Top Romney strategist on Trump’s choice, Jeb’s struggle, Bernie’s rise

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney eats lunch with adviser Stuart Stevens aboard his campaign bus in 2012. (Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Ted Cruz rails against the “Washington cartel” but is a creature of the very establishment he condemns. Donald Trump could have been a serious contender but opted instead to be the “Jesse Ventura candidate.” Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are trying to sell flip phones in the smartphone era. Bernie Sanders is “the most popular politician in America.”

That’s how Stuart Stevens, the strategist who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, described the 2016 field in an interview Wednesday with Yahoo News broadcast on Sirius XM.

Stevens, a canny and cutting presence on Twitter, shared his candid views on some of the candidates in the crowded field to succeed President Obama, starting with real estate mogul and reality star Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump had a choice in the very beginning: to become a serious candidate for president or to run as kind of a Jesse Ventura candidate,” Stevens said, referring to the blunt-speaking former professional wrestler and action movie actor who starred in “Predator” and later became governor of Minnesota.

“Had he become a serious candidate for president, he would have taken the time and done the work to study policy, and really learned a lot. He, in Iowa, would have been meeting with business people, small-biz people, asking their ideas,” Stevens continued. “He would have been meeting with teachers and students and parents and talking about education. He would have been doing these things that candidates that want to succeed and are serious do.”

But “instead, what he’s done is what he enjoys. He’s at a point in his life where he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t enjoy,” the consultant said. “What does he enjoy? He likes having these big rallies and going out and ranting for an hour. That’s fine — it just has very little correlation to what you need to do to get elected president.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses, has run “a very smart campaign” and is “a good tactician,” according to Stevens.

“But at the heart of the Cruz campaign, I think, is a fundamental hollowness that he’s running as this ultimate outsider when he’s really more the ultimate insider,” the consultant said.

“Here’s someone who’s an Ivy League millionaire who has worked his way quite successfully up the ladders of power — governor’s staff, White House staff, Supreme Court clerk, United States Senate,” Stevens said. “I think he would be doing better running as Ted Cruz and not trying to rail against the Washington cartel while you’re right in the middle of the Washington cartel.”

Turning to self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in Iowa but leads her in the polls in New Hampshire, Stevens pointed to the senator’s favorable rating and unfavorable rating and declared him “the most popular politician in America now.”

And, Stevens said, “what is happening with Bernie Sanders is much more important than what’s been happening with Donald Trump. We’ve had a lot of socialists who’ve run for president before in America. We’ve never had one do so well.”

Looking at his number of donors and favorability, Stevens said “the data says that Bernie Sanders is doing better than anybody else who’s running for president.”

Asked why Clinton has not talked up her husband’s economic record more, Stevens replied: “I think the problem with talking about Bill Clinton’s record is it’s just so long ago.”

“I think that this is one of the problems that Jeb Bush has talking about Florida. It’s sort of like trying to sell someone an iPhone by showing them a flip phone. You can have the greatest flip phone in the world, but it’s like, ‘OK, what does that have to do with what I want now?’”