Romney announces he won’t run for president in 2016

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced Friday that he will not run for president in 2016, cutting short a third run for the White House two weeks after he publicly announced his interest.

'After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I've decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee,' Romney said in a call to supporters Friday morning.

Romney won the Republican nomination in 2012, after an unsuccessful run in 2008, but lost to President Barack Obama.

His renewed interest was greeted with some resignation by many Republicans, who blame him for not toppling Obama in a race they saw as winnable. But he retains a measure of personal popularity in the party, as well as gratitude for his work in 2014 on behalf of Republican candidates.

Romney's first public comments about a possible third race came Jan. 16, during a gathering of Republican National Committee members on the aircraft carrier Midway in San Diego harbor.

He said then that if he ran again he would change his focus to poverty, income inequality and foreign policy.

'I believe in the post-Obama era we need to stand for safety, and for opportunity for all people, and we have to stand for helping lift people out of poverty,' Romney said.

He took after Obama and likely 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. He also alluded to the 10 years he spent as a Mormon bishop, an experience he rarely discussed in his two earlier campaigns.

On Wednesday night, Romney spoke at Mississippi State University, where he again criticized the president and Clinton. After Obama made an oblique reference Thursday to Romney's new poverty focus, Romney tweeted out a response: 'Mr. Obama, wonder why my concern about poverty? The record number of poor in your term, and your record of failure to remedy.'

But even some former aides said the new focus was a difficult one for Romney, whose 2012 campaign was riddled with comments seen as less than supportive of the needy.