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In January, when Mitt Romney was asked if he'd run for president for a third time, he responded by repeating the word "no" 11 times. But according to a Wednesday report from the Washington Examiner's Byron York, that may have been premature. "Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging '16 Republican field, and carefully weighing the pluses and minuses of another run," York reports. "That doesn't mean he will decide to do it, but it does mean that Mitt 2016 is a real possibility."
York adds that Romney "is said to believe" that, apart from himself, only former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has a shot at winning the White House for the GOP. Bush has said he'll decide whether or not to run by the end of the year. If he opts not to, there will be no clear establishment favorite in the declared field — and an obvious opening Romney might be able to fill.
In the past 100 years there have only been three major party nominees who have lost the presidency and then been re-nominated for another try. They are Thomas Dewey, who lost to FDR in 1944 and again to Truman in 1948, Adlai Stevenson, who lost to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 — and Richard Nixon, who lost to JFK in 1960 and beat Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
Correction: Added Adlai Stevenson to the list of presidential losers who went back for another try.
