughout the convention. A laptop computer, the screen flipped open, rested on one arm of the couch behind me.  read more »

tomscocca (9:40:01 PM): How come Mitt Romney showing up in Denver means GOP Serious About Attacking Obama rather than Despised Has-Been Begs for Attention?

For most of the summer, Biden contracts were trading at around 10 on the Intrade political market, while Evan Bayh contracts traded much higher – peaking at 40 about 10 days ago. But look at what’s happened in just the last day, as the media has begun portraying Biden as the most likely selection.

Other notable values on the Democratic V.P. market: Tim Kaine is now trading at 15.4, which is actually up slightly from yesterday, and Kathleen Sebelius is at 14.8 – almost a five-point jump for her from yesterday. Hillary Clinton is at 9.3, unchanged from yesterday. But maybe we shouldn’t read too much into this: Wesley Clark is at an absurdly overvalued 13.8.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney is top at 31.1, followed closely by Tim Pawlnety at 29.9.

In an interview on Fox News today, Mike Huckabee registered his objection to the idea of Mitt Romney joining this year’s Republican ticket.

“Mitt Romney has had very definite swings of positions— not just one or two little things, but on many of the issues,” Huckabee said.  He later added: “I think that there are better choices for Senator McCain, that would have the approval of values voters.”

Huckabee’s concerns, it’s probably fair to assume, have a lot more to do with 2012 then with 2008. Both Huckabee and Romney saw their reputations enhanced by their campaigns this year, and each now has high name recognition and a sizable following within the G.  read more »

Last week, I pretty much wrote off the idea that John McCain will offer his running-mate slot to Mitt Romney. I probably shouldn't have. (Talk about a flip-flop ...)

My reason for dismissing Romney was simple: The political style he exhibited in his own presidential campaign -- abandoning just about all previously held principles in an effort to hew to every conservative interest group's issues checklist -- fundamentally violated McCain's sense of propriety and honor. This went far beyond, in my estimation, the usual hurt feelings and sour grapes that campaigns produce. So why, I asked, with all the options that he has, would McCain actually give Romney his No.  read more »

The case for Mitt Romney as John McCain’s running mate is strong and very easy to make.

He’s well known, popular with the party base, a strong performer on television, and would bring big bucks, vigor and youth (or at least the appearance of it – he is 61, after all) to a Republican ticket that desperately needs all three. Plus, Romney’s corporate background would offer badly needed cover to McCain on the economy, while his family name could boost the ticket in Michigan and his Mormon faith could help in Colorado and Nevada. Factor in the apparent lack of all-star VP options for McCain, and the former Massachusetts governor’s prospects only seem to brighten.  read more »

This just came in from the McCain campaign:

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today announced that John McCain and Governor Mitt Romney will hold a media availability in Utah on Thursday, March 27th.

The release goes on to note that the event will be at 2 p.m. at the Million Air F.B.O. in Salt Lake City.

CNN is reporting that Mitt Romney will endorse John McCain at an event in Boston at 3:30, and that he is going to ask his delegates to support McCain as well.  read more »

The McCain campaign just announced that Gary Bauer has endorsed John McCain. Bauer is the onetime president of the Family Research Council, founder of the Campaign for Working Families PAC, former presidential candidate, and an enthusiastic supporter of traditional marriage and turning over Roe v. Wade.

His endorsement should help soothe some of the conservative rebellion against what seems like McCain’s inevitable path to the Republican presidential nomination. It also seems like a bit of a blow to Mike Huckabee, whose wins this weekend were a sign of support from social conservatives. Huckabee had just earned the endorsement of James Dobson.

Release after the jump.  read more »

The race for the 2012 Republican nomination is on, with the two early leaders—Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee—using this year’s campaign, in very different ways, to position themselves for what many in the party privately believe will be an open nomination.

Granted, it’s somewhat premature to discuss the 2012 race when John McCain, who is now the presumptive nominee, actually leads Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (slightly) in some polls. If McCain wins in the fall (and seeks a second term at age 76) then there probably won’t be any room for Romney or Huckabee or anyone else four years from now.

But the same was true back in 1996, when Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes came up short in the primaries and immediately started laying the groundwork for follow-up bids in 2000—even while publicly professing that they expected Bob Dole to be running for reelection that year.

Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee are well aware of the G.O.P.’s tendency to nominate the candidate whose “turn” it is, a pattern that—in a very roundabout way—has reaffirmed itself with the success of Mr. McCain, the second-place candidate from the last open Republican contest. In fact, George W. Bush is the only non-incumbent Republican since Barry Goldwater to win the presidential nomination on his first try.

