In Mesa, Mitt Romney douses talk of convention-floor comeback
Former GOP presidential candidate was in the Valley to endorse Sen. John McCain's re-election
- Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, endorsed Sen. John McCain's re-election in Mesa
- Romney rejected talk of a plan to nominate him again from the floor of the 2016 GOP convention
- Romney called McCain, R-Ariz., a "lion" in the Senate. "He roars and people listen"
Mitt Romney on Saturday did his best to squelch talk of a secret plan to again nominate him for president at next year's Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
"Please let me know who's doing that and I'll have a word with them. I'm not running," Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, said after officially endorsing U.S. Sen. John McCain's re-election at a rally at Dobson High School in Mesa.
"There are a number of people who I support, who I think would be terrific presidents, whether it's Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham or Carly Fiorina. The list goes on and on. ... We're going to see how the process works out and I expect that we're going to be very happy."
Romney early on took his name out of contention for the 2016 race, but BuzzFeed News reported Thursday on a "secret plan" by "wealthy donors and die-hard loyalists" to nominate him from the convention floor. Other national reports have suggested that Republican establishment figures are so rattled by the success of GOP front-runner Donald Trump's outsider campaign that they are already bracing for a potentially nasty brokered convention.
"I'm heading the 'Draft Romney' campaign," quipped McCain, an Arizona Republican and the 2008 GOP White House nominee.
McCain and Romney share the distinction of being the two Republicans who lost to President Barack Obama: McCain in 2008, and Romney in 2012.
As he did during a 2010 appearance at Mesa High School, Romney asked Arizona voters to send McCain back to the U.S. Senate for another six-year term.
McCain is "a great senator for Arizona," but also "a critical senator for America," he said.
"What America needs is more of John McCain conservatism -- that's what makes America great," Romney told the crowd of about 1,000 people. "This is a man who will do everything in his power to keep America safe.
"... He is a lion in the Senate. He roars and people listen."
McCain has been criticized as too liberal by some elements of the Arizona Republican Party, which formally censured him in 2014. This election cycle, McCain is facing Kelli Ward, a Republican state senator from Lake Havasu City, and three other GOP rivals -- Alex Meluskey of Scottsdale, David Pizer of Mayer and Clair Van Steenwyk of Sun City West -- in Arizona's 2016 GOP Senate primary.
Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., is the leading candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination.
During the 30-minute rally, Romney and McCain both took quite a bit of time during the rally inside the Dobson High gym hammering Obama over foreign-policy and national-security issues.
"By the way, is there anybody in this room that thinks that this country wouldn't be one heck of a lot more secure with President Romney?" McCain, the Senate Armed Service Committee chairman, asked from the stage.
Later, after saying the dangerous world situation demands that the United States elect a Republican president in 2016, McCain mischievously teased: "Maybe we can say, run, Mitt, run?"
Both McCain and Romney have been on the receiving end this year of potshots from Trump, the celebrity billionaire who has topped national GOP polls for months. And the two have criticized Trump, too.
Trump and McCain engaged in a high-profile feud in which Trump stoked controversy by ridiculing the former prisoner-of-war McCain's status as a war hero. He also has repeatedly slammed Romney for blowing the 2012 election against Obama.
During the rally, McCain said that Obama's planned influx of up to 10,000 refugees from Syria, which is in the midst of a brutal civil war, should be put on pause to make sure Islamic State terrorists are not infiltrating their ranks.
After the event, McCain told reporters that the American public needs to have confidence that the U.S. anti-terror screening system works, especially after the Dec. 2 terrorist mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. But he rejected Trump's call for a temporary ban on all Muslims coming into the country.
"We seem to be worrying about what Mr. Trump says about immigration, when this president has been an abject failure and San Bernardino was just the biggest attack on the United States of America since 9/11," McCain said. "We've got to get our priorities straight."
Romney said he has confidence in his party's presidential-nomination process.
"In the months ahead, you're going to find that the American people do what they typically do, which is vote for people who call on the best of the American people," Romney said. "We look for our leaders to call us to be greater than we otherwise might be, and that's what we're going to find in our nominee."
Romney and McCain were joined on the Dobson High School stage Saturday by Cindy McCain, the senator's wife, and junior U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and his wife, Cheryl.
Saturday's McCain-Romney rally was the third big political event on the Dobson campus in recent years. In February 2009, Obama spoke at the school, delivering a speech on the housing-mortgage crisis. In March 2010, McCain appeared there at a re-election rally with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
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