during the halftime show. >> will she be wearing anything? we know she will. yes, all right. >> andy scholes, have a great time. thank you so much. and thank you so much for starting i don't remember morning with us. make great memories today. >> "inside politics" with john king starts right now. mitt romney leans in and abruptly bows out. no third white house run in 2016. >> it's best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee. >> jeb bush is the instant winner, but who might benefit most in the long run. plus, president obama prepares to budge if it raises spendsing and rallies his base. >> we need to stand up and go on offense and not be defensive about what we believe in. >> republicans say the president is in denial about last year's election results. what about their own promises? >> so, yeah, there have been a couple of stumbles.

>> "inside politics," the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. welcome to "inside politics" i'm john king. thanks for sharing your sunday morning with us. here is jackie ka sin fish, michael len, wanda summers and jonathan martin of "the new york times." for the past three weeks he looked like a candidate, certainly talked like a candidate but, no, there will be no mitt 3.0. >> i also believe with the message of making the world safer, providing opportunity for every american regardless of the neighborhood they live in, and working to break the grip of poverty i would have the best chance of beating the eventual democratic nominee, but that's before the other contenders have had their opportunity to take the message to the voters. >> former massachusetts governor mitt romney on friday bowing out of a race many were convinced he

was about to join. why? let's start with the why. he publicly said i'm seriously considering. he told donors, go tell your friends. he could have done this privately and then said no. why get so publicly out there and say, never mind? >> of course. that's why so many republicans think this whole exercise was so selfish. jonathan was telling us there was three weeks, seems like there's been three months that we've been on the romney watch. you look at his statement when he pulled out and the three words that jumped out to me were we could win. so the rich people who were talking to him, the people from his inner circle were convincing him there was a shot but there was no external encouragement and i think you'll agree, the strengths of jeb bush was a big part of what caused him to pull back. >> in fact, there was external discouragement and a lot of it. there were many people in the party who publicly in stories that lots of us wrote in the weeks after mitt stuck his head back up who said, no mas. privately he had a lot of phone

calls with top gop donors who if not directly at least subtly made clear to him they weren't up for another ride on the horse. >> his aides, his donors all going elsewhere, mostly to jeb, and the romney folks saying, we had the voters, we didn't have the elites. they were in fact misaligned. >> no question that the immediate winner is jeb bush because jeb bush was already building establishment support, taking away people in camp romney last time, key staffers, key activists or key money people. mitt romney on the way out, can you not read this as a shot of jeb bush. >> i believe that one of our next generation of republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as i am today, one who has not taken their message across the country, one who's just getting started may well emerge as being better able to defeat the democrat nominee. in fact, i expect and hope that to be the case. >> help me here, jackie. next generation? next generation.

>> right. >> same generation may not be as well known as i am today. bush is a pretty well known name in the country. >> right. >> why? >> he's not -- he's never been -- he hasn't been a fan of jeb bush. he's made that abundantly clear. he doesn't think he can win. now this gives mitt romney the ability to be a king maker. now he moves into party elder. that's why you see him meeting with christie. we'll see him with rubio. >> that doesn't sound like chris christie either. >> maybe marco rubio. >> the mitt primary. his first public political move was to have dinner with chris christie. now, again, chris christie is not even an official candidate but he's doing everything it looks like he's going to give in. is that a romney slap at bush? i know chris christie is his friend. it's odd public that that's your first move. >> it is a little bit of odd public posturing. this is a big win for chris christie as well with jeb bush in the race, with mitt romney in the race it would have been very

hard for him particularly on the money side to carve out. does mitt romney do anything immediately after this dinner he's had. i don't think that will be the case. people come to kiss mitt's ring and what role he plays next will be a fascinating story in this presidential campaign. >> i predict he won't endorse anybody. the people around him say he wants to, as you call him a king maker, wants to preserve his dignity. he pulled the plug just in time so he didn't get embarrassed as jay martin would say. he wants to help the rnc. he wants to be a big help to whoever the nominee is. he's going to do what he should have done before. >> john, this is somebody who was so haunted by what went wrong in his campaigns. i was with him last week in mississippi when he gave a speech at mississippi state university. in his comments in that address, and also in a more extemporaneous comments he made at a barbecue where he was with the coach of mississippi state, it was increasingly clear that

