Good news, everyone! Mitt Romney (D, but R when necessary-Utah) has a plan for victory in the 2024 presidential race. That plan involves forcing Trump out of the field of candidates. Romney outlined his pathway to victory in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. While bemoaning the fact that Trump will likely be the nominee, Romney holds out hope that The Donald can be defeated, provided the race is narrowed down to two contenders before Trump “sews up” the nomination. For that to happen, the mega-donors and influencers in the GOP must convince those candidates who do not have a realistic chance of winning to drop out of the race. He concedes that this may be easier said than done, but the risk of having expendable candidates in the race is just too high:
There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu has observed, “It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.”
Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.
Romney suggests a drop-dead date of Monday, Feb. 26. That is the first business day after the contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. He goes so far as to suggest that donors to lower-tier candidates extract a pledge from them that they will drop out if their prospects are dim after the fateful Monday.
Keep in mind that this is the same guy who was singing the praises of hot dogs just last week. And a man who has not shown his face at a single state or county GOP convention since he ran for Senate. I should know. I’ve been to more of them than he has.
What is striking is that Romney does not trust the party leaders to do the right thing and show Trump the door. He wrote:
Donors may think that party leaders can narrow the field. Not so. Candidates don’t listen to party officials, because voters don’t listen to them either. And the last people who would ever encourage a candidate to withdraw are the campaign staff and consultants who want to keep their jobs for as long as possible. They buck up candidates, promoting long-shot prospects and favorably biased internal polls. I can almost hear the words from “Dumb and Dumber”—“So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
Given Romney’s track record, particularly when it comes to visiting with the GOP faithful in Utah, it is no wonder that he does not trust party leaders. Chances are that by extension, he is not putting his faith in the voters, either. He does, however, trust the money. Go figure. He certainly no longer enjoys the support of Utah Republicans.
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I’ve sat through enough nominating conventions to know that the outlying candidates fall by the wayside fast enough. Yes, they usually have a small but vocal group of supporters, but they end up folding their tents and going home. In fact there is a good chance that many of the current hopefuls may not raise enough money to make the debates and will then fade into the background. Romney’s fear is that, unlike a race for the Senate or Congress, there are so many contenders that the anti-Trump vote could be spread so thin that Orange Man Bad will claim the top spot. But Pierre Delecto is ignoring one very salient fact: in many polls, Trump is consistently polling #1 with DeSantis coming in #2. One exception is South Carolina, in which Trump still came in #1 but former S.C. governor Nikki Haley took second place. But Mitt is confident that his plan could be the key to a resounding victory for whatever party he happens to favor at the moment.
I don’t think Romney believes that Trump is going to win the general election. That being said, I also don’t think that Romney believes that there is a second term in his future. So the questions are, what is angling for, and whom is he trying to impress?
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