According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released yesterday, about four times as many likely Iowa caucus goers prefer Mitt Romney to Mike Huckabee, about six times as many prefer Romney to Chris Christie or Rick Santorum, and seven times as many prefer the former Mass. governor to either Ted Cruz or Rand Paul.
These findings are known as "circumstances." And now Romney has let slip on Hugh Hewitt's radio show that "circumstances can change" his immutable refusal to make a third presidential run, although he added that "I’m just not going to let my head go there," which is vintage Romneyesque doubletalk and a grim reminder of what awaits us--again.
In short, in 2016 it'll be Hillary vs. Mitt--two of the most scheming, least sincere, shiftiest as well as most awkward pols ever to haunt American presidential politics--after Hillary dispatches her feeble primary opposition and Mitt does the same. Both will cruise through 2015 accumulating nearly all the financial marbles and super-PAC graft, which will permit both to invincibly slander their internal critics before engaging the even more slanderous main event.
There will be no "national debate." Mitt's campaign will consist of rhetorical hilarities, spectacular hypocrisies and unspeakable demagoguery, as will Hillary's. Mitt will promise more severe conservatism while leaving us all in the dark as to what in God's name he's talking about, while Hillary, in kind, proceeds to bewilder us with centrist mush that her bumbling, squabbling staff will then hopelessly attempt to clarify. And of course both will be the toughest-talking chickenhawks on the planet, while at once pledging to deploy American firepower with unimpeachable prudence.
Both will effectively nullify President Obama's legacy of an Eisenhowerian-Kennedesque seriousness and return to rank Nixonian opportunism; both will be unRooseveltian loyalists to their class while blathering about Hooverian fouls in every pot; and both will unveil weird, W.-like Wilsonian visions for a world according to unsurpassable American virtues and vague theory.
In the end, Hillary will win by 52 to 48 percent and with 300+ Electoral votes. After that, heaven knows what--since Hillary's actual beliefs, assuming she has any, are as infinitely mysterious as Mitt is repetitiously doomed.