And the start of the 2016 presidential campaign:
Related: The 2016 Electoral Map
You know where it all starts:
"A provocateur the GOP can’t afford to ignore; Iowa Representative Steve King pulls presidential field to the hard right — and potential peril" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff January 11, 2015
WASHINGTON — Representative Steve King has compared illegal immigrants to livestock. He tried last week to overthrow House Speaker John Boehner for being too moderate. And he was quick to defend a colleague who spoke before a white supremacist group in 2002, saying, “Jesus dined with tax collectors and sinners.”
See: New Congress Off to Grimm Start
King could also play an important role in choosing the 2016 Republican nominee. A politician who delights Tea Party activists, riles liberals, and infuriates the Republican establishment, King is gathering outsized influence in presidential politics as a gatekeeper in the first caucus state, Iowa, and with a following that is attracting even moderates such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
It puts him at the fulcrum of the continuing debate about the heart and soul of the Republican Party. He also illustrates the irresistible tug of conservative activists in the GOP primary — because they have the most energy and can field ground troops and build excitement — as well as the worries that the party will go too far in catering to them.
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In two weeks, King will host a forum in Des Moines that will feature some of the top presidential hopefuls in what is billed as a kickoff to the state’s yearlong evaluation of the presidential contenders.
Among those expected to attend the Iowa Freedom Summit, which is also hosted by Citizens United, are Christie, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, former senator Rick Santorum, and the neurologist-turned-conservative firebrand Ben Carson. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, developer and television personality Donald Trump, and former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin also are planning to attend, but others in the party worry about King’s influence, particularly at a time when some Republicans are trying to use more inclusive rhetoric and broaden their outreach to minorities....
Republican presidential candidates have sought to curry favor with King, sometimes awkwardly.
Senator Rand Paul this summer sat down for dinner with King at a campaign event this summer when an illegal immigrant confronted King. Paul quickly got up from his seat, grabbed his drink, and left with his half-eaten hamburger still on the table.
King hung around, questioning the young woman on whether she knew English and telling her repeatedly that she and her mother had broken the law.
Someone in the background yelled, “Go home!”
King’s rhetoric makes establishment Republicans, even in Iowa, cringe.
Then there must be some good in him.
Iowa has several prominent power brokers — including newly elected Senator Joni Ernst and Governor Terry Branstad — and some suggest that Iowa Republican activists are more pragmatic and less combustible than King....
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Whom the Globe would make king:
"Unlike Mitt Romney in ’12, Jeb Bush makes transparency push" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff January 08, 2015
WASHINGTON -- Jeb Bush is planning to post online some 250,000 emails that he sent while he was governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. The emails are technically already public under Florida laws – and news organizations have examined them -- but he is trying to make them more widely accessible and searchable online.
He is also, according to a report in Politico Wednesday, preparing to release his tax returns.
Making his emails and tax returns public stands in direct contrast with Romney, who has almost no email records from his tenure as Massachusetts governor and whose unwillingness to release his tax returns bogged down his campaign for months.
Romney supporters continue to hope that he will mount a third presidential campaign, and Bush’s early entry into the race was seen as a way to claim the establishment Republican mantle that Romney had four years ago. If Romney enters the race, Bush could make transparency an issue.
The Globe reported in 2011 that Romney’s staff purchased 17 state-issued computer hard drives and purged state government email servers in the final days of his four-year term as Massachusetts governor. Emails were also lost from several of Romney’s cabinet members because they said they were not told they needed to preserve them.
Related: Romney Erased Mass. Records
Just in training to be president is all.
“There has never been an administration that has provided to the opposition research team, or to the public, electronic communications,” Romney told the Nashua Telegraph at the time. “So ours would have been the first administration to have done so.”
Those are the sorts of statements that were seized upon by enemies to criticize Romney as opaque and out of touch.
Unlike Florida, the Massachusetts governor’s office is not explicitly required under state law to preserve its emails and make them available to the public.
Only a handful of emails from Romney himself were discovered through public records requests. The only reason they were available was because the state had inadvertently kept the email account from Romney’s budget chief, Thomas Trimarco. In those emails, Romney used a Hotmail account to communicate with several top advisers.
Bush’s release of emails could also draw a contrast with other potential candidates. Governor Rick Perry’s offices for years deleted emails after only seven days. It keeps copies of e-mails that the governor’s office believes are subject to that state’s public records law, but Perry’s office has maintained that doesn’t include any e-mails reflecting his views or staff discussions, according to the Houston Chronicle.