he had spent the last couple of years consumed with what had gone wrong, complaining of the political process, focus on what you say instead of what you did and your record, talking about the fact that the parties, the party was too focused on the primary voters instead of -- >> welcome to the nfl, right? like that's proof that he shouldn't be -- >> but i think that was what was driving his desire for one last go. i figured it out now. i know what i did wrong. i figured out -- >> i was right. >> i figured out the process. i was right. now i'm going to do it and i'm going to get it right this time. >> you had to wonder how much of it was a reaction to the documentary mitt. >> sure. >> he looked like a person. it brought out a part of romney that we didn't get to see, even the people that followed him around all the time. i think that had to be a part of it, too, because it got such a strong reaction. >> if they had always seen the real me. i think that was fed by that documentary. the fact that he got some adulation on the campaign trail last year. what so many people in the party

said mitt was in danger misconstruing regard for him as the party's last nominee, as the guy had a ran against obama as a desire for him to run again. there was and is a difference. >> respect versus affection. >> there's a lot of republicans actively exploring or thinking about running. if you looked at the field in 2012, you looked at those guys on stage it was clear ron paul was not going to be president, michele bachmann was not going to be president. mike huckabee's run before, rick santorum has run before. three freshman senators in rand paul, cruz and marco rubio. john kasich might get into this. scott walker is leaning pretty far forward. some others i'm for getting. rick perry is running for a second time. very credible field. does anyone else benefit here? i would put walker forward. he's acceptable to the tea party and the establishment. if you have three big names on the establishment side. fair point? >> absolutely. i completely agree.

i think you see that in some of the people that are around him. he's hired rick wiley. he's hired some other people that were mitt people. i think that he's really building. he is coming up right now. walker is so hot right now i guess is how i would say it. >> does it hurt rubio in the sense that rubio's thing was if you've got a romney/bush race he can run as the younger guy and come through. what as romney says next generation. >> i thought rubio's play was a generational play. but also vs mitt, christie and jeb in the race would have let rubio run as a conservative. and say i'm not the establishment guy that you think those guys are. this will create a mad scramble for mitt's donors here in the weeks to come and i think it does open up some space on the center right wing of the party. but there are so many days here before we're actually going to know where the period and the voters are. this is the money primary. the actual primary won't come for a year. >> as we look at the end of this

week, beginning of the next, there's no camp that feels better than rubio after his great day at the koch primary in palm springs. scott walker clearly won iowa. rubio because he was serious, because he was prepared, because he was knowledgeable, those big check writers really liked it. >> the big question now in the republican race is does jeb bush get off the launch pad? we know he's popular with done knows. mitd gone, he's going to sign up donors. does jeb get off the launch pad with actual voters? his first trip to iowa and new hampshire will be important to see. >> even with that romney is a fascinating fight within the republican field, geography. fascinating look going forward. i want to close with this one. you wrote about the debate inside camp clinton. she doesn't have a formidable opponent. this is almost a coronation. there's a debate whether she should tell us for sure. she's running, she's running,

she's running. should she tell us officially from her lips in march or april or you say there are some people close to her, presumably this is her saying, why rush? maybe i'll wait until july. why? >> very strong argument for waiting. if you look at the polling of both republicans and democrats and their focus groups, the biggest vulnerability for secretary clinton is when she looks political. people like her better when she's the former secretary of state, when she's in statesman mode. as soon as she becomes another candidate people are reminded of the things they don't like about her, don't like about the clintons. so the argument is let's wait as long as we can. they've been thinking early april. they want it to be at the beginning of a quarter so they can get that blockbuster number. as the temptation, maybe we'll do an exploratory committee in april and do the real thing in july but the push back to that and the reason that they may pull back from that is that the worst thing for her would be to look like she's taking it for granted, look like she's

