Can't get enough of
Cruz 2016? Well how about
Mitt 2016?
As we spoke, Romney compared the barrage of 2016-related questions to a scene in the film “Dumb and Dumber.” After Jim Carrey’s character is flatly rejected by Lauren Holly, she tells him that there’s a one-in-a-million chance she would change her mind. “So,” Romney told me, embodying the character, “Jim Carrey says, ‘You’re telling me there’s a chance.’ ”
This was the obvious opening for me to ask if there was a chance. Romney’s response was decidedly meta — “I have nothing to add to the story” — but he then fell into the practiced political parlance of nondenial. “We’ve got a lot of people looking at the race,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”
That's from a Mark Leibovich piece in the upcoming New York Times Magazine titled "Mitt Isn’t Ready to Call It Quits," which perhaps frames what Romney said about the possibility of a third campaign in 2016 a little too strongly. Still, what Romney said was much more than a non-denial denial or even cracking the door open to the possibility of reconsidering running in 2016. Instead, by leaving the question unsettled ("we'll see what happens") he effectively acknowledged that he's considering a bid and that he has not made his mind up.
This is a big shift from what he's been saying publicly since losing in 2012 and it comes as former aides and supporters are aggressively mounting a push for Romney 2016. His words will encourage the ones he hasn't been speaking to and will give the ones who are still in his orbit more credibility when they talk up the possibility for a third bid.
Given all that, it's crystal clear that Romney wants to run again. That doesn't guarantee that he will run again, especially because he probably doesn't want to jeopardize his non-pariah status within the GOP, but if he can launch a bid as the front-runner for the GOP nomination, he will.
But even though Romney is as popular within the GOP as he's ever been, he's still the same old candidate who ran in 2012. For example, check out his new explanation for his 47 percent remarks:
Romney told me that the statement came out wrong, because it was an attempt to placate a rambling supporter who was saying that Obama voters were essentially deadbeats.
“My mistake was that I was speaking in a way that reflected back to the man,” Romney said. “If I had been able to see the camera, I would have remembered that I was talking to the whole world, not just the man.”
During the campaign, Romney
initially defended his remarks and tried to support his statement. When that didn't work, he
said that his remarks were "completely wrong." And now he says that he was lying about his beliefs in order to make a supporter feel good.
Moral of the story: Romney is still Romney. He's still the same guy who can't keep his story straight. He's still the same guy who awkwardly refers to purses with "bedazzle beads." And the best thing he's got going for him continues to be that the GOP is still the same old GOP: A party that might not have a better candidate to nominate in 2016 than the one who led them to defeat in 2012.