US Senators disclose very little, and Congress is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, so there would not be an extensive record from opponents such as Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.
Politico reported on Wednesday that Bush was preparing to make an early disclosure of a decade or more of his tax returns. A Bush aide disputed the report, which cited anonymous sources, saying it would be some time before such a decision would be made.
But Bush in the past has released his tax returns whenever he was a candidate, something Romney never did until his 2012 presidential campaign. Under pressure, Romney released one year of tax returns in January 2012, and another year in September 2012.
Romney’s reluctance was seized upon by his opponents, who used it to accuse him of being too wealthy to connect with average voters and question whether he was hiding politically damaging information.
Bush’s campaign has been under early scrutiny that he could have similar problems to Romney, with investment activity in recent years through an offshore private equity fund. Releasing his tax returns soon could snuff out some of that criticism, or get it out of the way early.
That's where the article ends, where it should begin.
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"Mitt Romney ponders another White House run; Tells top donors no time frame for his decision" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff January 09, 2015
WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney told a group of supporters Friday that he is considering a third presidential campaign, according to two people who were present, a decision that could dramatically shake up the emerging field in the 2016 Republican nominating contest.
I guess either no has begged him yet, or Jeb's poll numbers came back lousy.
During a meeting in the New York offices of Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, Romney told a group of about 30 high-level financial executives and former campaign contributors that he was troubled by the current state of foreign affairs and long-term issues with the economy, according to the two attendees.
Romney told the group that his decision had nothing to do with his views of other candidates planning to run, although other sources close to Romney have said that he is not satisfied with the emerging Republican primary field, even with the addition of former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
Some at the meeting encouraged Romney to mount a run immediately, although Romney said that he had no timetable to make a decision.
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Spencer Zwick, who is Romney’s finance director and who attended the Friday meeting in Manhattan, said, “This is a guy who has it in his heart and soul that he could save the country. I don’t believe he will be able to sit on the sidelines — knowing how qualified he is — and just concede the presidency to Hillary Clinton or someone else.”
Check the ego at the door, please.
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Among contributors who met with Romney in New York were Emil Henry Jr., a former Bush administration assistant treasury secretary; Alexander Navab, from the financial firm KKR; Patrick Durkin, a managing director at Barclays; Clifford Sobel, managing partner of Valor Capital Group; and Edward C. Forst, the chief executive of Cushman & Wakefield.
**********
Romney stated multiple times during 2014 that he had no intention of running for president again. “The unavailable is always the most attractive, right?” Romney joked with reporters in June. “That goes in dating as well.”
Ann Romney, who has pushed her husband to run in the past, was more emphatic.
“Done,” she told the Los Angeles Times in October. “Completely. Not only Mitt and I are done, but the kids are done. Done. Done. Done.”
But in the meeting with donors, Romney said his wife was now “very encouraging” of another campaign, according to one source in the room.
But even some of his past supporters are skeptical of his ability to run for president again.
“Romney is history to me. Been there done that,” said John Moran, retired chairman of a large New York-based private investment company and major Republican fund-raiser who raised money for Romney in 2012. “I think the party will look for a new face.”
“I won’t say that Jeb Bush has got it in the bag,” he added. “But almost.”
Bush has been aggressively building his finance team, tapping networks that his father and brother built during their presidential campaigns, as Bloomberg reported that Bush is trying to raise $100 million by April — a staggering figure....
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Related: Mitt Romney’s fight could be harder in 2016
At least he would have home-field advantage:
"Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who is assembling the pieces of a presidential run, met with Boston business heavyweights and former Mitt Romney backers Friday to raise money for his rapidly growing political operation. Bush was hosted by Putnam Investments chief executive Robert Reynolds for a luncheon at the firm’s downtown offices. Former US senator Scott Brown, a longtime Romney supporter who unsuccessfully sought a New Hampshire Senate seat last year, tweeted a photo of himself and his wife, Gail, with Bush, saying they had discussed “2016 possibilities.” The son of one president and brother of another, Jeb Bush has launched a fund-raising blitz in recent weeks for both a leadership PAC and a super PAC. The former two-term governor of Florida, Bush is seen as a candidate who could draw backing from the party’s establishment wing, which helped Romney turn back a number of challenges from the social conservative bloc in 2012. Bush’s Boston stop came as various Republican candidates are hoping to pick off portions of Romney’s 2012 coalition, and particularly his financial network, large swaths of which were rooted in the Boston business world. Also in attendance for Bush’s Putnam visit, according to people familiar with the event, were Bank of America director Chad Gifford, a major Obama donor whose son Rufus was finance director for the president’s reelection; Christopher Egan, founder of Carruth Capital and son of the late US ambassador to Ireland Richard Egan; and Jim Koch, founder of the Samuel Adams beer company."