And with Mr. McCain emerging as the nominee and quite possibly facing defeat in the fall, the race between Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Romney seems to be on to play the next-in-line role in 2012.

There was no accident in the setting Mitt Romney chose to end his 2008 presidential bid. In front of some of the right’s truest believers at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, he presented his withdrawal as a patriotic act of self-sacrifice, sparing his party a protracted nomination fight and freeing Republicans to unite against the Democrats and “a surrender to terror.”

He might just as well have announced his ‘12 candidacy on the spot. The CPAC attendees represent the conservative activists who Mr. Romney tried mightily to unite behind his candidacy this year. He had some success, but not quite enough. Now he has four years to try again.

More after the jump.  read more »

OK, so let's assume for the sake of this exercise—or maybe just because we feel like it—that Michael Bloomberg is still actively considering a run for president.

Conventional wisdom was that Bloomberg would be more likely to run if Romney, who had fashioned himself the conventional, party-line conservative in the race, became the nominee, leaving moderate Republicans and Republican-leaning independents up for grabs. So now that he's not around to stand in the way of John McCain, a presumptive nominee with, presumably, much wider appeal, what effect could it have on Bloomberg's calculation?  read more »

The Log Cabin Republicans just sent out a gleeful email (subject: We Did It!) saying they "led the way" in pushing Mitt Romney out of the G.O.P. race and today "a great day for the Republican Party."

Email after the jump.  read more »

In part, Mitt Romney was simply accepting reality—rather than spending millions more from his own pocket to fight it—when he suspended his campaign today.

With John McCain's delegate lead, the G.O.P.'s delegate distribution rules, and the lingering presence of Mike Huckabee, there was simply no plausible way for Romney to beat out McCain for the nomination.

But his move, which he couched in terms of party unity, could also be seen an effort to preserve his viability for 2012, should McCain go down to defeat this fall.  read more »

After hearing that Mitt Romney would likely drop out of the Republican primary, Michael Bloomberg told reporters at a press conference in Midtown this morning that he felt "sorry" for him, and hoped he would stay active in public life.

"It's sad because I know how much they've tried and they put their heart and their soul, and in many cases, their personal wealth into it," Bloomberg said. "They believe they can make a difference.  read more »

Mitt Romney just withdrew from the race for the Republican presidential nomination after a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primaries—he won the states he has lived in and a series of not particularly contested caucuses.

In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Romney noted that he "hates to lose" but is withdrawing because "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win."

He also said, "we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism!!"

Full text of the speech after the jump.  read more »

Mark Halperin is reporting that Romney will drop out of the race, possibly making his announcement at Conservative Political Action Conference today.

UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that Romney will suspend his campaign.

Following John McCain’s victory in Florida last week the chorus of McCain-hatred grew louder on talk radio shows and on many conservative blogs.

Rush Limbaugh declared that McCain was not conservative and unacceptable as a candidate. Formerly respectable conservative figures took delight in criticizing McCain’s war record—yes, his war record—by tallying up the number of planes he had lost in combat. Ann Coulter and James Dobson, a social conservative leader and head of the Focus on the Family organization, declared McCain so indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton, the featured villainess in any conservative drama, that they would vote for her or stay home.

In short the McCain villifiers doubled down on their bet that they could derail McCain and lift their favored alternative, Mitt Romney, to victory.  read more »

Each of the Republicans can claim some kind of victory tonight, but the big winner is clearly John McCain-–with a major assist from Mike Huckabee.

John McCain won the most delegates today, with a tally that could reach as high as 600, depending on how California shakes out (it has more than half of the number needed to clinch the nomination). McCain did win the most states, but his delegate total was additionally padded by victories in some large winner-take-all states, like New York and New Jersey. He can also claim a win in the South (Oklahoma), along with a string of close second-place finishes in that region (which netted him a bundle of delegates, since those states award their delegates proportionally). His California victory makes for a powerful statement for the kind of day he had.  read more »

With tallies still outstanding from California and a few other states, NBC has Barack Obama leading the day's pledged delegate county, 594-546. (Slightly closer than the Obama campaign’s reported estimate.)

On the Republican side, the numbers are less clear, but NBC is predicting that John McCain will receive between 400 and 600 today, while Mitt Romney will grab between 150 and 400, and Mike Huckabee will finish with about 200.

To raucous cheers, Mitt Romney just boasted that he's now won all of the states in which he has lived: "Michigan, Massachusetts and Utah."

He didn't mention New Hampshire, where he is a part-time resident (a summer home in Wolfeboro) and where he lost the Republican primary to John McCain.

