Commentary: How Bloomberg would fare in the general election

Immediately after New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg officially announced his defection from the GOP ranks, political analysts quickly began hyping a possible general election match-up between three New Yorkers: Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg.  Already, the media is in love with the idea of a three-candidate New York showdown in '08.

Prematurely though, these pundits are assuming that Clinton and Giuliani will win their party's nominations.  We are six long months away from the first vote.  Anything can happen on both the Democratic and GOP ends.  Giuliani's pro-choice stances could be his undoing.  Hillary's Washington establishment label could cause a massive voter revolt in January.  We cannot presume anything at this point.

So while other blogs, news sites and so-called 'pundits' salivate over a possible Clinton-Giuliani-Bloomberg showdown, Newsweek's Jonathan Darman thought outside the box about Bloomberg's possible impact on all the other candidates:

Other candidates could also feel the Bloomberg effect in a generalelection fight. John Edwards has made a strong pitch for his party'spopulist wing. Should he win the Democratic nomination, pro-businessvoters in the middle might view a Bloomberg vote as a protest againstboth Bush-backing Republicans and Labor-pandering Dems. Barack Obama'scampaign is centered around the idea he would introduce a new,different kind of politics. Whatever you may think of it, Bloomberg'scandidacy would certainly be new and different. On the right, MittRomney has taken conservative positions on every major social issue inthe hopes he will emerge as the choice of Christian conservatives inthe primary. Should he win the nomination, he's counting on moderatevoters remembering he was the governor of liberal Massachusetts forfour years. But that pivot could prove harder with a viable, sociallymoderate Independent candidate in the race. John McCain and FredThompson's aides talk up their candidates' appeal to a broad swath ofvoters as evidence they can lead the GOP out of troubled times. Butthat appeal may well be limited as long as McCain and Thompson refuseto break with Bush on the unpopular war in Iraq.

This is a pretty decent analysis.  Mitt Romney is expected to perform yet another political makeover if he becomes the GOP nominee -- transforming himself back into the moderate candidate he was as Massachusetts Governor.  Many of Romney's moderate positions on social issues will be canceled out by Michael Bloomberg.  There would be too much overlap.  For that reason, if Romney and Bloomberg were two of the three candidates in the general election, almost any Democrat would win.

But I don't think it will come to that.  The Karl Rove's strategy of pandering to the far-right works well.  That is why someone like Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee, two conservative southerners that are good at reaching out to Evangelical conservatives, would be affected the least if Bloomberg got into the race.

Obviously, these hypotheticals are nothing more than late-night thought unless Bloomberg actually does run.  But if he chooses to, Bloomberg would be much more electable than Ross Perot.  It would be unlike any other election in American history.