The Friday afternoon following Mitt Romney’s decision not to enter the 2016 campaign fray, my radio show was booked solid with journalists who, like me, were trying to read the “invisible ink” in Romney’s announcement, which I had obtained and posted a few minutes before the 2012 nominee began his call with donors. Getting such a scoop was a fine thing for me, but 2016 not getting Romney’s participation in the primaries is a disappointment to his legion of supporters and and every political journalist in the land who longs for an “open convention” in Cleveland in the summer of 2016.

That “open convention” is still very much a possibility but it needs the arrival of one or two more serious candidates to make it so with Romney gone, and despite Jake Tapper’s caution that Romney’s announcement had not been Shermanesque, I think the former Massachusetts governor has gone from would-be king to king-maker.