Mark Leibovich reviews the "confluence of political realities [that] has created a genuine opening for a Romney third act."
As Obama struggles through a difficult final term, there is a lack of a clear Republican heir apparent. Presumptive early front-runners, like Chris Christie and Jeb Bush, have shown themselves to be flawed or reluctant or both. A splintering of possible movement candidates (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz) could beget a need for a default consensus choice.
And in Leibovich's interview of Romney, we read a confluence of green lights from the virtual candidate himself. "We’ve got a lot of people looking at the race. We’ll see what happens," he said. He also made sure to belittle Hillary Clinton as an "enabler" of the sitting, unpopular president's foreign policy. And then there was this: "I was talking to one of my political advisers, and I said: 'If I had to do this again, I’d insist that you literally had a camera on me at all times,'" to remind the candidate of lurking, concealed cell phones.
As Leibovich remarks, "It was ... impossible to ignore the phrase 'If I had to do this again.'"
Of course Romney doesn't have to do this again, but he'll make it sound as though he does: self-sacrificial Mitt, rescuing us, by demand, from an Obama third term, a corrupt New Jersey governor, an isolationist wingnut and a Texas nihilist.
God this is going to be fun.