Mitt Romney Quotes

In our system today, many people don’t have to win general elections; they just have to win primaries.

You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.

Conventions don't nominate people anymore. Primaries do.

The political parties have no role except to stage the conventions, where you celebrate a decision that's already been made elsewhere.

I will continue to work with the Republican Party to try to encourage primaries.

We don't win or lose elections because of [party] rules.

The people who vote in the primaries are at the ideological edge of their party.

Party machinery is not a fortuitous development, but is the direct result of the requirements of practical politics. The necessity of nominating candidates for offices leads inevitably to the development of caucuses and conventions.

The only way to win the White House, in my view, is to become a nominee of either the Republican or the Democrat Party, and simply running to be a spoiler would not give the American people, I think, the chance to express their own views about Mr. Trump or about Secretary Clinton.

A great many of us have been concerned about the presidential nomination system... whether or not we have drifted into a system that simply doesn't work so well any more.

Needed reform of the nominating procedures has been thwarted by the individual vested interests of the DNC members in maintaining the maze of primaries and caucuses.

I strongly favor shortening the campaign season and putting more primaries and caucuses on the same day, preferably regionally.

Every election is important for national politics.

Voting third-party in 2016 meant choosing The Green Party's Jill Stein, the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, or Independent Candidate Evan McMullion.

You have to remember that in a state like Florida, independent voters will decide the election.

I think it would be an extreme poverty indeed if there weren't more than one person willing to compete for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect.

Nevertheless, I don't hesitate to say that elections in Germany are decided in the center, not on the fringes and not in the accumulation of minority interests.

Any politician who wants to run for president will come to me in a few years.

Elections have consequences.

If we go by the National Popular Vote, we'll get more people voting.

I have never understood the Iowa caucus.

A lot of people criticize the primaries, but I think they are absolutely essential to the education of the President of the United States.

Political elections are not life and death.

Presidents are not elected in these crowded halls, with cheering thousands. They are elected by the fireside in November.