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Could Mitt Romney and John McCain turn out to be the hidden arrows in Marco Rubio's political quiver in New Hampshire?[continued]

The Seven Stages of Grief are usually rendered as shock, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance. The GOP Establishment’s emotional train is just pulling into Depression Station, and it will tarry there awhile before chugging reluctantly on to Grand Acceptance Junction. Oh, they might never really accept Donald Trump’s emergence as the Republican nominee – quite a few of them are deadly serious about sabotaging the election and throwing political control of the United States to Democrats in perpetuity, if Trump wins the primaries. What they’ll never accept is that the Trump phenomenon is real, and it says more...

EXCERPT Anyway, Charlie Rose with Mark Halperin last night. Charlie Rose said, "Are you saying, Mark, that if the Republican Party unites against Donald Trump, that they can't stop him?" HALPERIN: The establishment now will not accept Trump as the nominee. They will fight him to the end, including at the convention if they need to and I think they'll run someone else if he does become the nominee. ROSE: Meaning somebody's in the field -- HALPERIN: No! Someone like Mitt Romney or Mitch Daniels, someone else to step forward to say, "We've got a safe place to vote because...

Link only http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mitt-romney-could-stop-donald-trump-seriously_56689e49e4b080eddf56dc2d

For Republicans fearful of Donald Trump becoming their party’s presidential nominee, a new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters offers a three-word solution: Willard Mitt Romney. If the former Massachusetts governor were added to the mix of the 14 other Republican candidates running in the Feb. 9 first-in-the-nation presidential primary, New Hampshire voters would, if the election were held now, give him a 2-to-1 win over Trump, the leader of the field. Romney, who said as recently as last week that he is not interested in running, did not file for the New Hampshire primary...

It's hard to keep up with the twists and turns in this presidential race. Hillary Clinton under fire on Benghazi! Ben Carson has a theory about the pyramids! Bernie Sanders wrote about rape fantasies! Donald Trump . . . well, Donald Trump! Figuring out which headline will have the biggest impact on the general election is a bit of a parlor game. But what if they have no impact at all? After the 2012 election, political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck wrote a book called"The Gamble"that looked at the cause of President Obama's victory over Mitt Romney. They sifted...

Rumors are starting to fly that Republican elites are considering adding Mitt Romney to the Republican primary in a last-minute attempt to destabilize the popularity of non-traditional candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, The Washington Post reported. But this seems to be mostly rumor and speculation from his friends, since Romney himself has said he won’t run again and no one has gone on record yet with specific plans to draft him. What’s really going on? Here’s what you need to know....

Why isn’t Mitt Romney president? Because he thinks like this. Over at Breitbart was this headline: MITT ROMNEY: DEMISE OF LEGACY MEDIA EMPOWERING CONSERVATIVE ‘INSURGENTS,’ PREVENTING MORE ‘COLLABORATIVE ACTION’ The story reads, in part, like this: Failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lamented that the demise of traditional media is empowering Republican “insurgents” and preventing establishment Republicans from compromising more with Democrats. As the Republican establishment is trying convince Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to run for House Speaker, Romney told David Axelrod on a recent “The Axe Files” podcast that the “extremes within our respective parties are having a louder...

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, sounded off on the possibility of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Romney’s 2012 running mate, as the next Speaker of the House. Romney told show host Jake Tapper Ryan as Speaker of the House would lessen the possibility he could make a future run for president. “We need Paul in two spots at once,” Romney said. “You know, there haven’t been a lot of people that have gone on from speaker to the White House, so I’d hate to lose him as a potential...

Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney listed a half-dozen Republican candidates he said could qualify as mainstream conservatives his party could live with in a general election — and said he didn’t think Donald J. Trump was one of those. Mr. Romney, a two-time candidate who was the party’s standard-bearer in 2012, ticked off New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and businesswoman Carly Fiorina as viable options. -snip- Mr. Romney did not mention retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who along with Mr....

THERE IS one man who can save the Republican Party, and his name is Mitt Romney. Seriously. Seven years after Romney crashed and burned in the 2008 Republican primary and three years after he beat a weak GOP presidential field before losing to President Obama, he is still the party’s best hope of winning back the White House.

"Mitt wants to run. He never stopped wanting to run," an anonymous senior adviser of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign recently told New York magazine. Other members of Romneyworld have denied the former governor is interested in another campaign. But at this stage in the 2016 race, Mitt Romney should start preparing to get back in the arena.Romney should be ready to enter the field to save his party from an awful reckoning between its leadership and its base, a reckoning that has been brought on by Donald Trump's campaign. Trump has proven that the "strongest GOP primary field in...

As Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican presidential race, frustration and panic have become high enough to make some inside the party Establishment pine for a candidate they roundly rejected as recently as January: Mitt Romney. 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 — and some Romney-ites are only too happy to talk up the prospect of their man jumping into the race if the Establishment fails to stop Trump, whose support...

Colorful former Trump advisor Roger Stone thinks 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney is thinking about getting back in the presidential race. Stone tweeted his suspicion, and told CNN he had heard that Romney was considering a run from his sources. The move could indicate Romney sees an opportunity to better confront and challenge front-runner Donald Trump. Some see current establishment standard bearer former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as flailing. Trump has mocked Bush for being "just flat" on the campaign trail and Sunday called him a "low energy" candidate. Romney publicly considered a third run as recently as January, but...

I have a question for you FReepers. In a Primary debate in late January, 2012, Romney tried to get to the right on illegal immigration by proposing that we make conditions so difficult for the illegals that they pack it up and go home on their own (i.e., self-deportation), rather than rounding them up and deporting them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObVnA0nIx_s A Google search finds many columns on this topic, but only immediately after that debate. Then Obama brought it up in an October debate, just before the election and blasted Romney on it. After the election, the Republican 'advisers' (most of them...

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Thursday that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's rhetoric on Iran "hurts the cause." "I am opposed to the Iran deal, but @SenTedCruz is way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause," Romney, acting in his emerging role as party elder, tweeted Thursday. Mitt Romney ✔ ‎@MittRomney I am opposed to the Iran deal, but @SenTedCruz is way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause. 6:40 AM - 30 Jul 2015 Cruz, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said Monday that President Barack Obama's administration will become "the...

Failed Republican 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney took to Twitter early Thursday to attack Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is running for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, for his comments accusing President Barack Obama of becoming the leading financier of terrorism with his nuclear deal with Iran.

For Republicans eager to cast The Donald out of the GOP presidential primary, a warning: The only thing more difficult than a Trump in the race, may be a Trump who's no longer in the race. The apoplexy over how much damage Trump is doing to the party brand—and its eventual non-Trump nominee—in his present role as a recalcitrant, incendiary, front-running candidate, may well be trumped (if you will) by the fulminations and machinations of an ex-candidate. It would be one thing if Trump went graciously and serenely into surrogacy, whenever that moment came, giving a no-strings-attached endorsement to the...

Two longtime top advisers to 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, Beth Myers and Peter Flaherty, are joining former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, people familiar with the move said.

Mitt Romney's backing helped several candidates emerge from a crowded primary field and be successful in the 2014 midterm elections. He's aiming to do the same for presidential candidates in 2016. Many observers expected Mitt Romney to slink away from politics after his defeat in the 2012 presidential election, but the former Massachusetts governor has instead embraced a new role as an elder statesman and kingmaker within the Republican Party. While he has shied away from open campaigning, Mr. Romney has taken to tacitly supporting the more moderate, establishment-friendly candidates in a packed and ideologically tangled field. “Romney, who flirted...