Will Mike Bloomberg to run in 2012?

by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 10/21/10

Charlie Gasparino, commentator for Fox Business, reports today that his Wall St. sources say they want Mike Bloomberg, mayor of NY, to run for President in 2012 and Bloomberg is considering it.

“He’s not saying no. He’s leaving the door open,” Gasparino said this afternoon on Fox Business.

Gasparino said in his book, “Bought and Paid for: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street” that many on Wall St. supported Barack Obama in 2008 but have since become disillusioned and are turning to Bloomberg.

It was suggested in this column in August that Bloomberg offered potential for a new political party with his pal Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California: “Bloomberg/Arnold could change the political dynamic in this country to one of temperament rather than economic outlook. My local paper here in the mountains tells us today that the ‘widening consensus’ is that the U.S. economy has ‘slowed to a crawl’ and the federal government is out of options. That means that the traditional Democratic Party is out of options as well, as it put all of its chits on the Roosevelt paradigm and the Marx/Keynes hybrid. This at a time when Hayek’s classic ‘The Road to Serfdom’ finds its way to the bestseller lists at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. . . We need New York and we need L.A., but they are crumbling under the paralysis of political tradition and orthodoxy. We need, primarily, imagination, and Arnold and Bloomberg bring it. Let’s see what they have to say.”