HotAir.com:
Some children want to be cowboys, astronauts, or pro athletes. I
wanted to be conservative America’s premiere “Romney 2016?”
trollblogger.
Live your dreams, my friends.
It may not be only the right flank of the Republican
party that’s crowded in 2016. Mitt Romney is more open to a third
presidential bid than ever before, according to friends and top donors
of the former Massachusetts governor, which means there might be a
bloody battle on the establishment side of the field as well.
“The governor is preserving his options — that’s the message I’ve
gotten from Boston,” says Robert O’Brien, a Los Angeles lawyer who
served as a foreign-policy adviser on Romney’s 2012 campaign. When I
spoke with O’Brien in December, he told me that Romney was not
considering a 2016 run but that “circumstances could change.”
In Romney world, the thinking about a 2016 bid has ratcheted up, and
his top donors, most of whom remain quite loyal, have gotten the signal.
O’Brien tells me that the shift in his own language reflects what he’s
hearing from Romney and his team in Boston, which right now consists
only of Spencer Zwick, who served as finance director on both of
Romney’s presidential campaigns, and Zwick’s deputy, Matt Waldrip. Both
Zwick and Waldrip work with Romney’s eldest son, Tagg, at the
Boston-based private-equity firm Solamere Capital. O’Brien has spoken
with a number of key donors who have relayed their hope the governor
will run; they are sending him the message, either directly or through
former staffers, that they want him in the race.
It’s not gonna happen. Even if, against all odds, Christie sobers up from his football-induced euphoria and realizes that he’s going nowhere in the primaries,
especially now that Bush is in the race, there’s no way Romney will get
in and risk splitting the establishment/centrist vote with Jeb. For him
to do it, you’d need first to eliminate that risk by having the entire
right side of the field implode — Rubio falters because of amnesty, Rand
Paul falters because of foreign policy, Cruz falters because of his
role in the shutdown, etc etc etc. Even then, someone like Jindal or
Walker would probably pick up the disaffected conservative votes, not
Jeb. Why would Romney sabotage a fellow establishmentarian like Bush and
risk handing the nomination to a more right-wing candidate like Jindal
or Walker by jumping in at that point and dividing the center? Even if every
candidate on the right faded and Jeb raced out to an enormous,
seemingly prohibitive lead, paint me a picture where the donor class
would encourage Romney to disrupt Bush’s momentum by joining the race
himself. The people who bankrolled Mitt three years ago and who’ll be
bankrolling Jeb now may have mild preferences for one or the other of
them, but ultimately they don’t much care which gets the nomination so
long as a conservative doesn’t. Give me a scenario in which that
calculus changes and suddenly there’s support in the monied center of
the party for the idea that Jeb Bush himself must be stopped and there’s
only one man to do it.
It’s not happening. But Bush, prudently, is taking no chances. Even before I encountered the phrase in the excerpt below, my thought upon reading the opening was “shock and awe.”
Jeb Bush’s allies are setting a fundraising goal of $100 million in the first three months
of this year—including a whopping $25 million haul in Florida—in an
effort to winnow the potential Republican presidential primary field
with an audacious display of financial strength.
RELATED: Mitt Romney, Who Swore He Isn’t Considering 2016 Run, Is Now Considering It
NationalJournal.com:
Six months after President Obama's 2008 landslide victory swept
Democrats into power across the country, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Eric
Cantor sat down at a suburban Washington pizzeria to talk policy. They
spent that May weekend arguing that the GOP's best path back into power
was to improve the party's battered image by advocating reforms for
education, immigration, and the economy. Cantor saw the session as a
rebranding exercise, offering mostly platitudes about having a
conversation with the American people. Romney used the event as early
preparation for his second presidential campaign, mostly sticking to talking points.
But Jeb Bush came prepared with a slew of creative proposals to test
out at the town hall, like charging lower tuition to students pursuing
high-end degrees in engineering and science.
After
the event ended, several reporters (myself included) chased after Bush
to ask him the inevitable questions about his interest in running for
president. He was visibly annoyed, lamenting that Washington reporters
only ask about the political horse race and have no interest in policy.
With Bush's announcement Tuesday that he's forming an exploratory
committee for president, he'll be testing the proposition that being a
policy wonk sells politically. In discussing preparations for a run this
week, Bush confidently declared he wouldn't pander to Republican
voters, sticking to his principles on immigration and education reform.
In principle, the argument is refreshing. In practice, however, it
ignores political reality.
The
organization that Cantor launched (the National Council for America)
never got off the ground despite the hype. Republicans won back control
of Congress simply by running against an unpopular president, not by
offering a set of solutions to fix the country's struggling economy.
Despite being House majority leader, Cantor lost his primary to an
obscure opponent—in part because he overestimated the political reward
of pitching lofty reforms and ignored the day-to-day dissatisfaction
from his own constituents. In his second presidential campaign, Romney
struggled to lock up the nomination against a deeply conservative field
and was unable to capitalize on Obama's mediocre approval ratings.
Other
Republicans have talked in high-minded fashion about selling
conservative reforms to GOP voters, but found there wasn't much
political benefit in doing so. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became
famous for his tough talk against wasteful government and teachers
unions in his first term, but has all but abandoned advocating new ideas
since campaigning for reelection. Lately, the famously outspoken
governor has avoided policy questions on immigration (despite traveling in Mexico!) and on the Senate report on the CIA's interrogation techniques.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has gotten little political traction
promoting reforms on health care, energy, education, and national
security, and he's careful to frame his ideas in opposition to Obama.
Once a supporter of the Common Core educational standards that Jeb Bush
champions, Jindal now compares them to Soviet central planning.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Jeb Bush acolyte who is mulling a
presidential campaign of his own, learned firsthand the political risk
in embracing change. By championing comprehensive immigration reform,
Rubio alienated much of the conservative base and got sidetracked from
other issues that could also broaden the party's appeal. Bush is an
equally enthusiastic proponent of immigration reform, but unlike Rubio,
he plans to continue pushing it in a GOP primary. Rubio responded this
year by delivering a series of speeches centered on economic opportunity, but now Bush's planned candidacy puts a crimp in his path to the nomination.
Candidates
want to be seen as having a detailed blueprint on how to get the
country back on track, but it's those very details that lead to
unintended consequences. Republican officials confidently promoted
comprehensive immigration reform as a surefire way to improve the
party's standing with Hispanics, but blowback from the base and
resistance from the public tempered the enthusiasm. The political
benefits of courting Hispanics was offset by the risk of alienating the
GOP's base of working-class whites.
RELATED: Jeb Bush: I’m going to try to persuade Republican voters to back immigration reform
