Mitt Romney: when 'no' doesn't mean 'no'

There is an old psychoanalytic, and well-worn story, worth remembering at moments like these. A man and a woman are involved in a long and loving relationship. She eventually decides that her feelings for him have changed, and she breaks things off. The devastated man does his best to move on with his life, but never quite resolves his feelings of longing for the woman.

After a period of time, and dictated by social convention, they both decide that they ought to try and be friends. As they slowly become comfortable with each other again, the woman begins expressing certain friendly platitudes: "you are a great guy", "any woman would be lucky to have you", etc.

The man's residual feelings are suddenly brought back to the boil, and, embarrassing himself in the process, makes an unrequited pass at his former lover – The hapless man in this story is Mitt Romney, and the woman in his life is the Republican Party.

It is a rare thing to be able to say that Donald Trump is right. But his analysis of Mitt Romney's latest excursion into national politics was spot on: "obviously he wants to be relevant, he wants to be back in the game". And that is exactly what it looked like: the message was an attack on Donald Trump; the spectacle was pure campaign strategy.

A pre-announced, open-ended press release, followed by an underwhelming speech on a well-worn topic, for a handpicked audience in a sympathetic state – Romney looked very much like a man running for office. And his message did little to save him from this implication. Pivoting from a description of Donald Trump as a "fraud" and a "phony", Romney implored Republicans to vote in a manner – any manner – that denies Trump an absolute majority of delegates prior to the cycle-ending convention in Cleveland.

According to Romney, voters should give-up on trying to defeat Trump outright, and should now focus on a spoiling strategy. People should 'vote for Ted Cruz in Texas, John Kasich in Ohio and Marco Rubio in Florida' in an attempt to dilute the overall number of votes that Trump can secure. And perhaps he is right on this point; perhaps this is the only remaining way to keep Trump away from the nomination.

What began as nothing more than a comical distraction has – and particularly so after a landslide Super Tuesday victory – become an unparalleled crisis of identity; a hostile takeover of both the Republican Party and their ideology. However, Trump's polling numbers amongst Republican voters remains stuck around the 40 percent mark (nationally), whilst at the same time, a majority of Republicans say they won't vote for him under any circumstance.

So the Party's best, and perhaps only, hope of defeating Trump before the convention is to force him into a one-on-one race and hope that the anti-Trump vote mobilises around the other candidate.

This is now beginning to look wishful: at a bare minimum it will be a three man race. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both have the backing and the supporter-base to take them all the way through to the convention – at least on current polling. This, and the presence of 29 states or territories who use varying degrees of proportional voting rather than a 'winner-takes-all' format, makes a convention deadlock an increasingly likely prospect.

Romney's sudden political re-emergence at just the same moment as a brokered convention is being spoken about as a serious possibility, will have many in the Republican Party shifting nervously in their seats. Whilst aids close to Romney have begun actively leaking about the desirability of a brokered convention, Romney's friend and colleague, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, said what no-one yet dared, but what everyone must have suspected: "If the convention is locked up, there's a possibility [that Romney will put his name into contention].

The image is hard to shake: Mitt Romney still believes he can be President of the United States – and Donald Trump is his ticket. This will not end well. If there is anything concrete that can be taken-away from this unpredictable election season, it is that the Republican Party have well-and-truly moved-on from the Party they were four years ago. There are no fond memories to be found.

For Mitt, this seems to be a hard reality to accept. Over a week ago he began tentatively testing the waters with a fragile criticism of Trump for not releasing his tax returns, speculating that he is hiding a "bombshell". This ought to have been laughed away by the sheer irony that Romney suffered from the same criticism in 2012 after a delayed release of his own taxes.

What he found however, was a Party so battered, and so fearful, that they would accept help from anyone willing to stand-up to their live-in abuser. This was enough for Romney: a few friendly words and a warm embrace, and he was once again hooked.

He quickly followed this up with an attack on Trump's failure to immediately disown the support of former-Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke, as "disqualifying" and disgusting". This is all fine, however the moment his staff began pre-announcing his announcements; releasing statements, such as Mitt Romney "plans to give a major address… [on] the state of the 2016 Presidential race" things immediately started to, once again, look a little sad.

John Kasich, the one person most likely to benefit from a brokered convention, took it upon himself to have 'the talk' with Romney, though be it in a very public and brutal manner. During the most recent debate, Kasich glibly dismissed Romney's intervention into the campaign, saying: "Mitt Romney's a great guy but he doesn't determine my strategy".

Romney made just such a misjudgement a little over a year ago when he launched his third run for President in as many election cycles. Well, technically he only ever committed to "giving serious consideration to the future", but at that early stage such a statement was as good as an absolute, unflinching, clear-eyed guarantee.

Only a lack of support, be it financial or popular, would have stopped Romney during his 'consideration' phase – the exact same barriers that would have caused Romney to drop-out after any official announcement, or at any point in his campaign for that matter. His intentions were as true as they were ever going to be – he wanted to be President.

Romney spent the three weeks following his announcement busily foraging for the financial backing, the political support, and the requisite staff and infrastructure that a national campaign demands - none of which were forthcoming. So Romney 3.0 died in a whimper - but make no mistake, it was, if only briefly, very much alive. In political terms, this represents a fleeting courtship, yet nonetheless, a courtship that was both one-sided and ill-construed – Romney simply should have known better.

