Mitt Romney: 'I'm not running' for president in 2016
Source: USA Today
Mitt Romney is not running for president. Really, he says.
For those who are into parsing the 2012 presidential nominees statements on whether hes going to suit up again for a White House bid, Romney added another during an interview with Bloomberg Politics.
Im not running, Im not planning on running and Ive got nothing new on that story, Romney told Mark Halperin.
The will he or wont he speculation flares up every time Romney gives an interview, producing statements in which he seems to open the door a little to the possibility. The Washington Post produced an interesting timeline of Romney statements on this subject, which is a fun read.
Read more: http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/10/07/mitt-romney-president-bloomberg-politics/
tridim
(45,358 posts)TheNutcracker
(2,104 posts)Cannot live through another Bush!!!
Don't forget the 23 reasons Jeb should not run!
The shopaholic: Customs agents detained Bush's wife, Columba, in 1999 at the Atlanta airport and fined her $4,100 for failing to declare the more than $19,000 in clothes and jewelry she'd purchased in Paris.
The addict: In 2002, Bush's daughter Noelle was arrested for trying to purchase Xanax with a bogus prescription. In rehab, she was caught with a "white rock like substance" thought to be crack cocaine. Between 1995 and 2002, she racked up seven speeding tickets, five other traffic violations, and was involved in three wrecks.
The stalker: In 1994, Bush's eldest son, George P., broke into his ex-girlfriend's house. After fleeing her father, George returned to the scene and drove his SUV into their front lawn. His ex told the police that young George had "been a problem" since the breakup. Her father declined to press charges.
The other son: In 2000, cops discovered Bush's 16-year-old son "Jebby" boffing a 17-year-old girl in a car in a mall parking lot. The police reported the incident of sexual misconduct, but Jebby wasn't arrested.
The black sheep brother: Volumes have been written about Jeb's siblings, especially former president George W. Bush. But his brother Neil, who helped bankrupt a savings and loan and once toured Asia with the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon while he was promoting the development of a 51-mile underwater highway between Russia and Alaska, will give reporters plenty to chew on.
The fraudster: In 1986, Camilo Padreda, who had been a counterintelligence officer for Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, hired Bush to find tenants for office buildings financed with US Department of Housing and Urban Development-backed loans. Bush took the gig, despite the fact that four years earlier Padreda had been indicted for embezzling $500,000 from a Texas savings and loan. Those charges were dropped, but in 1989 Padreda pleaded guilty to defrauding HUD of millions. (Bush was not involved in that scam, and it's unclear whether he was aware of the savings and loan indictment when he teamed up with Padreda.)
The international fugitive: In 1986, Miguel Recarey, who'd done 30 days in jail for income tax evasion in the 1970s, paid Bush $75,000 to help him find a new headquarters for his health care company. The company never moved, but while Bush's father was serving as vice president, Bush lobbied the US Department of Health and Human Services to help Recarey access millions in Medicare funds. Bush also helped arrange for Recarey's company to provide free medical care to the Nicaraguan contras. Recarey was later indicted for a massive Medicare fraud scheme but fled the country before trial. He is now an international fugitive.
The bribery case: In 1988, Bush formed a company with GOP donor David Eller to market water pumps manufactured by Moving Water Industries, another Eller business, to foreign countries. The company used Bush's White House ties to drum up business. In 1992, at the behest of MWI, the Export-Import Bank approved $74 million in US-backed loans to Nigeria to buy water pumps from Eller's company. The Justice Department later alleged in a 2002 civil suit that about $28 million of those loans were used to bribe a Nigerian official. Bush was not implicated, but in November 2013, a jury found MWI guilty of making 58 false claims to the Export-Import Bank on its applications for the Nigerian loans. A federal judge fined the company $580,000. Bush escaped testifying after the judge determined his testimony wouldn't be relevant to the central issue in the case.
The fortunate son: Cuban American real estate developer Armando Codina was the Florida chair of George H.W. Bush's unsuccessful 1980 bid for the GOP presidential nomination. He loved the Bush family so much that when Jeb first moved to Miami in the early 1980s, he made Bush a partner in his real estate company and gave him 40 percent of the profitseven though Jeb had no real estate experience or money to invest. In 1985, Bush and Codina bought an office building partially financed by a savings and loan that later failed. The $4.56 million loan went into default, but federal regulators gave Bush and his partner a pass. Instead of foreclosing, they merely asked them to repay $500,000 of the loan. Taxpayers picked up the rest. In 1991, Bush and Codina sold the building for $8 million.
