National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, argued that if Mitt Romney does decide to run for president again in 2016, it will be “awkward.”
Lowry, in blogpost on National Review’s website, added his voice to the chorus of conservatives who think Romney may want to rethink his recent suggestions that he would run for president a third time.
“After all the energy expended selling him as the Mr. Fix-It from the private sector for years and years now, this time around he will be the quasi-career politician who just can’t give up the game and whose pitch is inevitably based, in part, on all the experience he has gained running for president for so long. This will be awkward, to say the least,” Lowry wrote.
On Friday, Romney spoke at a Republican National Committee meeting in San Diego. His speech was laced with hints that he did indeed plan to run for president again.
“First we have to make the world safer. Second, we have to make sure and provide opportunity for all Americans regardless of the neighborhood they live in. And finally, we have to lift people out of poverty,” Romney said.
Here’s Lowry’s full post:
I never thought Mitt Romney would get this far in flirting with a run. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but it’s a free country and if you really want to be president, it requires a certain shamelessness and imperviousness to criticism. Romney is certainly justified in thinking he has some unique attributes in having won the nomination once and having run a credible general election campaign. But, as has been pointed out over the last week, he won that nomination almost by default against a couple of guys who were so desperately under-funded and under-organized that they hardly had campaigns as traditionally understood. Presumably — at least one hopes! — the landscape will be different this time. Also, Romney’s narrative will have to be different. He has really done nothing except run for president since about 2006 (and he has held or run for office continuously since 2002). After all the energy expended selling him as the Mr. Fix-It from the private sector for years and years now, this time around he will be the quasi-career politician who just can’t give up the game and whose pitch is inevitably based, in part, on all the experience he has gained running for president for so long. This will be awkward, to say the least.
