Mitt Romney is deeply upset with the lack of civility by Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and is threatening another run for president if things don’t improve.

“Romney himself has become one of Trump’s most vocal detractors inside the party. “He’s someone to whom civility means a lot. The whole Trump thing really bothers him,” a close Romney adviser told me.”

I don’t believe Mittens for a moment. It’s not Trump’s incivility that has Mittens panties in a bunch, it’s Trump’s attack on carried interest that infuriates him.

Trump has been speaking out about the tax code and the way it is biased towards the financial industry with hedge funders like Mittens able to pay a much lower rate than say a teacher or secretary. Last week Trump almost sounded like a progressive when talking about the tax code:

“I would change it. I would simplify it. I would take carried interest out, and I would let people making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay some tax, because right now they are paying very little tax and I think it’s outrageous. I want to lower taxes for the middle class. I do very well, I don’t mind paying some taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds that pay almost nothing and it’s ridiculous, OK?”

Compare what Trump has to say about tax fairness, to the basic GOP talking point of lowering all taxes, including those for the hedge funds guys, and the decades long project to convince ordinary Americans that lowering taxes on “job creators” is how to ensure widespread prosperity. That this has proven to not be the case matters not the least. It’s an ongoing project as this article by the Weekly Standard makes abundantly clear.

“Contrary to the fevered imagination of the exasperated American Left, conservative candidates for public office do not tend to take a free-market approach to fiscal policy because it helps “the rich,” but because they believe in earnest that it helps the whole country. By and large, this same rule applies to conservative voters, many of whom may not always benefit directly from the lack of meddling and modest confiscation, but who conceive nevertheless that a capitalistic economy is likely to deliver better results in the long term than is a power-hungry Uncle Sam… “

Tell me another one.

And now Donald Trump is challenging this tax cutting meme in a way that resonates with the lower income Republicans that are also attracted to Trump’s nativist resentment and xenophobia.

The horror.

The conservative project for the last 40 years has been about lowering taxes on the wealthy.

Full stop.

Now, a blowhard like Trump is ruining everything. Didn’t he listen to Mittens in 2012 explaining how the US is divided between the makers and the takers? Doesn’t he understand that the makers like Mittens must be able to pay their taxes at a capital gains rate of 15% rather than an income tax of 35% lest they be forced to flee the country and leave us takers to stew in our misery?

I have one more thing to say about this latest turn of events.

Run Mittens, run.

Sorry, two things to say.

Pass the popcorn.