As a long, rather difficult week comes to a close, you really don’t want to get up early with a headache, check out the news aggregator, and see this headline:
Why Mitt Romney is perfectly poised for a comeback in 2016
I don’t know why Matt Lewis chose this theme for a column at The Week. But he doesn’t really make a very compelling case for Mitt 3.0. We’re told that Romney has been “proven right” on all sort of things since 2012, though only Russia’s nastiness (hardly a real point of contention) is mentioned. But the main argument is that Romney’s now been made a humble and even lovable Rocky-figure because he would be undertaking a comeback.
That’s right, Mitt Romney the scrappy underdog — the loser who’s out to redeem himself — is a more attractive Mitt.
You know the term “lovable loser?” He should embrace it.
Well, if that’s all it takes, there are plenty of other “losers” available to the GOP. There’s Rick Santorum, who can also cite the “It’s My Turn” meme. There’s Rick Perry, whose self-immolation in 2012 just cries out for “redemption.” Nobody’s “scrappier” than Rudy Giuliani, and the MSM found Mike Huckabee very “lovable” in 2008.
But Mitt? He wasn’t very lovable even within his own party, and even when they were lifting him to their presidential nomination. And at the risk of sounding like a “class warrior” here, I’d observe that people with Mitt’s kind of wealth simply cannot come across as “humble”or generate the sort of empathy that feeds a comeback. I mean, it’s not like he woke up the day after he lost the 2012 presidential election wondering where his next paycheck would come from, like millions of folk from the despised 47%.
So spare us the bathos, Matt. If you are longing for another Romney run, that’s your prerogative. But let’s don’t pretend the man is “perfectly poised” for anything other than doing reverse mortgage ads.
