Posted on 07/03/2014 2:30:37 PM PDT by markomalley
Just something I’ve been thinking about today while dealing with the migraine that columns like this have given me.
A mysterious “Draft Mitt” website is already in place. His de facto 2016 campaign slogan — “I tried to warn you” — is appealing. A near-majority already agrees that America would have been better off with him as president. All systems are go.
Should an opening emerge, Romney, like Nixon, will have a massive legacy infrastructure at his disposal to seize the opportunity. Impressively, Romney is the only Republican who can roll into any major money center like New York, Los Angeles or Houston and mobilize his fundraisers on demand, and he is doing so with regularity.
Where Romney stands out versus every failed nominee of the last half century is that he, a lifelong businessman with just one successful four-year stint as governor of Massachusetts, is not a career politician. Why might this matter in 2016? Presidential elections are typically about a pendulum swing. A view among many at the conference (aptly titled “The Future of American Leadership”) was the perception of too much rampant incompetence for too long—by both parties. Peggy Noonan echoed this sentiment in a recent column for the Wall Street Journal: “Americans hate incompetence”… and “they’ve seen it now from two administrations.”
I’m not sure the “not a career politician” brand helps much with a guy who’s made it his business lately to help Republican career politicians beat back tea-party challenges, but never mind that. Back to my question in the headline: Could anyone in modern American politics get nominated, lose the presidential election, and then get nominated again? It wasn’t uncommon back in the day. Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson twice against Eisenhower; the GOP nominated Nixon in 1960 and then, successfully, in 1968. No former loser has gotten a second bite at the apple since then, though. Are the party’s benches deeper these days or is there more to it?
I think it may be more a function of people not wanting to run again than not being able to get re-nominated. Presidential campaigns have gotten much longer and much, much more expensive. Imagine spending two years under media klieg lights, traveling endlessly, begging the donor class for money ’round the clock, barking out the same talking points over and over, and enduring stomach-churning primaries — only to fall short in the presidential election and then have your supporters sneer that you’re a loser. Who’d want to risk going through that twice? My takeaway from “Mitt,” the documentary about Romney’s second campaign, was that the family really didn’t want to endure another campaign in 2012. They went through with it only because Mitt, as “next in line,” was the favorite for the nomination. His 2008 campaign fizzled in the primaries so he hadn’t had even one bite at the White House apple. He got that in 2012. I don’t think he can stomach another now that he’s approaching 70. And even if he could, notwithstanding his initial advantage in name recognition, which voters would want to roll the dice again on him after he got crushed by an incumbent whose first term had seen chronic eight-percent unemployment? Establishmentarians might back him because he’s a known quantity and has thrown a lot of money around to protect business-class Republicans from grassroots righties, but are primary voters really going to double down on Mr. “47 Percent”?
Seems to me that for someone to get re-nominated he’d need to be young and ambitious enough to be willing to run another excruciating two-year marathon and he’d need some plausible-ish argument that even though he lost the first time, he didn’t really lose. (Nixon, of course, lost only very narrowly to Kennedy in 1960.) There is, in fact, a guy like that out there:
Gore was under 60 in 2004, had universal name recognition as Clinton’s VP, and had won the popular vote four years earlier against Bush. He could have jumped in and made the case that President Gore would have kept us out of Iraq. He probably could have gotten re-nominated. Ross Douthat thinks Obama could have gotten re-nominated too had he lost a squeaker to McCain in 2008. That’s possible: He was even younger in 2012 than Gore was in 2004 and he certainly didn’t want for ambition. He could have recycled the racial-trailblazer appeal from his 2008 campaign by claiming that losing to McCain had merely deferred the dream and 2012 was the time to see it finally realized. Even then, though, I’m not sure he could have pulled it off: 2012 would have been Hillary’s turn. She would have used Obama’s 2008 loss as proof that the electorate wants someone in the White House as experienced as McCain and she would have had a trailblazer narrative of her own to sell. I’m not so sure O wins his rematch with her in that hypothetical. Gore was the best and maybe only hope for a repeat losing nominee over the last 40 years — and even Gore decided that the ordeal of running again was too much.
