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Mitt Again?
On Politico at this hour:
The day after Mitt Romney opened the door to another possible presidential run, a new poll shows he has a huge lead among likely 2016 Iowa Republican caucus voters.
Further:
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Wednesday, 35 percent of likely GOP caucus voters would vote for the 2012 GOP nominee in 2016. When Romney’s name was added to the pool, no other candidate received double-digit votes.
The survey comes as rumors have begun to swirl about a potential Romney bid for president in 2016. After months of insisting that he will not run again, the former Massachusetts governor on Tuesday acknowledged that “circumstances can change.”
Well, good people of Ricochet? In a field including, let us say, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush, where would you rank Mitt Romney?
Published in General
I don’t care about Perry’s credentials. What I care about is that he jumped into the race last time with an almost unimaginable amount of momentum, due to the “anyone but Mitt” sentiment, combined with the fact that “anyone but Mitt” at that point was garbage. Millions upon millions of conservatives nationwide were desperately hoping to see Perry succeed. And then, he flopped. Spectacularly.
If he wants another shot, he has a huge mountain to overcome from his epic failure last time around.
I , too had hopes for Perry. I hoped he would be what the left branded GWB as, just able to speak well. I wish he had shown himself to have any ability to think on his feet. On numerous occasions including those several moments, he proved otherwise.
Aggie jokes originated in Texas. Perry merely gave them a national audience.
An Aggie’s favorite Aggie joke:
Q. What do you call an Aggie five years after graduation?
A. Boss.
An Aggie politician’s favorite Aggie joke:
Q. What do you call an Aggie on January 20, 2017?
A. Mr. President.
We will see what happens.
Comments like ctlaw’s are a sterling example of why yankees are so widely disliked by Texans.
Lugar, who with the help of Cantor, McCarthy and Ryan’s YGNetwork propositioned democrats to vote in the Republican primary to spoil a Tea Party candidate? Good riddance!
May Cochrane go down in flames.
At least nobody here is trying to Coulterize Romney with whopping falsehoods at abusive volume about how much more conservative than thou Romney is. I prefer the honesty of the meh-he’s-electable argument to the spectacularly ineffective hellfire shriek that the Tea Party is a bunch of cowardly progressives who should just do what we’re told.
I said several pages back that Scott Walker is my first choice as of today, but I think there is a very good chance
a) Walker will not be reelected.
b) The problems the world and the US might be facing could be totally unseen right now. A trade war with Russia or the collapse of the Chinese economy are two very real possibilities. I think Romney’s gravitas on economic issues might stand up better than Perry’s Boss Hogg imitation or Rubio’s pretty boy act. I think Mitt should keep his options open.
MLR knows I’m an admirer of if not a supporter of Perry for a presidential run, but we both agree it harms the party to make attacks on GOP candidates; remember Reagan’s 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of one’s fellow Republicans.
This also applies to Petty B’s reference to Rubio as a “pretty boy.” As a Floridian, I can tell you he did great stuff in Tallahassee in tandem with Jeb Bush; lay off the snark, please, for the sake of the party.
Amen, Liz.
I agree I do have a tendency to snark, and I would vote for Rubio or Perry if they are our nominees. Point taken.
Out of those? Middle of the pack, and then I’d cry.
Mitt is a terrible, awful, no-good candidate who could make a very successful president. But he can’t be one without being better at the other.
I admit to knowing little about Jeb outside his reputation, but his name would make him an awful candidate (Common Core wouldn’t help him in my book). And Christie wouldn’t even win votes in his own state. He’s a perfect example of a guy I think more people like in the abstract than in the reality.
Ted Cruz I’d rank about even with Mitt. Bright guy, conservative, but an easy target and someone that I think has shown needs more seasoning. Like Obama, he’s someone who hasn’t even shown an ability to work with his own party, let alone reach across the aisle. But he’d at least get the base fired up.
Next would be Rand Paul, and that’s simply because he’d be fascinating to watch. Could be a total train wreck.
And that leaves Perry by default, which would be awful because that’s how we got McCain and Mitt.
What are the odds of losing three times in a row?
We need someone that we know can throw a punch at Hillary.
Any chance we can draft Bill?
Nixon airlifted weapons to Israel when it was hanging on by a thread. Carter turned his back on the modern, pro-Israel, Shah of Iran. Carter loses, hands down.
Didn’t we just argue this over on another thread?
ETA: Re: Perry, I’m with you every time.
Marco Amnesty Rubio can get bent too. He’s a liar and took a lot of people for a big ride. At best, he allowed himself to be used as a hood ornament on a car that was smashed into a wall — the gang of 8 amnesty drive. Well stupid and dishonest is as stupid and dishonest does. This party has had its last grace “for the sake of the party” from a lot of us.
The Ryan budget takes ten years to NOT BALANCE. We don’t have ten years.
Well I am a Cleveland Browns fan.
Carter also started the defense buildup that Reagan continued. What is Carter’s legacy? He made Liberals a laughingstock for a generation. Nixon’s legacy were totalitarian bureaucracies like the EPA and NHTSA that plague us to this day.
You didn’t argue the point with me, btw…
Romney couldn’t beat a guy who had shown himself to be an incompetent disaster.
I don’t see how he can beat Hillary, or any other democrat, because they will of course claim to have had nothing to do with Barry and his endless incompetence, except to have learned what not to do.
I think the real reason why we’re hearing talk of running Mittens again is because the GOP donor class has realized that a Jeb Bush candidacy is a complete nonstarter, and they have essentially no other plausible establishment friendly options.
I suppose it’s possible the GOP establishment could shoehorn Romney into the nomination again- but this time they’d have to use the carpet-bombing tactics they used against Newt Gingrich against politicians including the likes of Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, etc. I suspect this would not go well for the Republican party, overall.
Plus, since Romney couldn’t handle Candy Crowley I have no reason to think he could handle any other political challenge.
Thumbs down on Romney.
Why does anyone care what Iowa thinks? I recall their primary being a circus and run by incompetents. In the end, Rick Santorum won it after it being mistskenly called for Romney.
What do you believe will happen before then? The Ryan Plan is focused not on the short term (when we don’t really have a problem), but on long term entitlement reform (where we do). You’re right that it’s a poor plan if we expect a global collapse in, say, five years, but that seems like an eccentric expectation.
edit: The use of all caps is a coc violation; perhaps next time you might use bold, italics, underlining or (if those aren’t enough), all three.
I’m a true conservative but when reading the comments on this I’m struck with some irony. It would appear that we’re all looking for the absolute perfect candidate. We all want Ronald Regan to reincarnate so we can go back to the good times. That isn’t going to happen.
6 years ago the Democrats selected the most imperfect candidate in history. They shielded us from all the negative and created a candidate with a perfect image — too perfect, but they rallied and elected him. He didn’t believe most of what they really did but they elected him and gave him a super majority.
We need to find a candidate that can beat Hillary Clinton and apply that standard and quit looking for the reincarnation of The Gipper. As conservatives, we also need a strategy to beat the biased media and a strategy to focus on the important issues not the liberal issue of the day/week. They have outmaneuvered our logic and our intelligence. We are better than that!
We have to save this country.