Wednesday, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) made the announcement as to whether he will run for office again in 2024.
It has been one of the more anticipated announcements, considering the friction that took place between Trump and Romney during the Trump administration.
Most of us expected Romney to retire, but he has been playing games about it for months.
On Wednesday, he finally decided to end the drama and say that he would, in fact, be retiring. However, in that announcement, he put a challenge to Joe Biden.
In announcing that he would not be running, Romney used Biden's own words against him and asked Trump to step aside to turn over the country to the next generation.
Romney stated:
"President Biden, when he was running, said he was a transitional figure to the next generation. Well, time to transition.
"I think it would be a great thing if both President Biden and former President Trump were to stand aside and let their respective party pick someone in the next generation … I think both parties would be far better served if they were going to be represented by people other than those of us from the baby boom generation."
Heading into this month, it was pretty clear why Romney was going to step aside.
Unlike most of his career, this run in office has been brutal for him. Utah is an uber-conservative state, and his open battle with Trump crushed his approval ratings.
Until August, Romney had been underwater for most of his term, struggling to stay above 40%.
Recently, on running again, Romney had stated:
“What I’m trying to do is to decide whether I can get some things done that I care about. In other terms, how productive can I be?
“Because our state deserves someone who can actually get things done, work across the aisle if need be to accomplish things, and I’m getting a sense of whether that’s going to be something that I can do in another term.”
However, that changed recently, rising from 40% in May to 56% in August, when I saw that jump, I actually thought he would run again.
I think the battle with Trump has just gotten to be too much for Romney.
If you noticed, the more he stays quiet, the better his approval rating gets, and with Trump running for office again, there is no way that Romney would be able to keep quiet. Honestly, I would not be surprised to see his approval ratings dip again in the next set of polling with the shots he just took at Trump.
Now that we know he is retiring, I expect to see Romney become a big player for Ron DeSantis in the 2024 race, but I am not so sure that is a good thing for DeSantis.
He has tried to keep himself away from the "establishment." Still, DeSantis and the establishment are both trying to beat Trump, so DeSantis will have people that he does not necessarily want endorsing him as this moves forward.
It is going to make for a very interesting run-up to Super Tuesday, that's for sure.
