{"id":6413,"date":"2014-09-08T01:11:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T01:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/08\/mitt-falls-far-short-of-saying-no-to-2016-run\/"},"modified":"2014-09-08T01:11:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T01:11:09","slug":"mitt-falls-far-short-of-saying-no-to-2016-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6413","title":{"rendered":"Mitt falls far short of saying &#039;no&#039; to 2016 run"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Don&#8217;t believe Mitt Romney&#8217;s non-denial about whether he wants to run for president one more time.<\/p>\n<p>The 2012 Republican presidential nominee told Fox News Sunday&#8217;s Chris Wallace that &#8220;I am not running. I have no plans to run.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>OK, Mitt. That ain&#8217;t one of those Shermanesque statements, you know, where you&#8217;re supposed to say &#8220;If nominated I won&#8217;t run; if elected, I won&#8217;t serve.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.politico.com\/blogs\/politico-live\/2014\/09\/romney-195006.html?hp=r6<\/p>\n<p>Mitt says he&#8217;d be a better president than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats&#8217; presumed frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. He also says he&#8217;d\u00a0do better than the man who beat him in &#8217;12, President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p>Mitt told Wallace that his time had &#8220;come and gone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hey, doggone it, he still hasn&#8217;t said he won&#8217;t run under any circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>These non-statements about political futures are so frustrating. Politicians keep saying they &#8220;have no plans&#8221; to do something, then turn around and do what they said they have no plans to do.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with that non-statement is the verb &#8220;have.&#8221; It&#8217;s a present-tense verb that doesn&#8217;t rule anything out, say, for <em>tomorrow<\/em>. Or the next day, or the day after that.<\/p>\n<p>I remember in 1988 I asked\u00a0the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen if he would consider running as Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis&#8217;s running mate on the Democratic Party presidential ticket. Sen. Bentsen said his plate was full serving as Texas&#8217;s senior U.S. senator. He never actually answered directly: yes or no. Turned out he was dodging. Dukakis selected him to run with him for the White House.<\/p>\n<p>Bentsen had an out. He was able to run successfully for re-election to the Senate that year.<\/p>\n<p>Is Mitt Romney really and truly not going to run for president in two years?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard nothing from him that says &#8220;not just no, but <em>hell <\/em>no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don&#8217;t believe Mitt Romney&#8217;s non-denial about whether he wants to run for president one more time. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee told Fox News Sunday&#8217;s Chris Wallace that &#8220;I am not running. I have no plans to run.&#8221; OK, Mitt. That ain&#8217;t one of those Shermanesque statements, you know, where you&#8217;re supposed to say &#8220;If &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6413\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mitt falls far short of saying &#039;no&#039; to 2016 run<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,18],"tags":[540,2140,2805,3022,3101,4980],"class_list":["post-6413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","category-state-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-hillary-rodham-clinton","tag-lloyd-bentsen","tag-michael-dukakis","tag-mitt-romney","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}