Can you feel the Mitt-mentum?
The Romney 2016 speculation is the story that nobody — reportedly including the once (and future?) candidate — seems to be able to quit. Mark Halperin at Bloomberg Politics reported last week that the losing 2012 presidential candidate had been seen huddling with conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch at a recent Republican fundraiser and had “tongues a-wagging.” An upcoming private dinner with former campaign advisers “has Romney intimates abuzz,” according to the Washington Post.
“A lot of people in Romneyland are rooting for him to get in,” one inner-circle source told CNN in recent weeks, while another added: “I wouldn’t bet on it, but I wouldn’t bet either.”
A Des Moines Register poll released Saturday found Romney leading presumed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a (hypothetical) 2016 match-up. Now the Post is out with its report that “his friends said a flurry of behind-the-scenes activity is nudging him to more seriously consider it.”
No public dismissals from the potential candidate himself or his wife seem able to stop the anonymously-sourced speculation and media hype. Never mind that a failed major party nominee has not run again since 1984 when George McGovern (the 1972 nominee) lost his long-shot bid to retake the Democratic nomination and has not won since Richard Nixon (who lost in 1960) pulled it off in 1968.
But this is a tried-and-true feature of the presidential election cycle. One need only look back to 2002, when losing 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore was frequently referred to as a possible 2004 aspirant. In fact, the Post put out a report about the Gore 2004 rumblings — Gore, of course, ended up not running again — almost 12 years to the day before its Monday report on Mitt.
There are some differences. Ann Romney doesn’t sound much interested in another run, while Tipper Gore was ready to go. With a weak field of Republican potentials, Romney has been re-establishing some old campaign connections, while Gore had let his network stagnate for the most part. But the similarities in the hype, the coverage, the leaks, and the pure speculation are equally striking.
HE’S STILL THE BIGGEST CHEESE IN THE PARTY!
Romney’s undeniable advantage — and the only advantage that any possible candidate could really have at this stage — is name recognition. The party base knows him and likes him, as the Post reported Monday, referring to him at one point as the “tacit head of the Republican Party”:
Because of the vacuum of power within his party and the lack of a clear 2016 front-runner, confidants said Romney is grappling with this question: If drafted, would he answer the party’s call?
Gore, too, was still presumed to be the top dog in a potential campaign, according to the Post’s Oct. 15, 2002, report headlined “Gore: Off Stage, or On for ’04?” (accessed via Nexis):
Sometime near the end of this year, Gore will decide whether to seek the presidency again in 2004, and if the answer is yes, he will become the instant frontrunner for his party’s nomination — the man who won the popular vote but lost the presidency …
Gore still commands a bigger stage than all his potential rivals.
HE’S LOOSENED UP HIS NOTORIOUSLY STIFF WHITE GUY SCHTICK!
Romney has become somewhat renowned lately for donning a more relatable persona now that he isn’t running for the most powerful job in the world. He’s been posing for selfies and stopping by Jimmy Fallon for a slow-jam over the last year.
He has even become a bit of a jokester on the stump, acknowledging that being a non-candidate gives him some new freedom, as the Post related Monday:
He also said that now that he was no longer a candidate, he had a joke to share involving Obama, golfer Phil Mickelson and tennis great Andre Agassi.
As Romney told it, Obama shows up at a bank to cash a check without his ID. The teller asks him to prove who he is, saying that Mickelson proved his identity by hitting a golf ball into a cup and Agassi proved his by hitting a tennis ball at a target. “Is there anything you can do to prove who you are?” the teller asks.
“I don’t have a clue,” Obama replies in the joke.
The crowd ate it up.
Gore, also regarded as a stiff and awkward candidate in the same vein as Romney, was said to have retreated from the public sphere, rejuvenated and returned “more relaxed.”
“I think he’s accomplished what he thought was the most important thing to accomplish, which was to get out of the public light and put himself into a place where he could step back into the arena, after some break,” this Democrat said. “One of his favorite sayings to folks in early 2001 was, ‘They can’t miss you if you’re never gone.’ I think he’s done very well with that.”
Friends and supporters who have had informal contact with him say Gore appears far more relaxed and at ease than he was before.
HISTORY HAS SHOWN HE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG!
A big part of Romney’s supposed appeal is that he has been vindicated since the 2012 election by a series of second-term scandals, crises, and missteps. The emergence of a Russia with imperial ambitions seems to be the favored example after Romney was mocked during the 2012 campaign for naming Russia as America’s No. 1 geopolitical foe.
Former aides and senior Republicans say Romney appreciates the GOP masses crowing that he was right about issues such as Russia and health care.
For Democrats stung by the way Bush v. Gore ended the 2000 election, the ensuing Bush years seemed like one long, painful vindication of Gore and everything they believed. Gore himself seemed to be tapping into the Democratic base’s dissatisfaction with the state of things since his loss, stoking the 2004 fire with a public speech in September 2002 that criticized the build-up to the war in Iraq:
The speech helped galvanize many rank-and-file Democrats who were hungry for someone to challenge President Bush and raise serious questions about the administration’s policy. Donna Brazile, who was Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, called the speech “a brilliant stroke” by the former vice president. “That speech put him back on the map for the closing weeks of the election season,” she said.
But while Gore might not be the most encouraging comparison, Romney 2016 hopefuls are hitching their horse to another historical precedent. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty pointed out to the Post that Ronald Reagan had run multiple times before 1980 (though never secured the nomination). He was, he said, “stronger for it.”
“There is a feeling that the country missed out on an exceptional president,” Pawlenty said. “If he runs, I believe he could win the nomination and the general election. It’d be the right person at the right time, and I would encourage him to do it.”
