Which Shape Shifter Will Romney Be This Time?

I don't like Mitt Romney for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that he's a rich, spoiled brat who suffers from an overweening sense of entitlement.   He thinks he's entitled to the presidency.  In addition, his ego drives him to be the first Mormon president.  He's in love with the idea of being president.  What he'd actually do if elected is a bigger question - a question that Romney himself doesn't seemed to have fleshed out even when he ran for the office in 2012.   Thus, the question becomes one of what version of Romney will we see/Romney seek to project?  The speculation on Romney's reasoning is all over the place.  Here are examples of the speculation.  First,  highlights from a piece in Time:

It is always wonderful to see a twice-failed politician suck it up and sort of announce he’s going to be running for President again. Mitt Romney’s allies say he will be different this time. There is talk of a new personal style that was really his old personal style—as seen in the Netflix documentary Mitt—but was brutally suppressed by his … political consultants, most of whom seem back on board.

There is talk of Romney emphasizing the eradication of poverty as one of his three campaign pillars. There is talk about his being less gaffe-prone this time. (Translation of last two sentences: he will try to act like a rich guy who cares for the 47%.) He will “position” himself just to the right of Jeb Bush.

What they don’t talk about is whether this iteration of Romney will come equipped with a backbone. The last two certainly didn’t, to the point of embarrassment. In neither campaign did Romney take a position that was even vaguely controversial with his party’s rabid base. He was disgraceful on immigration, “self-deporting” himself to Dantean circles of chicanery. He was craven on fiscal sanity, opposing in one debate—along with all his fellow candidates—a budget proposal that would include 90% cuts and 10% revenue increases.

Worst of all, he self-lobotomized on the subject of health care, dumbing himself down egregiously, denying that his (successful) universal-health-coverage program in Massachusetts was the exact same thing as Barack Obama’s (increasingly successful) national version. He never expressed a real emotion—not anger, not sadness, not unscripted laughter. His manner was as slick as his hair.

Ouch!  The there are these highlights from a piece in Reason.com:

It looks we’re in for a Romney trilogy: Since The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and a 2008 primary contender, was considering another campaign, it’s become increasingly clear that Romney is aggressively scouting a route to 2016.

Getting real means changing his tune. His 2012 presidential campaign left a lot to be desired. This time, he says, things will be different. Different how, you ask?  You know…different.

So it’ll be more of the same, but with different packaging. This is the wrong lesson of the 2012 campaign. Romney had a number of communications foibles, but his big problem wasn’t communications. It was substance. The communications foibles arose in part because the messaging operation had so little to work with, and thus ended up distracted and unfocused, sucked into daily controversies that they couldn’t respond to.

Romney’s verbal flubs from last time will still be on the record. He’ll have to defend them or distance himself from them, repeatedly, and he’ll have to do so without contributing too much to the not-insane perception that he’s an ideologically unmoored flip-flopper.

And then there is this from the Washington Post:

Ever since the news broke last Friday that Mitt Romney is not only thinking about running for president again in 2016 but also making moves that suggest he is going to run, I've been trying to figure out why.  I've talked to Republicans who are close to Romney and Republicans who are only interested observers.

For people outside of Romney's direct orbit, there is bafflement about what Romney is doing. Closer allies explain, without their names attached, why Romney running again isn't as odd as it is being portrayed.
[I]n short those conversations -- and my own thinking -- have produced three basic reasons to explain why Romney is doing what he is doing. They are:

1. He doesn't believe Jeb Bush is a terribly strong candidate/frontrunner.
2. He doesn't think anyone in the current field can beat Hillary Clinton
3. He believes he has something more/new/different to offer the country at a critical moment in history.

I don't doubt Romney's sincerity. But I do think he and those close to him are fooling themselves that he can simply proclaim that he is running a new and different campaign -- one based on foreign policy and poverty, according to Politico -- and that will be that.

Does Romney think either his Republican opponents or, potentially Hillary Clinton in a general election, are going to just let the whole "47 percent" thing drop? Or that the car elevator, "severely conservative" and the picture of him with money coming out of his suit jacket are going to disappear?

The image of him as an out-of-touch plutocrat, which the Obama team so effectively painted, will linger no matter what Romney says or does as a candidate. And, unlike in 2012 when he was seen as the de facto frontrunner due to his close-but-no-cigar bid in 2008, the logic (or lack thereof) for why he would choose to run again in 2016 would make him a puzzle in the eyes of many Republican primary voters. People don't usually vote for puzzles.

As I have said before, the would be GOP candidate field is going to provide wonderful spectator sport.   Meanwhile, Hillary and would be Democrat candidates need only to carefully record the insanity and lunacy so that it can be trotted out in the general election.