Also see:
Ex-N.Y. governor Pataki ‘seriously considering’ presidential run
Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina returns to New Hampshire next month
Say again?
That's where they go next.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Mitt Romney crafting a rationale for 2016 run; Focus on poor, foreign policy" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff January 14, 2015
WASHINGTON — In private meetings and phone conversations, Mitt Romney has begun to answer the biggest question looming over his potential entry into the 2016 presidential contest.
Why?
Romney’s stunning change of heart, after two years of strenuously denying he had any interest in seeking the Republican nomination again, appears to have evolved in just the last few weeks. And, just as quickly, he has been developing a rationale for a third bid, say supporters he spoke with recently.
Economic stewardship would still lie at the core of a Romney campaign, as it did in 2012, but he also would seek to turn some past weaknesses into strengths. The candidate — once lampooned for his wealth and caught on video dismissing the 47 percent of voters on government assistance — has been telling supporters he would run on an antipoverty platform. And while a trip abroad proved to be a low point of his 2012 campaign, he is making the case that he is uniquely qualified on foreign affairs.
Underlying it all is the notion that, in the mind of Romney and his top advisers, the country made a mistake in not electing Romney in 2012. They want to give the country another shot at sending him to the White House.
Just what voters love to be told: you were wrong. Yeah, that will win them over.
“If you believe in your heart that this country is going to hell in a hand basket and is worse than ever, you owe it to your country to think about this,” one longtime Romney adviser said. “There’s a burden there to think this thing through carefully.”
Oh, I agree, but much of it is due to Mitt and the $y$tem he has profited from, the one perpetually promoted by the Bo$ton Globe. Looking at it from that per$pective, and considering who the pre$$ is of, by, and for, you would write it that way I guess.
“But there needs to be a rationale,” the adviser continued. “If we made one mistake — and we made more than one in ’12 — it was in not making people understand this is the Turnaround guy.”
Romney’s escalating moves toward a run have created a dizzying atmosphere for his tight-knit circle, filled with conference calls and meetings. While he is facing some skepticism, a tougher road to the nomination, and a fair amount of head-scratching — even among his former network of campaign aides and donors — it is starting to look increasingly likely he will mount a third campaign.
It was here where I did that while wondering why am I reading this?
“I would be surprised at this point if he didn’t get in,” a person close to Romney said.
Romney is planning to speak on the USS Midway aircraft carrier Friday night as part of the Republican National Committee’s winter meetings in San Diego, intensifying his push among party officials after announcing to top financial contributors privately last week that he is thinking about getting in the race.
“Maybe he’s been pushed by people around him for months to run,” one donor who was in the room last week said. “But this feels like a guy who only came to grips with it over a two- or three-week holiday. I really think this was a December decision.”
An impulsive decision?
In the months after he lost the 2012 general election campaign to President Obama, Romney’s advisers began encouraging him to consider another run. Romney batted down the ideas with self-deprecating humor. But behind the scenes, he also continued doing something unusual for a man in self-proclaimed political retirement: He carefully tended to his former network of big campaign contributors.
He called them to check in, met with them whenever he traveled, and shared meals with them.
In recent months, Romney began to express more openness to the idea of another shot.
“Circumstances change. Just ask Barack Obama,” said longtime Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, who has handled communications for Romney’s two previous presidential campaigns and worked for him in the Massachusetts State House. “In Mitt’s case, he’s received an incredible amount of encouragement from people he respects and admires, and as a result, he’s giving the race a second look.
“At home, our economy is still not as strong as it could be, long-term growth is in doubt, wages are stagnant, and around the world there’s deep concern that as America’s leadership has unraveled, hostile forces have filled the vacuum,” he added. “Mitt Romney was right on these issues in the last campaign, and I expect if he runs again they will form the core of another campaign for president.”
Related:
"Romney has has ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the two worked together for about a year at Boston Consulting Group in the late 1970s, after Romney graduated from Harvard law and business schools and Netanyahu from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
Also see: Romney and Netanyahu enjoy a longstanding friendship
And more importantly, they don't trust the Bushes.
Interesting that Romney all of a sudden.... ????
