NOT TO BE

During the 2012 Presidential campaign every week there was the latest and greatest “not Mitt” and Mitt Romney.  Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and even Michele Bachman all were the “not Mitt at some point.  In retrospect it was hard to consider any of them, other than Rick Perry, as a real candidate.  Rick Perry, of course, self-destructed with his brain freeze during a debate.  In the end we ran out of “not Mitts” so we got Mitt.  Ron Paul was a fringe candidate only capable of sucking enough votes out of the mix to guarantee Barack Obama’s re-election.  Election results demonstrated why there was such a desperate search for a better “not Mitt.”

Now that Mitt Romney has taken himself out of the race.  I believe he is about to be replaced by “not Jeb.” The Washington establishment wants a Jeb Bush candidacy.  He is perfect.  He is not nearly as threatening to liberals and he is guaranteed to lose in a general election.

It will be very different in 2016.  Republicans are going to field some very serious candidates.  Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Scot Walker, Chris Christie, and Mike Huckabee are already running.  It is not official yet, but they’re running.  There will be more. The worst of this group is better than the best “not-Mitt” in 2012. Jeb Bush will raise an incredible amount of money, but he will still make an early exit.  His only real chance is to run out of “non-Jeb”s and that won’t happen this time.

At this point it is hard to predict but my money is on “not-Jeb” running against “not-Hillary” and there are more good “not Jeb”s than there are “not Hillary”s.  I guess you could describe this as” to be or “not” to be.