treating it as a core nation. that's what hurt her so badly. >> republicans will be playing up that angle. she's taking that time. she doesn't want to earn your vote. you can hear it already. >> people want to fight her or work with her. >> new hillary campaign will be different than the old hillary cam pain. it will be interesting to see the public in fighting of the old campaign. you only get one. everybody sit tight. up next, president obama unveils his budget tomorrow. republicans are already up in arms saying the last thing voters embraced in november was higher taxes and more government. first, politicians say the darndest things. bill clinton might call it a garden of eden take on campaign 2016. would you be first fellow? would you be mr. and mrs. presiden presidents? is there a proper -- have you thought about this? >> no but, you know, if you call it -- a president is a man you call the president's spouse first lady so we'll have to cross this bridge if a gay

couple ever -- but let's say if a woman became president we could -- i could be called adam. grandpa bode, grandma said you used to really... control. i guess i did take some risks. anncr: bode, bode miller!!! trained a little bit differently. a little too honest sometimes. the media is useless. you were out of control. but not always.

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republicans are holding their 50th or 60th vote next year to repeal or undermine the affordable care act, i've lost count at this point. something easy to remember. if that bill ever actually reached my desk i would happily veto it. if they try to unravel new rules to make sure wall street recklessness doesn't hurt families again, i'll be happy to veto it. if rather than try to solve the

problem of a broken immigration system, they compound the problem, i'll veto it. >> welcome back. listening to a defiant president obama rallying democrats with promises to oppose just about everything republicans claim is their mandate after their big november election. in his budget coming out tomorrow, monday, the president will call for higher taxes, spending. is the president tacking left now to test the political climate. what about that wanda summers? it's been said since the state of the union address. yes, we have the fighting obama back. he's defiant. the republicans say, mr. president, we've got a bigger house majority. we took over the senate. we won 31 governorships, this is not what the voters want. >> they're completely dismissive of the idea of the fighting obama. i talked to one after the state of the union. what do you think of the speech, particularly the president's tone and the way he addressed

congressional democrats. they got kicked up and down the line. nothing looked good for them in the house, nothing in the senate. sure, he has to get the team's fired up to fight them. he wants to keep his team rallied up, that's great, but at the end of the day he has to work with congressional republicans they think if he wants to get anything done the last couple of years. they want to see him engage in actually governing as opposed to this fighting back and forth. >> that's part of the big question, does the president want to get anything done or does he come to the conclusion i can't get much done so we democrats are going to do to them what the republicans did to him, which is essentially get in the way and clog up the system and get to the next election because for the republicans when they did it in 2009 they knew a mid-term in 2010. if you're the democrats now, can't you say 2016 the presidential year demographics history tells us we're in better shape? >> all the evidence is beaten. you stack the deck in your question. we see the president both what

he's saying in washington and when he's on the roads very much saying what they wish they had said before mid-terms. politico said in a survey that they wish this middle class economics theme had been much more prominent. they wish there had been more conversation about the progress that had been made. the president is going to keep doing that. he feels like his bottom was the day of the mid terms. he's been coming back since then. you talk to people in the white house, they feel the best that they've felt in a long time. no reason to take their foot off the gas. >> it's not only what he says but what he's doing or not doing. what i've heard from republicans, he is a dopesy in the white house. if there were some under the radar, i'm going to make this speech to rally the troops, that doesn't exist. >> what about the republicans? whether it's faux defines or faux mojo or whether it will get anything done, he's doing what he's doing. his numbers are back up around

50 perce 50%. you saw john boehner. they're saying they are going to prove they can govern. there are tangent debates about abortion and what are they going to do about immigration and dhs funding. why are they in such a rutt? >> we'll get to the end of january and they will the only bill that will have passed is terrorism risk insurance. not the big, bold agenda. >> the problem is they haven't reconciled with more conservative members. they haven't figured out how to herd the cats. that's one of the draw backs to having such a large conference is you have to get them all to agree and it's really hard. we saw pelosi have trouble and now john boehner is having trouble. >> the leaders calling governing conservatives. a lot of the members elected in the last five or six years, opposition conservatives. they were sent here to "pose

