It’s been a while since Mitt Romney took himself out of the running for 2016 during a conference call on January 30 that Mark Halperin had assured us would show how close he was to jumping right in (guess it did: not close at all!). A couple of weeks before that Paul Ryan allowed as how he planned to stay in Congress and enjoy his Ways & Means chairmanship, at least for this cycle.
But since January it’s seemed the GOP field was going to just grow and grow, didn’t it, perhaps straining the limits of credibility, perhaps passing through the gates of delerium! Candidates who’d never held office and were fired from their last private-sector job! Candidates a step ahead of the process servers! Candidates time had forgotten!
Now, finally, one brief breeze blows in from Michigan (per Politico‘s Alex Isenstadt):
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will not run for president in 2016, according to two sources familiar with his planning.
Snyder, a Republican who was first elected in 2010, has been traveling across the country in recent weeks but has decided against a White House bid. One source close to Snyder said he’d expressed concern about the time commitment needed for a national campaign.
The timing may not have been entirely coincidental:
The decision came one day after a Snyder-backed ballot initiative went down to defeat by an overwhelming margin on Tuesday. The initiative would have raised sales taxes to pay for roads funding.
Yeah, noting like a failed tax increase initiative to remind you that excited crowds may not greet your first trip to Council Bluffs.
Still, it’s a bit of a shame that for this cycle, at least, we won’t find out how well national audiences would respond to Snyder’s trademark slogan: “One Tough Nerd.”
Too bad.
