The most likely Republican presidential candidate for 2016 is . . . Mitt Romney?
The former Massachusetts governor has run and lost two bids for the White House — in the 2008 Republican primaries and again in the 2012 general election. What’s more, he proved to be a foot-in-mouth candidate who blew his chances of winning in 2012 by writing off 47% of the electorate and suggesting that illegal immigrants “self-deport.”
And yet, establishment insiders in the GOP tell me that the third time may be the charm.
“The smart folks in the party are not committed to any presidential candidate this early,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for the US Chamber of Commerce, the powerful business lobby that has scored a string of establishment victories over Tea Party candidates in this year’s Republican primaries. “But Romney can’t be dismissed as the guy who lost last time.
“You watch him on TV these days, and he’s a new guy with total command of the issues and a real presence,” Reed added. “He could throw an organization together and get the money.”
A wealthy New York-based Republican with close ties to members of the donor class, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, wholeheartedly agrees.
“Most of the people I talk to who are involved in Republican politics as donors want a winner,” he told me. “And many of these people are talking about Romney because so many of the things he said in 2012 — about Russia being a ‘geopolitical foe’ and people losing their health insurance under ObamaCare — have come to pass.”
Until a few months ago, the favorite among establishment Republicans was Chris Christie. And there are still those in the GOP, such as Kenneth Langone, the billionaire co-founder of The Home Depot, who support the New Jersey governor.
You watch him on TV these days, and he’s a new guy with total command of the issues and a real presence. He could throw an organization together and get the money.
- Political strategist Scott Reed
“To me, politics is practical,” Langone told me. “We Republicans don’t have the luxury any more of having an ideological litmus test in the party. Chris is a candidate who can win. And though he has never given me a definite indication that he is going to run in 2016, in my humble opinion, he’s in.”
However, most Republicans think Christie has suffered too many self-inflicted wounds to be considered a front-runner.
The list of internal grievances against Christie is long and includes: his hug-a-thon with President Obama after Hurricane Sandy; his it’s-all-about-me keynote address at the 2012 Republican National Convention; his bungled handling of the Bridgegate scandal; and his appointment or reappointment of several liberal judges in New Jersey.
With Christie fading in the presidential sweepstakes, many Republican donors and operatives turned, for a while, to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as the party’s great hope. But Bush is playing Hamlet, unable to make up his mind.
“Jeb has several problems that give him pause,” said a major Republican source. “To begin with, he has staked out a position on immigration reform and the Common Core education standards that may make him too moderate for today’s Republican Party. Then there are his family problems to take into consideration. His wife isn’t into being a public figure, and his daughter has had drug issues in the past.”
In my conversations with Republican operatives, none could think of a time since the 1980s when there wasn’t an obvious front-runner.
This past week, several potential candidates, including Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Ted Cruz, showed up at a presidential cattle call in Dallas that was organized by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.
“We are six months away from when some presidential campaigns in the Republican Party will launch, and it doesn’t appear that the donors are coalescing yet,” said Spencer Zwick, a fund-raising expert who is so close to Romney and his wife, Ann, that he is often described as their “sixth son.”
“If you look at the crop of Republican candidates who are obvious today, there isn’t one who has the financial infrastructure to pull together the resources to guarantee they can win a primary campaign,” Zwick said.
“If our goal is to beat Hillary Clinton or whoever the Democrats put up in 2016, then we need to be very serious about finding the candidate who can do that. I believe there is a growing sense that Mitt Romney was right during his campaign in 2012 and that he should be president. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to run for president.”
Though Romney has repeatedly said that he is not planning to run for president, he appears to be keeping his powder dry. During a recent interview with nationally syndicated talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Romney admitted: “Circumstances can change.”
Edward Klein’s latest book is “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas” (Regnery).