Paul Ryan Says He Won't Run for President if Romney Does

The 2012 Republican nominee for vice president, Paul Ryan, pledged that he would not try a run for president himself in 2016 if former running mate Mitt Romney jumped into the race once again.

The congressman from Wisconsin insisted that if Romney ran, he would support the former GOP nominee for president.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Ryan said, “I would support Mitt. If he were to run, I would not. But I don’t even know if I’m going to either myself. That’s something I’m going to decide in 2015.”

Ryan would not make the same promise for any other potential candidate. For other candidates Ryan said he would assess their candidacy later, “But Mitt Romney, I’ll definitely answer that one, because I think he would be a great president, and I would defer for sure to Mitt.”

Still, Ryan thinks that Romney won’t run. “He thinks his time has come and gone. He wants other people to get into the race,” he said.

Ryan also said that he thinks Romney isn’t behind any of the renewed talk of another run at the White House. “He’s not trying to start this buzz, he’s not trying to mount another comeback,” he claimed.

But there is an awful lot of reason to doubt that Romney has firmly decided against yet another run at the White House. Romney seems to have gone from a sure “no” to a newly minted “maybe.”

Romney’s most recent reply to the question of a 2016 run is “we’ll see what happens.” That is hardly a firm no.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com