What most gives me pause about the viability of a Romney presidential campaign in 2016 aren’t the logical arguments Jonathan Chait mustered today (which I mentioned in an earlier post), but a link he supplied that I didn’t follow until just a few minutes ago. It’s to a post by WaPo’s Republican blogger Jennifer Rubin, that thoroughly mocks and trashes the idea of Mitt ’16.
I’m not sure which analogy most aptly describes how shocking this is. Peter’s three-fold denial of Christ? The time Colonel Sanders went off on the quality of KFC’s food? Eldridge Cleaver’s conversion to born-again Christianity? Rubin’s commentary on the 2012 campaign–both the primary and general election phases–was such an endless paen to Mitt Romney that it became a significant sub-topic of campaign journalism (check out this massive Conor Friedersdorf description of her Mitt-o-rific writing). Now her dismissal of Romney ’16 is as cold and nasty as a Bain firing notice. And it’s not really mitigated by her pretence that Mitt’s interest in running is a fabrication of his former campaign consultants.
At Media Matters Oliver Willis suggests Rubin’s already in the 2016 tank for Jebbie, and is thus being consistent in her loyalty to whoever’s “team” she’s on. I don’t read her all that regularly, and was under the impression she was leaning towards Marco Rubio.
But whatever it represents, Rubin’s apostasy has to feel weird to Mitt and company. They better hope they never told her secrets.