With John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney all moving on after Super Tuesday, the next contests will be this Saturday in Louisiana, Washington State and Kansas.

With the strength he has shown in his home region tonight, Huckabee could parlay his strong Super Tuesday performance into Louisiana and Kansas. Washington would be a more natural fit for McCain, although Romney has been trying to pitch himself as a "western" candidate. (This Saturday's contest in Washington is caucus, however, which probably won't matter as much as the primary, which is 10 days later).  read more »

Mitt Romney is expected to speak shortly. Notably, he is doing so before California's results come in. Delegates are awarded proportionally there, but Romney could very much use a win. This has not been a very good night for Romney, since he was blocked out of contention across the South by Mike Huckabee. But it has not been nearly as disastrous as some had forecasted, since McCain's victories (outside of Oklahoma, perhaps) might be limited to blue states -- furthring the contention of some on the right that he is the favorite candidate of moderate and liberal Republicans only.  read more »

As a fuller picture of the results in Southern states emerges, it now appears that Mike Huckabee has undermined Mitt Romney's campaign. Romney, whose last-ditch strategy involves trying to rally the party's conservative base around him in opposition to John McCain and his supposed crimes against conservatism, badly needs a handful of wins in states like Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Missouri -- places where his new message should most resonate. But Huckabee's regional and cultural appeal in those states threatened to steal the voters that Romney is targeting.  read more »

The biggest news for Republicans at 8:00 is that Massachusetts has been won -- decisively -- by Mitt Romney. John McCain has campaigned in the Bay State, hoping to capitalize of disaffection with Romney from Republicans who feel he abandoned them as governor to pursue his national ambitions. McCain had the backing of two former Republican governors -- Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift (who was pushed out of the corner office by Romney in 2002) -- and hoped to benefit from residual goodwill from 2000, when he blasted George W.  read more »

That Barack Obama has won Georgia is no surprise. That he apparently has won it by such a large margin -- perhaps exceeding 70 percent of the statewide vote, if early reports are true -- is a shock, and could portend trouble for Hillary Clinton nationwide tonight. Georgia's Democratic electorate, like South Carolina's, is about 50 percent black, and Obama has apparently won this constituency overwhelmingly.  read more »

Another example of the enduring John McCain-Mike Huckabee alliance and its consequences for Mitt Romney: Huckabee just won the West Virginia State Republican Convention thanks to an assist from McCain.

Romney targeted West Virginia, where a vote of the 1,100 delegates at the state G.O.P. convention determines which presidential candidate will receive all 18 of West Virginia's delegates to the national convention.

More after the jump.  read more »

John McCain has been steadily rising in the polls for many weeks. But today, it looks like he may be on the verge of losing California--even though just one week ago he led the state. Here are a few points that could help make sense out the Golden State Republican primary.

1) Immigration. A Field Poll, the gold standard for California polling, released two weeks ago found that 40 percent of G.O.P. primary voters pegged illegal immigration as the top issue -- perhaps not a surprise given that California, a border state, once embraced Proposition 187, which barred state spending on illegal immigrants and their children. Romney has courted these voters relentlessly in this campaign, consistently attacking McCain for his support of comprehensive immigration reform -- or "amnesty," in the rhetoric Romney has adopted.

More after the jump.  read more »

Yesterday Bob Dole came to the defense of John McCain in a letter to Rush Limbaugh that hailed McCain as a "mainstream conservative."

In a television appearance this morning on Fox & Friends, Mitt Romney told the host, Dole is "the last person I would want to write a letter for me."

Now, McCain is returning the favor. His campaign just issued the following statement:

"Governor Romney's attack on Bob Dole is disgraceful, and Governor Romney should apologize. Bob Dole is a war hero who has spent his life in service to this nation and nobody has worked harder to build the Republican Party. Bob Dole deserves the respect of every American and certainly every Republican.

Full statement after the jump.  read more »

Democrats

Barack Obama:

At a minimum, Obama needs to keep the overall delegate count relatively close, so that even if he falls behind Hillary, he won’t be in a position where he needs to sweep the rest of the primaries and caucuses to catch up. Even though delegates are given out proportionally at the district level, Obama also needs to win multiple states in different regions to make a statement about his national viability.  read more »

When John McCain and Mike Huckabee forged an informal alliance just before the Iowa caucuses, skeptics called it a fleeting marriage of convenience.

With an assist from McCain, Huckabee would fend off Mitt Romney in Iowa, thereby wounding Romney and creating an opening for McCain in New Hampshire. Then, with Romney marginalized, McCain and Huckabee would call off their truce and tear into each other in a one-on-one battle for the nomination.

