As far as the primaries were concerned, he didn’t really get to do this. Everyone besides Romney but Santorum and Newt had already self-killed before Iowa, and Newt didn’t last long. Romney beat Santorum because not enough GOPers found him credible as a candidate.
I would have to strongly disagree with you there. In a 3-way race between Cruz, Paul, and Romney, Romney would lose despite the base vote being split.
In an epic battle of aging rich kids, Romney would win. Jeb’s just got too much rust on him, and the world’s changed since he last ran for office in 2002. But the chance that both of them would run, let alone that it would come down to the two of them if they did, is vanishingly infinitesimal.
Tru dat, but he’s light-years away from getting the opportunity to take her on.
Nah. Christie’s got so much baggage now, it would double the cost of his plane ticket to Iowa.
The problem with Christie is that people can see voting for an asshole who kicks the right butts to make government do what it ought to do. People can’t see voting for an asshole who is a whirlwind of fuckupitude. So he’s already massively unelectable, but electability is the only reason why the GOP was flirting with him anyway. He’s an ex-candidate.
Marley and iiandyii, you’re right that a campaign would make a big difference, but Obama is definitely a weaker candidate today than he was in 2012, when he was a weaker candidate than he was in 2008. The CNN poll showed Romney winning big. I think after a campaign, he just wins small.
Gore never stopped being viable. He was the frontrunner in 2004 before declining to get into the race. I’ve always liked Gore because I have an affection for heterodox candidates. Gore’s super liberal on some issues, quite conservative on others, he’s got a great deal of personal integrity, he’s intelligent, and he’s about as qualified as can be. Plus he’s not a loser like Romney is. He won in 2000 but lost on a technicality(and may have actually been robbed). So if there’s ever a candidate who should take another shot it’s Al Gore. But I doubt he wants it and he certainly doesn’t want it bad enough to go to war with the Clintons. But who knows, maybe if Hillary decides she doesn’t want to do it… The country could do a heck of a lot worse.
I’m also a little disappointed that Howard Dean isn’t trying again. He made noises like he was going to but has pretty much endorsed Hillary. He’s another guy who is intriguing. Very liberal on a lot of hot button issues but was a very conservative governor on budget issues, which is what’s most important to me.
Well, to deviate from the general speculating on Romney’s chances in 2016, I want to offer two things on the personal level… One, stories are Mitt had to beg his wife to let him run for the second time in 2012 and she did it ONLY on his promise that it would be the last time, win or lose. Two, Ann Romney has MS. Which is a progressive, physically debilitating disease. She was said to have had some trouble on the 2012 campaign and 2016 is gonna be four years later. I’m not sure what kind of physical shape she’ll be in but, given the track of MS, it’s not likely to be better than she was in 2012.
I think Romney is enjoying having his name whirled around and might possibly be looking to play kingmaker in 2016, but I don’t see him running again.
I know, I know, only Democrats are allowed to nominate patrician candidates, and then it’s a positive thing. In fact, all the Democrats’ biggest heroes come from old money.
Obama has had the considerable disadvantage of having to govern since the election. Anyone inclined to choose between the two gets to compare actual Obama to theoretical Romney.
One reason why we might be hearing chatter like this now is that Romney is out stumping for GOP Senate candidates–they just announced that he’d be coming to KY to help out McConnell. Getting some 2016 speculation out there into the media helps raise his profile for those appearances.
Still, the un-Romneys seemed to emerge one by one. In Newt’s case, carpetbombing negative ads did the trick. If it had been Newt v Romney one on one, not sure who I’d take. But I’d give Newt better odds than Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, or Cain.
I have to disagree here. Cruz and Paul split the far right and Romney picks up the Wall Street crowd.
But Jeb has the ability to pull in the corporatists, something Cruz and Paul would never do. Romney MIGHT still win, but I wouldn’t be too sure. Depends on if Bush was willing to stoop to the depths that we know Romney will.
It’s a positive thing if it comes with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, as has been the case with the Kennedys and the Roosevelts, for examples, and the Rockefellers back when the Republicans still permitted liberals to be part of them. And, yes, Mitt Romney too, early in his half-term as governor.
What is admired is a strong interest in social justice, not wealth as such. Wealth simply permits a public servant to be relatively free from the endless mundane financial pressures that interfere with the ability of the less wealthy to act on similar convictions.
So the wealth doesn’t actually matter, it’s being liberal. If Romney grew up poor, he’d still be a mean old conservative. The wealth is just a useful cudgel to pain him as “not like us”.
Of course, turnabout is fair play. The GOP nominee will probably have come from humble beginnings assuming it’s not Bush or Romney, and we can paint Hillary as an out of touch rich lady. While the GOP candidate is the guy you’d like to have a beer with.
