Mitt Romney, despite his denials, could still decide to take another run at the White House, according to Ed Rollins, the former national campaign director for the Reagan-Bush '84 campaign.
"I don't think at this point I would rule it out. The key thing he can do, that no other candidate at this point has proven they can do, is raise the kind of money you need," Rollins told Joe Concha, guest host of Thursday's "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
"There's a lot of big financial supporters who were in his camp last time who don't have a new candidate … to run," Rollin said.
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Rollins, a longtime Republican political analyst, said a presidential candidate needs a $150 million war chest to win the primaries.
"[Romney] can certainly do that pretty easily. Everybody else has to struggle to do that. And then it's going to be a $2 billion campaign," he said.
"He and his affiliates raised about $1.3 billion this last time, so he's got a campaign organization in play and they all have a vested interest in convincing him to run.
"My sense is there will be more and more of that pressure as the game moves forward. I've been around politics. There's no frontrunner on our side — it's wide open," Rollins said.
Speculation about a comeback for two-time presidential candidate Romney, who lost to Barack Obama in 2012, was given renewed life when a CNN poll showed voters would vote for Romney if the election were held today.
In the CNN/ORC International poll, Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, would beat Obama 53 percent to 44 percent. In 2012, Obama defeated Romney by a 51 percent to 47 percent margin.
At the same time, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll found Romney the chosen candidate with 35 percent of likely GOP Iowa caucus voters.
In an interview aired Wednesday on Fox News, Ann Romney was asked directly whether her husband would consider another run for president. She didn't rule out the possibility that he might be seen on the campaign trail in 2016.
"Mitt and I, at this point, are not making plans," Romney told host Neil Cavuto, adding that she believes people now recognize "that Mitt was right, and that feels good."
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