Posted on 09/01/2015 12:27:18 PM PDT by Chgogal
The more you hate Romney the more you should want him in the race, not just for strategic reasons, because it’ll split the center further, but for sheer comic value. If you think it’s funny watching Trump invent new insults daily to question Bush’s masculinity — we can’t be more than a week away from him calling Jeb “low T” — then you’ll have the time of your life watching him hassle Mitt as a choke artist whose piddling $300 million fortune would relegate him to carrying people’s clubs at Mar-a-Lago.
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One Romney bundler puts the odds of him getting back in at 20 percent. I’d say closer to five percent, but even if you think that’s optimistic, rest assured that there’s still a chance. It’s a matter of how long the donor class is willing to sit tight with the underwhelming crop of favored candidates they have now while loose cannons like Trump and total outsiders like Carson float to the top of the polls. We’re still at least two months away, I’d guess, from anyone panicking; that’s a lot of time for Scott Walker to steady the ship or for Marco Rubio to break out or for Jeb Bush to reassert himself as the man to beat. In theory, the closer we get to voting, the more seriously voters will begin to take the race and the more likely it is that an establishment-friendly “serious” candidate will emerge from the pack of candidates already in the race. And yet … there’s a chance that one doesn’t. What happens if, around November 1st, Trump and Carson are way ahead in Iowa and Trump and Fiorina are suddenly fighting over New Hampshire? If you’re a Jeb Bush backer or a Scott Walker backer, what do you do then? One option is to go all-in on Carly, easily the most polished political neophyte candidate in the race; the GOP could do worse next year than having not only its first woman nominee but one who, unlike Hillary Clinton, hasn’t been corrupted from long years of holding federal office. Another option if Jeb’s still flailing would be to go all-in on Kasich, who seems like he’ll be a player in New Hampshire and would be a major draw in midwestern swing states.
Essentially, so long as we’re not left with a Trump/Carson/Cruz battle for supremacy, there’ll be someone for centrists and country-club Republicans to back in the current field. But there’s a chance, albeit a tiny one, that we will be left with that choice, in which case establishmentarians will panic. What will it look like when they do? Do they bring Mitt back on the assumption that he’s the only Republican who’s sufficiently well known to Iowa and New Hampshire voters, with enough of a donor network to keep him going through the race, to launch a successful campaign that late? Do they huddle and decide to gamble on Rubio as the guy best equipped to unite the center and center-right against the insurgents? There has to be some sort of “in case of emergency, break glass” plan developing in a race this wild. What is that plan? Who’s the white knight who saves the party at the eleventh hour, as Trumpageddon is descending?
It’s not this guy, is it? C’mon.
rino rommney
If they are right and Trump losses as the nominee, we are no worse off than we were when McCain lost and Romney lost?
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Because this is the most important election ever.
An expression I’ve heard concerning every election in my 70 year life time. and I’m sure it was around from the start of elections.
The Crony Capitalist RINO Boehner/McConnell puppeteers must be getting worried that their boy “Jeb” (son of Bush, brother of Bush) won’t make it and his stand-ins Kasich and Christie are doing well.
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