Mitt Romney’s 2016 presidential campaign is great news for Republican campaign consultants, but is struggling to make the argument for why primary voters should prefer him over, say, Jeb Bush. David Freedlander reports, for example, that Team Romney thinks it’s a weakness of Bush’s that he left office as governor in 2007, even though Romney also left office as governor in 2007:
Team Romney says Jeb’s “time as governor was quite a while ago.” They left office simultaneously.
“They have not done a lot to flush out the details of his candidacy,” said Tom Rath, a senior adviser to Romney in both his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, speaking of Bush. “His time as governor was quite a while ago. A substantial number of Republicans have never heard him deliver a speech. Mitt is a proven commodity.”
Jeb was elected in 1998 and then re-elected in 2002. Mitt was elected in 2002 and then declined to run for re-election. It’s true that Mitt is a proven commodity in the sense that he’s already lost a presidential election, but that doesn’t seem especially compelling.
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