Romney: 2012 bid 'always a possibility'

by Mark Silva

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and venture capitalist who spent millions of his own dollars on a 2008 campaign for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, says running again for the 2012 party nod is "always a possibility.''

"You really don't think about that until the time comes when you need to make a decision,'' Romney says in an interview that will air Wednesday morning on FOX and Friends - wife Ann Romney says in the interview that they have "at least a year'' to make that decision.

"It's always a possibility, and you keep the options open, but, you concentrate on the task ahead, for me that's trying to get some good people elected in 2010,'' says Mitt Romney, well aware that his Romney-PAC fundraising and spending on fellow Republicans is a great way to boost his own base for a 2012 campaign. "And, I know once that's done, the next item on the agenda is what's 2012 going to be. And Ann and I will give that some thought and make the decision then."

Romney has one thing going for him: A solid marriage. That's been lacking in some of the other erstwhile Republican candidates for president down the road - South Carolina's Mark Sanford, Nevada's John Ensign. And certainly we should be mentioning Democrat John Edwards in this context - the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president in 2004 lost any hope of another bid for the top of the ticket in 2008 after his affair with a campaign videographer was revealed.

Romney's wife, like Edwards' wife, has battled with breast cancer. Ann Romney speaks of that long-private battle in her appearance.

"We're kind of an open book -- uh, no one protects our life,'' Mitt Romney says of him and his wife. "Look, Ann and I have been in love since we were in high school... She sunk the hook very, very deep, and I am still, I am still very much on her line, and she has captivated me from the very beginning - we're very much in love."

The public, however, apparently is not as in love with President Barack Obama as it was at the start of his term - and that, too, offers a Republican such as Romney ample food for thought.

"I had higher hopes for him,'' Romney says of Obama in the FOX and Friends interview. "I knew he was a smart individual I thought that he would learn that governing from the middle was the right way to go, as president Clinton learned his second term, but he's made a lot of the mistakes that ideologues often do, which is thinking that everybody in the country voted for their extreme agenda."

(Photo courtesy of FOX News. For more of the interview, read on:)

"I think the American people recognize that Barack Obama has taken us in a direction which has not made America stronger or more prosperous, or more free,'' Romney maintains. "He's weakened America, and that's a course which Americans immediately recognize is the wrong way to go...What he's done in America has not been popular."

Romney says this of a potential Republican rival in 2012, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the party's '08 vice presidential nominee, whose Going Rogue memoir and rhetoric have raised questions about possible third-party (TEA?) intentions:

"I don't know what her plans are, but my expectation is that she'll stay in the Republican Party. Look, she's a great, energizing member of the party. She has good ideas that have galvanized a lot of support for the party and she's a welcome addition."

He says this of his religion, having had to directly address his affiliation with the Mormon church during his first campaign:

"I think it's a liability for some and an advantage for others. For some people they look and say, "I like having an individual who is a person of faith.' For some people, it may be a liability if they feel it's a faith that they're not familiar with.... I frankly think for most Americans, they don't judge a candidate by what church they go to, they judge the candidate by the things they believe, their positions on issues, their capabilities, their skills."

The ever well-coiffed Romney, a trait for which John Edwards once was ridiculed, says this of his good hair:

"If you put enough glue, everybody's hair could be perfect - yeath, it just grows in the wrong direction, it grows down the middle of my face unless I stick it back there... I'm not planning on a different hairdo for any purpose... After growing up in a household with five boys.... no one has ever suggested I'm too perfect."