Mitt Romney said Sunday that he won’t take another shot at the White House.
The former Massachusetts governor said there are plenty of strong GOP candidates in contention for the 2016 nomination, and that he won’t attempt to join them.
“No, I’m thinking about the people who I want to see running for president, and there’s quite a group,” Romney said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “We have a very strong field of leaders who could become our nominee and could stand up for the kind of leadership I think America wants.”
{mosads}He did not name names.
Romney, a Republican primary candidate in the 2008 presidential race, won the GOP nomination in 2012, but was defeated handily by President Obama.
Romney minced no words Sunday when it came to criticizing Obama’s track record, particularly on U.S. foreign policy in the face of an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria and Russia’s recent invasion of Crimea.
He also revealed that, while he might not be eying the White House himself, he’s ready to do his part in going after potential Democratic candidates. Indeed, he was careful to associate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with what he called the “failed” policies of the Obama administration.
“Effective leaders typically are able to see the future to a certain degree, and then try to take actions to shape it in some way,” he said. “And that’s of course what this president has failed to do, and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well.”
Reminiscing about GOP of the past, Romney said he’s confident that the Republicans can return a candidate to the White House in 2016. And he vowed to help them get there.
“A lot of people are looking back to the 1980s and saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we had leaders like Ronald Reagan and George Bush and Jim Baker and George Shultz and some of the strong presidents and secretaries of State that led us during very difficult times?’ ” he said.
“I think we have those kinds of leaders in the party, and I wholly anticipate that I’ll be supporting one of them very vigorously.”