The shady company: In 2007, Bush joined the board of InnoVida, a building materials-manufacturing startup founded by a businessman whose previous company had gone bankrupt under suspicious circumstances. Bush and his fellow board members subsequently failed to notice that InnoVida officials had used forged documents to fake solvency, hidden the company's financial problems, and misappropriated $40 million. The company's Maserati-driving founder eventually went to jail for money laundering, and investors lost their shirts when the company went bankrupt in 2011. Last year, Bush agreed to repay the $270,000 he was paid by the company as a consultant to reimburse defrauded investors.
The Big Finance fail: Bush signed on as a paid adviser to the financial giant Lehman Brothers in 2007, just as the firm was on the brink of collapse. The company hoped he would use his political ties to rescue it, but he couldn't even convince Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to throw some money into that pit.
The terrorist: In 1989, Bush successfully lobbied his father, who was then serving as president, for the release of Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, who allegedly orchestrated the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people in 1976 and other terrorist attacks. Bosch, who was in a federal prison on an immigration violation and dubbed an "unrepentant terrorist" by then-Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, was a cause célèbre for Miami's influential Cuban populationa voting bloc that Jeb needed to launch his political career.
The black vote: During his first failed campaign for governor in 1994, Bush was asked in a debate what he would do to help African Americans. "Probably nothing," he replied. In 2000, his administration purged 12,000 eligible voters from the rolls because they were incorrectly identified as convicted felons. More than 40 percent of them were African Americans.
The welfare wife: During his 1994 campaign, Bush said that women on welfare "should be able to get their life together and find a husband."
The Playboy bunny: In 1999, Bush appointed Cynthia Henderson as his secretary of business regulation. Bush later transferred Henderson, who had worked her way through law school as a bunny at the St. Petersburg Playboy club, to another job in his administration, after she got caught taking a trip to the Kentucky Derby on a corporate jet owned by a company she regulated and accepting lodging and tickets to the event from an association of race track regulators. (Henderson's boyfriend, a Florida real estate developer, eventually paid the cost of the trip.) Rumors that Henderson and Bush were having an affair forced him to publicly deny philandering. (Now, I'll tell you a state senator told me that Columba caught him in the act with Cynthia Henderson, and that is why she shopped in Paris and lied to customs agents, to embarrass the governor! Whatever, they both lack character! Character matters~)
The socialist: While at the elite prep school Andover, Bush was briefly a member of the socialist club. He also smoked pot.
The failed charter school: After wining just 4 percent of the black vote in his first failed run for governor, Bush teamed up with the Greater Miami Urban League to start Florida's first charter school. In 1999, the state implemented a school grading system at Bush's insistence. His own charter school received a D. By 2008, the school had earned a C- and was $1 million in debt; the state shut it down that year.
The shady charter school operator: In 2010, Bush gave the commencement speech for the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, an Ohio online charter school owned by William Lager, a big GOP donor who has served on Bush's Digital Learning Council, which promotes for-profit online schools like ECOT. (Lager's companies have also sponsored conferences hosted by Bush's education foundation.) The school was far from a model for the future. At the time Bush gave his speech, ECOT's graduation rate had never exceeded 40 percent. A 2001 state audit found that though the state had paid the school tuition for more than 2,000 students one month, only seven students had logged on to ECOT's computer system. When state auditors couldn't find the rest of the school's alleged student body, ECOT was forced to repay Ohio $1.7 million. School founder William Lager's private companies have earned more than $100 million from online schools that perform worse than any of Ohio's worst brick-and-mortar public schools.
The cheaters: In 2010, Bush and his education reform organization, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, created a group of school superintendents and other high-ranking officials called "Chiefs for Change" to advance the Florida model of education, which emphasizes accountability and emphasized giving schools letter grades based on performance, especially standardized test scores. One of the original eight chiefs was accused of inflating the grade of a lackluster charter school funded by a Republican donor. The office of another was caught manipulating test score data.
The IRS complaint: In October, a New Mexico advocacy group filed a complaint with the IRS alleging that Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education failed to disclose thousands of dollars it paid to bring public school superintendents, education officials, and lawmakers to the group's events, where they had private "VIP" meetings with the foundation's for-profit ed-tech company sponsors. The complaint alleges that Bush's foundation disguised travel payments as "scholarships" to hide the fact that the nonprofit was facilitating lobbying between big corporations and public officials. The IRS has not commented on the complaint. Bush's foundation issued a statement dismissing the allegations as politically motivated.
The immigration book: Last year, Bush published Immigration Wars, a book that took a hardline position against a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. After going on TV to push the book's anti-path-to-citizenship positionand being accused of having changed his position to avoid offending the tea partyhe quickly reverted to his previous stance of supporting citizenship.
The Reagan comment: In 2012, Bush said publicly that Ronald Reagan would have had trouble getting his party's presidential nomination todaymeaning that the tea party had driven the GOP too far too the right. He told editors at Bloomberg, "Back to my dad's time and Ronald Reagan's timethey got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support." Reagan "would be criticized for doing the things that he did."
