Romney to the Rescue? Again?

Well, he thought about running, then met with Jeb, and apparently decided that the party was in good hands with Jeb.

Now some of his supporters are saying he's not quite so certain of that.

Gabriel Sherman at New York magazine:

As Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican presidential race, frustration and panic have become high enough to make some inside the party Establishment pine for a candidate they roundly rejected as recently as January: Mitt Romney. Romney himself has become one of Trump's most vocal detractors inside the party. "He’s someone to whom civility means a lot. The whole Trump thing really bothers him," a close Romney adviser told me -- and some Romney-ites are only too happy to talk up the prospect of their man jumping into the race if the Establishment fails to stop Trump...

"Mitt wants to run. He never stopped wanting to run," a senior member of his 2012 team told me. Other Romney-ites, watching this cycle’s candidates falling short, feel a sense of vindication after all the attacks they endured after Romney's failed 2012 bid. "These guys like Walker and Perry, they were big deals in their states, but you get them onto the national stage and it's a different story," a former Romney adviser told me. "It's like they were in middle school, and now they're freshmen in high school and they're getting their faces slammed in the toilets."

I personally like Mitt Romney so I'm open to a Romney candidacy; however, I have heard him tack once again to the left post-presidential-bid. I don't think I will able to will myself to pretend to believe it if he suddenly tacks to the right once more.*

People seem to think he won't get into the race. I don't know about that, though. Assuming he still has "the bug" -- which his supporters say he does, and which, it is said, one never really gets over -- then that takes care of the psychological part of it.

On the practical end of it -- could he make a splash? -- I'd say the answer is "yes." The "anti-Trump" vote, or the pro-Establishment vote, is currently both split and colossally disappointed. It is my guess they would not only quickly jump all ships to get on Mitt's ship, but that they're actually dying for some new Miracle Solution that will spare them the possibility of President Trump (or Carson).

Shortly thereafter, having rendered the alternatives unviable, almost all the rest of their supporters would jump to Mitt.

Whether or not he beats Trump, I don't know. But I suspect Mitt's entry immediately drains 75% of the support from the Establishment-friendly candidates like Jeb, Christie, and Rubio. He'd probably take a chunk from Kaisch, too, but I can't really say that with any confidence, as I have literally no idea whatsoever as to what people find appealing in Kasich in the first place.

* I think I exhausted my capacity for pretending to believe in 2014.

posted by Ace at 02:36 PM

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