Romney Won't Rule Out Accepting GOP Nomination at Contested Convention

Yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney refused to rule out becoming the GOP nominee again this year at a contested convention. Romney said: “I don’t think anyone in our party should say, ‘Oh no, even if the people of the party wanted me to be president, I would say no to it.’”
This comes in the wake of Romney’s sweeping broadside against GOP front-runner Donald Trump at the University of Utah last Thursday. Via the Washington Times:

Speculation abounded that Mr. Romney was setting himself up for a surprise nomination last week when he unleashed a brutal denouncement of front-runner Donald Trump, urging voters to support anyone but the billionaire real estate mogul in upcoming primaries to force a contested convention this summer in Cleveland, Ohio.

Mr. Romney lambasted Mr. Trump as “a fraud, a phony” in a speech Thursday. “He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.”

On the Sunday talk show, Mr. Romney said he isn’t running and plans to endorse one of Mr. Trump’s three rivals — either Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“I can tell you this: I’m not a candidate. I’m not going to be a candidate. I am going to be endorsing one of the people who is running for president,” he said. “One of the four is going to be the Republican Party nominee. Three of the four are people I would endorse. But I’m not running and I’m not going to be running.”

“Because that speech was so harsh and so intense that it virtually guaranteed that I think both for the Trump people but also for a lot of the Cruz people, that Romney would just plain be unacceptable.”