That’s not quite how it’s worked out, though.  read more »

Mitt Romney is in danger of losing his home state next Tuesday.

The former Massachusetts governor is on bad terms with numerous rank-and-file Republican voters in his own state, the result of the widely-held perception that Romney essentially abandoned them halfway through his governorship.

The Massachusetts Republican universe is small -- less than 15 percent of voters are party members -- and turnout in next Tuesday's primary could be comparatively microscopic, particularly if independents vote in the Democratic primary. Polls have shown Romney leading John McCain, who won the state overwhelmingly against George W. Bush in 2000, by about 15 points.

But those surveys were conducted before McCain's recent string of successes. Now, even Romney's top Bay State backers are admitting that defeat is at least possible. "Senator McCain will probably run well in the Northeast. Governor Romney will run well around the country," former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, a Romney supporter, told the Boston Herald today.

More after the jump.  read more »

Let’s start by stipulating the obvious: Mitt Romney is absolutely correct when he complains—as he did repeatedly throughout last night’s final pre-Super Tuesday Republican debate—that John McCain has intentionally and maliciously misrepresented Romney’s publicly stated views on the Iraq war.

It was in the closing days of the Florida campaign that McCain threw Romney on the defensive with charges that the former Massachusetts governor had favored a troop withdrawal—or “surrender,” as McCain prefers—last year at this time.

This was an utterly flimsy assertion, if for no other reason than this: Romney’s entire campaign has been premised on cozying up to the conservative base, even if it means reversing positions and attitudes that he’d held for years. Splitting with a Republican White House—and the party base—over a matter of war in the early days of a primary campaign was never in his playbook.

But as the Florida results showed, McCain's was also a highly effective tactic, one that Romney protested furiously when the two met in California for last night’s debate.

“Raising it a few days before the Florida primary, when there was very little time for me to correct the record…sort of falls in the kind of dirty tricks that I think Ronald Reagan would have found to be reprehensible,” Romney harrumphed last night with McCain sitting just a few inches to his right.  read more »

As my delayed plane waits for a green light to take off from Orlando, this Mitt Romney supporter is currently snoring on my shoulder. His t-shirt says "Woodstock Coalition of Aggressive Conservatives."

Rudy Giuliani’s former rivals are already pouncing on his donors.

Barron Thomas says that in the last day, he has received calls from the Huckabee, McCain and Romney camps, seeking his money, and the money of his many friends.

He says that he’s still undecided and told me, “I picked Rudy because I thought he was the best candidate.”  read more »

Here are some excerpts from John McCain's speech after his victory in the Florida Republican primary tonight, as prepared for delivery.

On Florida:

I have always loved this beautiful state, from the time I was a young naval aviator learning my trade in Pensacola to the time I commanded the largest air squadron in the United States Navy at Cecil Field. Most of all, I have always been indebted to Florida friends and neighbors in Orange Park for taking such good care of my family while I was away on a longer than expected tour of duty. Florida has always been a special place to me, and it is all the more so tonight.

On his opponents:

I offer my best wishes to Governor Romney and his supporters. You fought hard for your candidate, and the margin that separated us tonight surely isn't big enough for me to brag about or for you to despair. Governor Huckabee and his supporters, as always, brought to this campaign conviction and passion and something we don't always have enough of in these contests, good humor and grace. And I want to thank, my dear friend, Rudy Giuliani, who invested his heart and soul in this primary, and who conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is.

More after the jump.  read more »

Mitt Romney has become this year's answer to Mo Udall, the Democrat who tried and tried and tried to breakthrough in the 1976 primaries but always came up just a few inches short.

Romney has had chances to claim the momentum in the Republican race in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and now in Florida. He has done well in each of them, but—like with Udall 32 years ago—never well enough to claim victory. To date, Romney's only win (not counting his uncontested and largely meaningless victories in Wyoming and Nevada) came in Michigan, where his family name and native son status yielded an easily dismissed triumph over John McCain.

Meanwhile, McCain has scored outright victories in three fiercely contested primaries: New Hampshire, South Carolina, and now Florida. By winning Florida, where independents are barred from the G.O.P. primary, McCain has demonstrated that he can succeed even without what is perceived as his political base, and can now be declared the clear front-runner on the Republican side.

The Republican race will now move quickly. In seven nights, 22 states will hold primaries and caucuses, an opportunity for McCain to deliver a knockout punch to Romney, whose relatively narrow defeat tonight will allow him to press ahead with his campaign.  read more »