David Karol:
We cannot know all the factors that went into Romney’s decision, and maybe we never will. Politics, as Bismarck said, is not an exact science, and neither is political science. But as far as it goes, the abortive Romney 2016 bid is consistent with a view of campaigns in which party elites play an important role. Romney had the poll numbers. He has the money. What he didn’t have was a warm welcome from party elites. Romney by now has a lot of experience in presidential campaigns. It seems he drew conclusions from the signals he got. Campaign analysts should, too.
To be clear: I don't know what @MittRomney will say this morning, but every talk I've had w/ Mitt World leads me to believe he will run
— @MarkHalperin
Jonathan Bernstein doesn't have to scramble. Himself writing in 2014:
A Catch to Philip Klein for demolishing the case for Mitt Romney, 2016. Yeah, it’s a thing, or at least some people are trying to make it one.
It’s possible that, one of these Novembers, a presidential loser will win the nomination again, as Richard Nixon did in 1968. Before that, Tom Dewey got a chance to lose a second time in 1948, and Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Hubert Humphrey came very close to winning in 1972. I’d say that Al Gore would have been a very viable candidate in 2004 or 2008, and that John Kerry could have had an excellent chance in 2008. So it could happen.
But Romney?
See also Jan 2015 (
Do Republicans Really Want Bush or Romney? and
Romney's Road Gets Even Muddier.
More politics and policy below the fold.
WaPo:
As issues from evolution to climate change become more contentious and politically polarized, scientists and broader public opinion are drifting farther apart. This worrying trend is evident in new public opinion data released Thursday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Pew Research Center. The data reveals a huge and growing gulf between what scientists and the public think about vaccines, animal research, genetically modified food, climate change and more.
There is a 18 percentage point gap, for example, over whether parents should be required to vaccinate their children: 86 percent of scientists favor this, as compared to just 68 percent of the general public. There is a much larger gap on climate change: 87 percent of AAAS scientists say it is caused by human activity, compared to 50 percent of the public. Almost all scientists – 98 percent — say humans have evolved over time, while just 65 percent of the public thinks they have.
But for the general public, the strongest anti-science attitudes relate to genetically modified foods. Eighty-eight percent of AAAS scientists say it’s safe to eat genetically modified food, compared to just 37 percent of U.S. adults. Such discrepancies do not happen by accident. In most cases, there are determined lobbies working to undermine public understanding of science: from anti-vaccine campaigners, to creationists, to climate-change deniers.
It's a movie where ghosts are killed with homemade nuclear reactors and the part you can't buy is that women get to star in it?
— @LOLGOP
Sean McElwee:
One Big Reason for Voter Turnout Decline and Income Inequality: Smaller Unions
The decline of labor unions has shifted the balance of power not only in the country at large, but within the Democratic Party. Hello Wall Street; bye-bye voters...
John Dickerson:
To the Teacher Who Changed My Life
Neal Tonken taught me English in 10th grade. He changed my life. He died last week. I don’t remember what he taught me about how to start an essay, but that’s the way he would have started it.
He was clear and direct in his writing. Our first day of class in 1984 was his first day too. He’d been a lawyer and chucked it all to teach. He brought a bag of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly. He asked us to describe how to make a sandwich. Then he read our instructions out loud, following along literally, placing the jar on top of the bag of bread. We’d forgotten basic elements like removing the bread from the bag or taking the lids off the jars.
Josh Barro:
The first rule of modern tax policy is raise taxes only on the rich. The second rule is that your family isn’t rich, even if you make a lot of money.
President Obama’s State of the Union proposal to end the tax benefits for college savings accounts ran afoul of these rules, which is why he abandoned it, under intense pressure from both political parties, within a week.
Aaron E. Carroll:
I’ve read way too much reporting, and way too many tweets, parsing how the latest measles outbreaks happened. Some are missing the point. This is how outbreaks of a disease that isn’t endemic to the United States occur:
1. Someone traveling/living abroad contracts the disease and comes to the US
2. Other people who are susceptible to the disease come into contact with them here at home
3. Those people contract the disease
Go back to step 2
That’s it. It doesn’t matter if the person from step one was an illegal immigrant, a doctor working overseas, or an Amish Missionary. Since we can’t control what other countries do, and we live in a world where people travel, (1) is going to occur at some point...
The important part of stopping an outbreak of measles isn’t (1). That’s going to happen every once in a while. The important part is that too many people in the United States remain unvaccinated and susceptible to measles for any number of reasons. That’s what’s “causing” the outbreak. That’s what we need to focus on. Full stop.
Bloomberg:
The CEO Who Saved a Life and Lost His Job
Kevin Donovan, director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at the Georgetown University Medical Center, says the conflict between companies and patients lies in a clash of responsibilities. “The company’s obligation is the greatest good for the greatest number,” he says. “If it’s your loved one, if it’s you, if you’re a patient, your moral obligation is to the welfare of that individual.” Both approaches are legitimate, he says.
These complexities get lost in a social media maelstrom, says Darshak Sanghavi, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who’s conducted research on compassionate-use issues. “I think that whenever you have 140 characters to describe a complicated medical decision, it’s going to be oversimplified— ‘there’s a dying child, why won’t the drug company give the drug?’ ” Sanghavi says. “It’s so easily amplified, and any nuance, even if it was present early on, rapidly gets rubbed out,” he says.
James Greenwood, CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), says social media’s role in the Hardy case unnerved the industry. “When you add social media and start tweeting all over the place, then reason flies out of the window,” says Greenwood. “Social media creates opinion storms, we all know that.”
Ed Kilgore:
I’m really pleased to see Peter Beinart go after Bobby Jindal with an analytical scalpel, because I’m tired of being semi-alone in viewing the Louisiana governor as especially cynical and dangerous. No, I don’t think he’s going to win the presidential nomination, but right now he’s a cinch for a Cabinet post if Republicans regain the White House, and as Chris Rock would say, “That ain’t right!.”
In any event, Beinart focuses on the rather problematic relationship between two of Jindal’s big themes: “religious liberty” for conservative Christians, which he defines as sanctioned non-compliance with secular laws they don’t like, and hostility to Muslims for alleged refusal to assimilate to secular American customs.