Commentary: Run, Mitt, run!
Why doesn't Mitt Romney just run for president? If Mitt thinks Donald Trump would be such a disaster as president, why doesn't he just go in as a spoiler? Why not ensure that Trump can't win by dividing the Republican vote?
Maybe, as of just a few weeks ago, Mitt was really thinking about running. I sort of suspect he was, if only because it's the only reason I can think of why Paul Ryan would wait so long to endorse Trump, make such a big deal of not endorsing Trump, and then fold a couple of weeks later after Trump surrenders more-or-less nothing. Ryan's a sophisticated operator - why would he do all that, embarrass himself like that, unless he was told that there really was a non-Trump Republican who might jump in?
And when I say "non-Trump Republican," I'm not talking about a no-hoper instant punchline like David French. I'm talking about a Ben Sasse or a Tom Coburn or a Romney, the three most plausible contenders for the role, although Rep. Adam Kinzinger also apparently mulled a run. Of those four, Mitt made far-and-away the most sense given Coburn's repeated bouts with cancer - he resigned from the Senate just two years ago for health reasons - and the fact that Sasse and Kinzinger both have political futures to think about. A spoiler bid against Trump could easily foreclose any future those two have in the GOP once President Clinton starts appointing judges. It's understandable why neither one would want to be the GOP's Ralph Nader.
But as for Mitt, what political future does he have? He'll never run for office again. What does he really have to lose? What argument, given what he's said about Trump, and keeping in mind that he's worked to find someone else to run against Trump, does Mitt have for staying out?
Because here's the thing about another Romney run: he could win. He's been the nominee before. He has high national name recognition. He has a good chance of winning Utah, which would net him six electoral votes. And if neither Trump nor Clinton get a majority in the Electoral College, an outcome within the realm of possibility, this election will go to a House of Representatives still controlled by Republicans.
That would mean the next president would be almost certainly be Trump or Romney, and given the antipathy so many GOP electeds have for their presumptive nominee, and the doubts about whether he would actually appoint conservatives to the Court, it's not inconceivable that they vote in the guy so many of them happily endorsed four years ago.
No doubt it'd be a difficult undertaking. The American people will not be all that enthused about the guy who came in third becoming president. The press would not grant him the customary honeymoon given new presidents; he'll start out unpopular and likely stay there. Even if everything went off flawlessly, and it won't because it never does, it's a very safe bet that a Romney presidency would be a one-term proposition.
So what? We just had the deadliest terror attack in this country since 9/11, and Romney believes that he's the best man for the job in such dangerous terms - you don't run for president twice unless you do. If there's a shadow of a chance he winds up getting elected, and if the second place trophy is taking out a guy you so obviously despise, what's the downside?
Nader really did have a rough time after 2000. He cost a liberal the election less than a year before 9/11, and his old base, the progressives for whom he'd long been a hero, could blame the excesses of the Bush years on what looked in hindsight like a vanity run. He lost his standing, and he probably lost some friends, too.
The calculus is altogether different for Romney, a product of two milieus - the moneyed Boston suburbs and Mormon-heavy Salt Lake - that see Trump as dangerous at best and a fascist at worst. For the rest of his life, liberals would see him as a kind of hero, the guy who kept the orange fella from getting his little fingers on the launch codes. Some conservatives would likewise see him in such a light. All in all, there are far worse ways to end a public life in America.
And he could do all this while articulating a defense of moderate conservatism. One of the frustrating tendencies of #NeverTrump conservatives is how they have, by and large, avoided a long overdue accounting of how Trump happened and abstained from arguing why traditional conservatism is still relevant in lieu of attacking the Republican nominee. A Romney run might very well provide a vehicle to do both, particularly since victory would be so far-fetched. It could be a campaign that sees winning the election as secondary to winning the argument.
Because whether they're correct or not, there are serious arguments for entitlement reform, for free trade, for low-marginal tax rates, a less-regulated market and for a business-centered immigration policy. Let Mitt make those arguments, take them to the people, and see how they land. Will they be popular? Probably not. But if you believe in them, and want to fight off Trumpian nationalism, it's a worthwhile effort regardless.
This is not to say Mitt is perfect. He's not the most gifted politician, and there is something morally dubious, to say the least, about the "47 percent" comments and how he made so much money outsourcing American jobs - two things that neither he, nor the conservative project as a whole, did a good job defending last time around. Let him and the #NeverTrump right confront that reality this year, and in doing so help heal the intellectual rot that has afflicted conservatism.
So run, Mitt, run. You, and your beleaguered ideological cohort really have nothing to lose.
