If President Barack Obama wins a second term, tire mogul and 1996 presidential contender Morry “the Grizz” Taylor says he will enter the 2016 presidential race.
“If Obama wins then you guys get ready, because somebody is going to have to fix this mess and it is going to be a real bad mess in four more years if he’s running it,” the Titan International CEO told The Daily Caller in a phone interview last week, after first suggesting the news day must be slow for this writer to catch up with the”wild man from the Midwest.”
“And then I’m going to run. Because if you had now with the TV and the debates, I would have a blast.”
Is the Grizz, whose quixotic and colorful Republican presidential run in 1996 was brilliantly chronicled by Michael Lewis in the campaign classic “Losers,” serious?
“If Mitt don’t win it, in four years, I’m going to run. … You watch me change the debate.”
And while he concedes he “might not win,” the Grizz, who turns 68 this week, says “at least the American people will have a real choice.”
“Let’s face it: You know as well as I do that I’m not a politician. I’m a fixer.”
“I fix things that are broke. You can only do that if you get good people, if you know how to pick good people. I think Romney is much more better and he won’t tell you to your face straight up you’re full of BS, okay. I get very short and I would. But to fix it is not that hard when you look at it totally. Almost every agency in the federal government you could cut it in half and there is not an American citizen who would have a problem.”
The Grizz thinks federal regulations are stifling American business and that if the government cuts the corporate tax and allows American businesses to bring back money stored abroad without it being taxed, it would have a bigger stimulative effect than anything the Obama administration and Congress have done to date.
When TheDC caught up with him last December, he was unsure of who to support in the Republican presidential primary. Now, he is firmly in Mitt Romney’s corner.
“He’s smarter than anybody running,” he said. “And a super good man.”
And according to the Grizz, Romney is in the driver’s seat.
“I think all the polls are wrong and I think this is Romney and Ryan’s to lose,” he said.
People are not paying attention “except for you guys, the Beltway and the politicians in all the states, and of course the consultants and all of that,” he added.
The Grizz said that though Romney has the advantage, he has to be more aggressive because he is dealing with a “Chicago thug.”
“So you’re going to deal with a Chicago thug, you know, you might as well understand it and don’t wait to take a pounding from him,” the Grizz argued. “I would, you know, when the bell rings, step up and just smack him. I mean, that’s what I would do.”
The Grizz had equally harsh words for Vice President Joe Biden.
“Anybody that knows anything knows Biden could have never survived as a lawyer,” he riffed. “That’s why he went into politics. And, you know, hey, he has no idea what he is going to say. He’s just a gadfly that runs out there, you know, because the people in Delaware they were probably safer to throw him into the federal government.”
Fans of the Grizz shouldn’t expect to find him around this year’s GOP convention in Tampa, however.
“I went to the one in ’96 and then I figured it was so boring, you know, the people I had with me — we got on a plane, went to Vegas and had a great weekend,” he said.