Over the holidays, Romney gathered with his family in the ski resort of Park City, Utah. In between Christmas services with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a Brigham Young basketball game, hanging 22 stockings over a very large fireplace — as well as a chance encounter with Conan O’Brien — the family discussed whether its patriarch should again run for president.
I'm tired of kings, patriarchs, benevolent CEOs, self-appointed dictators called presidents, and all the other trappings of corporate governance, thanks. The self-internalization of their ma$ters values -- at best -- is what makes this propaganda slop so sickening.
Ann Romney, once cool to the idea, shifted over the past few months and is now encouraging her husband to run again, a person close to the family said. Romney’s oldest son, Tagg, has also been encouraging Romney to run for several months. Romney’s other sons have mixed views, but all have said they would be supportive if he decides to get in the race, the person close to the family said.
Spencer Zwick, who has been Romney’s financial director, also has been a driving force. Zwick met with several other candidates over the past year, but he has remained loyal to Romney and has kept in near-daily contact with donors.
“I believe Mitt Romney is too much of a patriot to sit on the sidelines,” Zwick said. “He knows how to do this.”
Thus inferring that if you don't get in you are some sort of traitor?
In December, some of Romney’s former donors began letting him know that former Florida Jeb Bush, a likely candidate, was soliciting them. They suggested that, if he had any designs on running again, he needed to take some action to stem any defections.
Early last week, Zwick began making phone calls to donors in New York. Romney was going to be in town doing business with Solamere Capital, the firm that Zwick runs with Romney’s oldest son, Tagg, and where Romney serves as an adviser.
While in town Friday, Zwick told the financial contributors, Romney wanted to meet in the offices of Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and a former Romney financial supporter.
Inside a glassed-in conference room, about 25 donors sat around a table. Several more listened in on a speaker phone. Hedge fund titan and billionaire Julian Robertson dialed in from New Zealand.
Just the guys we need at the top of government. I mean, they and their ilk have been in charge for decades now and look what good shape the planet is in.
Those in the room told Romney that he needed to outline a clear rationale for getting into the race, and Romney outlined the three issues that were driving him: poverty, foreign affairs, and long-term economic stability.
But nearly an hour of the 90-minute session was devoted to Romney’s past campaign, and what he needs to fix if he runs another. Several were adamant: He had to clean house, and couldn’t rely on the same team as he did last time. Romney agreed, telling the room that he had been led down the wrong path on some things, and his campaign failed to fully articulate his rationale for running.
They urged Romney to be more comfortable in public, to come across like he did in the documentary “MITT,” released last year. Some close to Romney say they’ve seen a looser side to him lately, citing him putting bunny ears over former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown during Governor Charlie Baker’s inauguration.
One of Romney’s core arguments for running in 2012 — as a business executive who could step in as Economic Mr. Fix It — would be harder to make with a vastly improved economy. Romney, in his recent private conversations, has asserted he can make long-term structural changes in the economy to help the middle class.
Yeah, I'm sure Bain has made life wonderful by saddling companies with debt after getting huge payouts for the generous takeovers and sell-offs.
He also has talked about the 50-year war on poverty, launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and about foreign crises, seeking to portray himself as uniquely qualified to address them.
Related: Poverty rate in Mass. highest since 1960
Wasn't Mitt governor once?
Looks like a war that was lost, huh?
If Romney were president, one longtime adviser said, “There wouldn’t be an ISIS at all, and Putin would know his place in life. Domestically, things would be in better shape.”
(Blog editor simply shakes his head)
Romney was criticized during the 2012 campaign for calling Russia the chief geopolitical foe. His supporters felt vindicated a year later when Russian President Vladimir Putin became a global menace.
OMG! This is DISGUSTING and RANK!!!!!
Yeah, the global menace stopped the U.S. invasion of Syria and is protecting eastern Ukraine.
What ABSOLUTELY BIASED and WAR-DRUMMING PROPAGANDA CONTEXT by the piece of crap Bo$ton globe "reporter." No wonder they are such a laughingstock now.
Pointing to polls that have indicated the former Massachusetts governor could now win a head-to-head matchup with President Obama, Romney seems to believe he could convince voters he was right all along.
Yeah, maybe about one thing.
But Romney’s Republican rivals — not to mention Democrats in a general election — would have plenty of ammunition against a self-proclaimed antipoverty candidate who once said in 2012, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”
I'm done firing at this point.
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Related: Will the third time be a charm for Mitt Romney?
The king is dead; long live the king.