Two years prior, such a thought was inconceivable. Everyone worth listening to, including Romney himself, believed that he had exhausted all present and future political capital – it was time for a career change. Romney won the last Republican primary in a canter, from beginning to end there really was little doubt that he would be the eventual nominee – yet, his campaign for the Presidency wasn't quite as smooth.

Ostensibly he had everything going for him: Romney was running on the back of a successful Governorship in Massachusetts, and an even more impressive record in business. In contrast, faced with stubbornly high unemployment levels and a stuttering economy, President Obama was proving to be a thoroughly underwhelming incumbent.

Yet as election season wobbled along, the Romney campaign began to take on the appearance of a festering wound. Prone to gaffes, incapable of mobilising the Republican base, consistently miscalculating voter turnout, conveying the impression of being 'out of touch', and simply being out-organised by the Obama team – Mitt Romney was unable to define himself as a candidate.

Election night offered a microscope onto this calamity. Romney confidently invited camera crews behind the scenes of his campaign to film what he believed was going to be an election night victory - this despite all polling indicating otherwise. He lost in a landslide. The atmosphere that was then being recorded for posterity was famously described by a campaign staffer as "like a death in the family". Humiliated, and believing that he would be labelled "a loser for life", Romney did what was expected of him: he withdrew from the public spotlight.

With Romney a political recluse, the Republican Party set about cleansing themselves of his aura. The Party leadership were united and unambiguous: they blamed the election failure entirely upon Mitt Romney's shortcomings as a candidate, and believed that the best strategy for Party regrowth would be a very public, and very direct, purge of the Romney name.

Yet, just as with the end of any relationship, animosity eventually dulls with time. And as this inevitably happened, Romney was presented with a few, though limited, opportunities to re-enter public life. During the 2014 Congressional and Senate primaries, Romney was deployed by the Republican Party to add a certain 'establishment' value on the campaign trail. What's more, he was fairly successful, serving as a constant reminder to the American public – then heavily disillusioned with Barack Obama – that they could have had a different President all along.

Furthermore, once ridiculed by Democrats for insisting that Russia was the United States' "number one geopolitical foe", Romney, by virtue of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, was beginning to gather a certain, though misplaced, posthumous foreign policy credibility.

This personal renaissance and slight salvaging of his reputation ought to have been enough. Yet, just as with the man in our psychoanalytic tale, Romney wasn't satisfied. His overwhelming desire to hold the highest office in the United States seems to have made applying appropriate context for such niceties, near impossible. For Romney, this small semblance of affection was indicative of a much deeper electoral love. So once again brimming with hubris, and believing it was desired of him, Mitt Romney set about running for President.

However, if he was hoping to be embraced by his former colleagues and welcomed back into his former life, Romney was to be sorely disappointed. By all accounts, the Republican establishment, in the role of our psychoanalytic woman, were firstly caught off guard, and secondly repulsed, by this unrequited advance.

At that stage, the only saving grace for Romney was that he recognised his mistake quite quickly, dropping out of the race just as evasively as he had entered it: "After putting considerable thought into making another run for President, I've decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee."

But once again Romney is back, and this time his ex-girlfriend (the Republican Party) has an abusive boyfriend that she is trying to rid herself of in the form of Donald Trump – Romney can now play the role of white knight.

However, this new found motivation and public engagement with the Republican nomination process can only reasonably be viewed through the prism of political opportunity. Ordinarily, conventions are formalities in function and vanity parades in process – they are coming out parties for the already nominated. However in the event that no candidate receives the required 1237 delegates needed to form an absolute majority, things suddenly get very interesting. The delegates for each state are suddenly no longer bound by the will of their voters and are free to change their pledge in order to try and force an outcome.

Under the 2012 regulations, candidates would need to have won a minimum of eight states in order to get their name on the first round of ballots. Yet once the deadlock occurs and the horse-trading and deal-making begins, these regulations fall away. After multiple votes and multiple failures, the Party can, and will ultimately, turn to outsiders as a compromise solution.

After all, they do eventually have to pick a candidate – and this presents a unique opportunity for a select few high profile Republicans currently outside the campaign process, yet with enough name-recognition to mobilise the Party's base in a general election. And what has become clear in the last week, is that Mitt Romney believes that he is the one person who can save the Party from the spectre of a Trump nomination – the longer he keeps fronting media conferences and campaign-esque events, the stronger this perception will become.

However, even if a brokered convention were to become a reality and the delegates become so terminally deadlocked that they begin considering outside candidates, it will still likely end in tears for Romney.

Alternative nominees, such as Paul Ryan, would almost certainly be seen as more palatable options, and even if Romney's name made it onto the convention floor, the current batch of Republican hopefuls are likely to find him very useful – just not in the way that he would hope. His 2012 campaign presents as an easy pivot point from which they can explain the mistakes that they won't be repeating should they win the Republican nomination – it is likely, that for a second time, Mitt Romney will be publicly purged.

Romney, almost certainly has, once again, misread the mood. He has mistaken hatred for Trump as love for himself. The Republican Party has been as clear as she could be about her feelings for Mitt. Yet from a few kind gestures, and ignoring all other contrary indicators, Romney has managed to manufacture a false signal and a false intent that conveniently matches his internal desire.

And as painful as this may prove to be, it is unlikely to be his political swansong – Mitt Romney, it seems, will only ever be a few friendly words away from once again running for elected office in the future.

Either way, it will be mayhem in Cleveland!