The mother: In April, former First Lady Barbara Bush appeared on the Today Show and said that her son would be "by far the best qualified man, but
we've had enough Bushes."
Cirque du So-What
(26,032 posts)declare himself King of Kapitalism and Ann can be Queen of the fookin' May.
Erose999
(5,624 posts)Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)IDemo
(16,926 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)At least according to half the people still hoping Warren is going to run after being told point blank 1500 times she won't...
lunasun
(21,646 posts)onehandle
(51,122 posts)That ain't Mittens.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)if he were to run after saying this, his reputation for straight talking would be jeopardized.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)told him to STFU, that's why he's backing off. Just an opinion. Plus the snowball in hell metaphor relating to his chances of being elected comes into play. Yet I remember he got 47% of the popular votes when he did run. Lot of deluded dummies out there. Say's a lot about the american voter.
SunSeeker
(51,811 posts)TlalocW
(15,394 posts)He really didn't enjoy the experience last time, and I don't mean just the losing bit of it. I'm sure it gets to be a grind for a person who actually likes people like Obama and Clinton, but when you've gotten everything you've ever wanted without really having to work at it, to have to go and plead his case in front of the peasants probably really irked him.
However, I think it's 50-50 that as 2016 gets closer, his ego gets the better of him, and he enters the race.
TlalocW
calimary
(81,608 posts)Particularly like the part about his having "to go and plead his case in front of the peasants." "The Great Unwashed and the 47 Percent." Yeah, he'd have to talk at least some of "those people" into voting for him because he doesn't have enough followers in the elite class to get a clear majority of the vote. That's probably the hardest part for him. He's spent a lifetime not having to deal with "those people." He'd have to deal with them directly every day in some way if, Heaven Forbid, he ever won. I imagine that makes it entirely NOT worth it for him.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)That's one often-repeated statement from him I do believe. He will run again if he believes he is called, and for what purpose DID God put him in his very high position within the Mormon community, gift him with his special abilities and supportive wife, and channel enough wealth to him that he can fund his own campaigns? Mormon kids in our neighborhood while we were raising our own were being told they would see the second coming of Christ within their lifetimes, and we're a few decades further on now...
BTW, remember the extra $2 billion he promised to add to the military budget -- OVER what the Pentagon requested -- when he was elected? What all was THAT about?
WI_DEM
(33,497 posts)Oh wait, the 53% voted for Obama.
still_one
(92,526 posts)dembotoz
(16,866 posts)fast stroll or maybe a prance like her horses
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)Enjoy your car elevator and leave us alone.
hibbing
(10,114 posts)liberal N proud
(60,352 posts)If his lips are moving, he is lying.
Rhinodawg
(2,219 posts)surrealAmerican
(11,369 posts)You can pretty well count on most things he says to be lies.
TeamPooka
(24,303 posts)Skittles
(153,310 posts)Aristus
(66,530 posts)This is not a guy who changes his mind...
jonjensen
(168 posts)I will now have to take this bumper sticker off my car!
calimary
(81,608 posts)Glad you're here! And you'd have to take the testimonial live dog off the top of your car, too.
SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)I mean, look at all the people on DU who insist that Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders are going to run for President in 2016, even when they repeatedly insist they aren't............Just sayin'.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)Nobody would vote for him!
oldandhappy
(6,719 posts)Sarah did the same thing but no one called!
C Moon
(12,226 posts)Now suddenly, he talks like he was NEVER planning on running?
Yeah, right: he's probably burying something in his backyard. As soon as he puts the shovel away, he'll say he's in.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)I guess America still isn't ready to put a vulture capitalist in the White House.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)I think Mitt thinks that we think that Mitt thinks he is like Hillary, and that we should all be scared that he might try to run again.
I just wish Mitt would quit pissing all over his chances this way.
I mean, he could be a little more optimistic about his chances next time.
Things could change before then that would get him into the race, Joe Biden might say something stupid, or Obama might do something uncharacteristic of himself long before the 2016 election season even begins!
So, I don't know why Mitt has such a rainy-day attitude about running again.
Shit, it wasn't like he was ever going to become the President anyway.
Not in real life. Maybe in his head, but not in real life.
I don't know.
Maybe next time he can get someone with real power, like Rush Limbaugh, to be his running mate.
I think he needs to adopt a different attitude about his future prospects.
Nobody is going to vote for a guy that is wishy-washy like this.
Maybe he needs a life coach at this stage in his life.
I think maybe he needs some tiger blood.
lanlady
(7,136 posts)Now STFU! And for Pete's sake, get a real job.
Third Doctor
(1,574 posts)I really wanted to see him run again. He was such a lying scumbag last time it was entertaining. Oh well...
mahina
(17,770 posts)Brigid
(17,621 posts)Signed and notarized?