Exit question: If, inexplicably, both Hillary and Joe Biden end up passing next year, why not John Kerry 2.0? Better than Martin O’Malley 1.0, no? Or … Al Gore 2.0?
Not just no, but HELL NO.
Yes but not Mitt.
My answerto the title question: When the Democratic Party and the GOPe collaborate, anything is possible.
No Mitt, no McCain, no Christie, NO MORE BUSHES either!!!!
The media will work hard to ensure the weakest possible Republican candidate.
Romney - the Magic RINO:
Chihuahua Romney - the One and the Only "Magic RINO(TM)":
"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party
over to the traitors in the battle just ended.
We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged
to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support.
Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates
wouldn't make any sense at all.""
-- President Ronald Reagan
Guess that former position was just a BS way to distance himself from the likes of Gingrich and Perry.
I think the case for Gore is pretty convincing. He certainly could have gotten nominated again, but then he would have been running against Bush, who had defeated him. Would he have prevailed in the general? We’ll never know.
It’s most unfortunate that Romney was not elected in 2012, but we really need somebody really good in 2016, this whole damn country is falling off the rails thanks to Mr. Fundamental Transformation. I don’t think that’s Romeny, and it’s certainly not Jeb “I love Mexicans” Bush; or Chris “what bridge?” Christie.
He should have run when he was nominee the first time.
K C U F mutt Romney. ...
Mitt didn’t have the fight in him the first time.
I’d take romney over jeb anyday = because of his business knowledge
Probably the wealthy northeast GOP-E donor bunch who’ve finally realized that Christie is a loser (not that Mitt is any better, as prior experience as shown).
When I was a kid Adlai Stevenson was nominated by he Dimwits twice to run against Dwight D Eisenhower. He lost twice.
I doubt this could happen now.
I think Romney is getting a bad rap by some of you. He certainly was a better choice than Obama, and the news media did a hatchet job on him.
I do agree, however, he is quite a bit more liberal than I am.
My choice for 2016 is Ted Cruz. Every day he sounds more and more like a new Ronald Reagan.
Stevenson's desire to run grew each time as his chances of winning shrank. I hope we won't go through the same thing with Romney.
I doubt this could happen now.
I agree. It's more of a winners versus losers world today. People aren't willing to give a second chance to somebody who already lost once.
From the article:
Gore was under 60 in 2004, had universal name recognition as Clinton’s VP, and had won the popular vote four years earlier against Bush. He could have jumped in and made the case that President Gore would have kept us out of Iraq. He probably could have gotten re-nominated. Ross Douthat thinks Obama could have gotten re-nominated too had he lost a squeaker to McCain in 2008. That’s possible: He was even younger in 2012 than Gore was in 2004 and he certainly didn’t want for ambition. He could have recycled the racial-trailblazer appeal from his 2008 campaign by claiming that losing to McCain had merely deferred the dream and 2012 was the time to see it finally realized.
In theory, maybe. But everybody was sick of Gore in 2004. The fact that he couldn't even carry his own state in 2000 was a heavy blow, and he was already opting out of electoral politics.
As for Obama 2008, no way was McCain going to beat him. If Obama had lost such a sure thing in 2008 people would figure that he just wasn't up to the job. Plus, he did say that if he lost in 2008, he wasn't going to try again (not that that would have stopped him if he really wanted to run again).
That is simply a lie, Mitt was a failed governor, and is a failed, career politician.
Romney has only won a single election in his 20 years of running, and he failed as a governor, he had to give up his plan to run for reelection when his own polling told him it was impossible, he left that office with 34% approval, and handed it to the democrats, after he himself had been the 4th republican Governor in a row.
Romney grew up with politics with an anti-war presidential candidate father, and a pro-abortion Senator candidate mother, and even a wife who has held elective office.
Romney left the GOP and eventually not only became a supporter of democrats, but actually fund raised as a democrat, and also for Planned Parenthood, and he even voted democrat, he ran to the left of Ted Kennedy on some issues, like gays in the military, and as Boy Scout leaders.
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