[Tennessee Nana]

As for Christie, I believe that he is too damaged, too moderate, and too temperamentally unreliable to be a credible GOP Presidential candidate
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Willard doesn’t...

Willard thinks Christie would make a fine president...

[Rockingham]

If I were a prominent Republican, I too would say nice things about Christie for the sake of supporting him and damning the Democrats who are after his scalp. After all, Christie is likely to remember and return such favors as are rendered in his current distress.

Similarly, Romney has considerable value to the GOP and conservatives in spite of his record and any defects in his heart of heart views and principles. Romney could help raise large sums for the GOP. He could endorse and energetically campaign for the eventual GOP nominee, helping to reconcile doubters to a Ted Cruz nomination, for example.

It should also be recalled that even well-established political figures sometimes change their views. In Reagan's 1976 campaign, he made an effort to appeal to moderates by announcing Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate. Many conservatives grumbled at the choice and the episode was quickly forgotten after Reagan's loss of his campaign for the nomination.

The experience was transformative though for Schweiker. For the first time, he came into close association with conservatives and found that he shared more of their principles than he realized. Schweiker's votes in the Senate shifted sharply Right and he eventually served as HHS Secretary after Reagan's election to the Presidency in 1980.

Might Romney's political views have similarly shifted to the Right due to the 2012 campaign? I suspect that must be so to some degree, with Romney getting enough of a political education in 2012 to learn what most of us in this forum already know.