Eugene Robinson says he would have too much fun with a Romney 2016 run:
Run, Mitt, run! You too, Jeb, and please bring along the whole roadshow of perennial Republican also-rans. Across the aisle: Go for it, Hillary! What all of you see so clearly is that the nation desperately wants to be led forward into the past, or back to the future, or something.
Okay, not really. I don’t actually believe the nation is eager to see the 2016 presidential race devolve into a contest of attrition among the tired, the shopworn, the unviable and the famously surnamed. For the moment, however, this is the direction in which history appears to be trudgin [...] Of course, Romney would have some explaining to do. He promised to reduce unemployment to 6 percent within four years; President Obama, who Romney said was clueless about economics, cut the jobless rate to 5.6 percent in just two years. In fact, the U.S. economy — with solid growth, plunging deficits and essentially no inflation — is the envy of the world.
If technocratic competence is not a promising way for Romney to frame his appeal, maybe he can try fiery passion. Seriously, I’d pay money to see that.
Aaron Blake lays out the precedent:
In fact, were Romney to win the presidency in 2016, he would be only the second major-party nominee since the 1800s to lose a presidential race and then come back and win one.
The lone exception? A president by the name of Richard Milhous Nixon, who lost to John F. Kennedy as the GOP nominee in 1960 but returned to win the presidency in 1968. Before him, it was Grover Cleveland, who lost as an incumbent president in 1888 only to be re-nominated and avenge his loss in 1892.
In the intervening years are a whole bunch of nominees who tried again only to lose -- sometimes badly.
Much more below the fold.
Jack Holmes:
Romney’s quantum politics are not the issue. He’s changed positions a bunch, sure, but nobody really seems to care. The real problem is that, other than people who share his last name, nobody has ever been excited about a Mitt Romney presidency. [...]
The real problem is that Republicans don’t like Romney. Even the traditionalist wing, the “business” caucus, can’t get jazzed about the guy. How else do you explain the parade of clowns that took turns leading the race for the Republican nomination in 2012? Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) surged to victory in the Iowa straw poll that August. Then Texas Gov. Rick Perry had a turn before a debate performance for the ages. Then came Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich.
Realistically, none of these people were receiving votes to become the presidential nominee. Each of those votes were cast for a hypothetical candidate whom we might call “Not Romney.” Not Romney led the polls up until Republicans from sea to shining sea were forced to admit that, yes, Mitt Romney was the best they could hope for. There would be no heroic rescue. Jeb Bush would not be riding into the Republican National Convention on horseback. The ghost of Ronald Reagan was unavailable.
Matt O'Brien makes an excellent point:
[W]e should remember that Romney, at least, lost in no small because he didn't have anything approximating a policy agenda.
Think about that. Romney was a professional presidential candidate for almost five years by the time Election Day rolled around in 2012, and he still didn't have a coherent strategy for the economy by then. His tax plan was a mathematical impossibility: he would have had to either abandon his tax cuts for the rich, raise taxes on the middle class, or run much bigger deficits to make it work.
And his economic plan, well, we're still waiting for it. Romney told his donors that "if it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy" and "we'll see capital come back, and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost to the economy." And that was it.
On a final note,
Ali Elkin takes a stroll down memory lane when the Mitt Romney praised Jeb Bush:
The former Massachusetts governor lavished a little extra attention on Bush in that interview, saying, "I think he would be an excellent candidate. I’d love to see him run for president. And I don’t think it’s because of a dynasty we would be inclined toward Jeb Bush. It’s because he was a great governor and an education governor and reached out to Hispanic voters with great success. I think he’d be a very effective nominee, and potentially a president. I like Jeb a lot."