After the most recent debate, there has been a spate of new articles about how and why Romney needs to come save the GOP. For example, Politico: It’s Time for Romney. KUTV (CBS affiliate in Utah) also got in on the action: Renewed calls for Romney to enter presidential race get louder after debate.
Turns out, there’s even a site–DraftMit.org–where you can go and sign up to do your part to try and drat Mitt into the 2016 campaign. Yeah, I went and signed up.
The reality is, there are several GOP contenders that look promising to me: Rubio, Fiorina and yes, even Jeb Bush.[ref]It grates on me to say that, but I thought he did well in the debate and I deeply respect his refusal to cave into ignorant populism on the immigration issue.[/ref] But as long as none of them are even seriously challenging Trump, why not hold out hope for my favorite?
While we’re at it: Rubio or Fiorina would make really great VP candidates.
Help me to understand what this would like. I can’t see Romney taking much of Trump’s constituency and I don’t see him doing anything but leveling the poll numbers of everyone else (including himself) to the single digits.
Don’t get me wrong though, it would be cool to see the Mitt swoop in as a dark horse at some point and break convention to be the nominee. I just don’t see how that happens given the current dynamics of the race.
I don’t think it would do much good for him to enter now, for exactly the reasons you mentioned, Nate.
But what we have right now is basically a circus. Trump is winning and that is alternately alarming, hilarious, and humiliating. Meanwhile, the simple fact that no one else has managed to dent his numbers means that their credibility is eroding fast. (Fiorina is the only one so far to really stand up to him and come off the victor, I think, but as much as I like her I don’t know that she has the whole package at this point.)
The main idea behind a Romney run would be that we need an adult who still has their credibility and dignity intact to come in and pick up the pieces after Trump implodes (or at least starts to implode). Romney also has the most credibility so that, if Trump does something really, really egregiously stupid he would be in the best position–even before entering the race–to be a voice of reason and say “enough is enough.”
But as long as we’ve got like 30% of GOP voters voting with the maturity of toddlers and keeping Trump on top, you’re right: Romney can’t save the party. Nobody can. We just have to wait until the Trump Tantrum begins to abate.