A New List

More: Chris Cillizza's thoughts about "What the heck is Mitt Romney doing?" It looks like Mittens really wants to be president, but more than that he really doesn't want Jeb Bush to be president:

What he sees -- and wants to stop -- is the momentum in the major donor community toward former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been the most aggressive potential candidate in the 2016 field since the 2014 midterms ended. Bush, according to one report, has set a goal of raising $100 million over the first three months of 2015 in hopes of convincing lots of other candidates that making the race is a fool's errand.By making very clear that he's on the fence about another race, Romney freezes some not-insignificant portion of the Republican major donor base -- especially in New York and New Jersey. Rather than signing on with Jeb in the next weeks or months, many of those money men and women will wait to see what Romney does before doing anything.So, Romney is really buying himself -- and, whether intentionally or not, the rest of the potential field -- some time. He's taking the Bush pot off of boil and turning it down to simmer.

Which then raises this question: Why?

The simplest answer is because a part of Romney would still like to be president and he doesn't want someone else -- named Jeb Bush -- to foreclose that possibility for him.  Romney has not been shy -- privately but publicly reported -- that he has doubts about Bush's ability to win the Republican nomination and the lack of any other candidate in the GOP field who presents a real challenge to de facto Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Read Cillizza's thoughts here. 

Saturday morning update: Who's not on this list? Mittens! I thought he had shut down all the 2016 talk but yesterday he told a group of associates (and donors) quote: "I want to be president" and that he's now considering getting into the race. Yowza. Time.com dissects the "hidden strategy" behind all this, saying it's more about money, influence and possibly messing with Jeb Bush's head.

Here's how Wapo, politico and Talking Point Memo read the tea leaves.

Original post:
Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake at The Fix are out with a new ranking of potential Republican presidential candidates, and Jeb Bush has jumped into the lead.

Here's the list, you can read the whole story here.

1. Jeb Bush
2. Rand Paul
3. Scott Walker
4. Chris Christie
5. Marco Rubio
6. John Kasich
7. Bobby Jindal
8. Mike Huckabee
9. Ted Cruz
10. Paul Ryan

Biggest surprise: no Rick Perry.

Days until Election Day: 668