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let's head around the "inside politics" table and ask our reporters for a nugget or two of information and a super bowl prediction. >> first the notebook. republicans in disarray. the establishment is really concerned about getting the department of homeland security funding bill passed. they don't really have a strategy because they don't know how their members are going to

react. they have an encroaching deadline. they are really figuring out the best way to cave. whether that means letting it go off the cliff or whether it means running off the cliff and coming back, they all kind of think they're going to cave. best way to do it. >> best way to cave. patriots, right? >> i mean, you know, aren't the -- >> that's where the country is. >> seahawks were america's team, right? >> what? what? >> sorry. i don't know. i'm a brown's fan. >> so there's one word that we have not said during this entire show and that word is rand. he's saying, don't forget me. so as he looks ahead to the next couple of weeks we're told that rand paul is going to travel every weekend going forward. he's not going to do many cattle calls. everybody else was in iowa last weekend. he's in iowa next weekend because he can draw a crowd on his own. he's in texas this weekend. something that he's doing as he travels the country is meeting

with physicians. they are thinking that a way to bring in some people who are not necessarily politically active who can give, who can talk in the community, he's talking to fellow doctors as he goes around. there's been a lot of conversation here about rand's new message, he's back to red meat. he is a doing a liberty event. his big rally is audit the fed. that's the reddish meat. on the super bowl show us your old school cuff links. >> tight shot. >> get one for you there. >> is it too late to take the packers for this weekend? >> too late to show the packers. you have ties to the northeast. >> ducks didn't work. seattle. >> one of the first things the house will do when they return tomorrow is to vote yet again to repeal obamacare. this is different than the scores we've watched and covered relentlessly before. this time a lot of republicans in this new congress, many of them freshmen from conservative

states, particularly in the south, have to actually vote for something that's now in play that is actually getting people in their district whose votes that they're going to need health insurance. this vote's a little bit more politically interesting than we're giving a lot of credit for. this will never get signed by president obama but this could put some republicans who in two more years will have to run again in a really, really tricky place if they have poor constituents betting. >> jonathan? >> well, the move by mitt not to run is really going to make new hampshire a crucial state. iowa is filled with a lot of conservatives, especially evangelicals. you could see somebody from the christian right come out of iowa. all eyes on new hampshire. i'm told that immediately after mitt made his move on friday the jeb folks started to figure out how can we get true key operatives in that state, jim meryl and tom rath.

both new hampshire pros. they stayed loyal. john i'm a john king guy so i'm going with the patriots. >> appreciate the loyalty. >> pandering is not okay in politics but it's fine here. i'll close with this. a bit of a fallout. won't be long before we do get a better sense of how governor romney's decision jumbles the competition for support in the first primary state. several i'll call them longer than long shots are heading to new hampshire over the next few weeks, including get your pen out george pataki of new york, jim gilmore and bob urlich. make it maybe it's getting easier to list those who are not testing the waters. rick perry is coming back to new hampshire and chris christie. new hampshire would be critical to the new jersey governor especially with romney on the side linings. with talk of a clinton coronation, camp christie likes new hampshire more and more because independents can vote in

either primary and they might find the republican race even more interesting. a lot of fun even with governor romney on the sidelines. that's it for "inside politics" again. state of the union starts right now. isis strikes again and mitt romney closes the door on 2016. i'm dana bash and this is "state of the union." isis says it has beheaded a second japanese hostage. a video released by the terror group appears to show the decapitated body of japanese journalist kenji goto. this comes one week after his fellow captive was beheaded. will ripley, what's the reaction in japan? >> reporter: dana, people here are deeply saddened by this awful end to this crisis which has gripped the country. there was hope a