That is my reason for doubting the recent spate of Mitt Might Run! articles now cluttering the political press. It won’t happen because it would be too much fun for us Democrats if it did. We’ve been good kids, pretty much, but no one deserves that much candy.
The three-cushion shot argument is that Mitt isn’t going to run, but he’s afraid that Jeb Bush will use his Wall Street connections to run the table in the Republican primaries, only to get blown out of the water when he comes up against Team Hillary in November. Does that mean that Mitt thinks that there’s another Republican who can do what Jeb can’t? That’s dubious.
It’s hard for me to believe that Romney’s rumblings are motivated by anything but ego—“Jeb’s half the man I am, so why does he get to be president?” Which makes Mitt sound either bitchy or childish. Take your pick.
Which leads me, against my better judgment, to believe that Mitt will run again. He’ll run because, basically, he’s stupid. He really thinks that Putin’s seizure of the Crimea really proves that Mitt was right back in 2012 when he claimed that Russia was our main geo-political adversary, though what it really proves is that Putin doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.1 And Mitt also really thinks that the 47% of the people who don’t pay federal income tax are also welfare chiselers on the dole. You have to be really stupid to believe that, but Mitt clearly did, and clearly does. But is he really stupid enough to believe that he’ll have a shot if he runs again? And are enough experienced Republican operators stupid enough to think that he’ll have a chance in order for Mitt to build a serious campaign?2 Well, maybe.
Afterwords
Just the thought of Jeb, Mitt, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, et al. punching it out in a monster mud wrestle is enough to make a Democrat forget, at least for a while, that his candidate is Hillary Clinton.
I’ve previously chuckled over the Mitt in 2016 Dream here and here and here. But it’s still funny.
- Paul Krugman explains why Russia will be paying the tab for Vladimir’s excellent Ukrainian adventure for the next several decades, unless the current drop in oil prices causes the Big Bear to go bankrupt beforehand. ↩︎
- Stupid enough or unprincipled enough to tear their party apart for the sake of some fat paychecks. ↩︎
