Is Mitt Romney Planning to Jump Into the 2020 Presidential Race?

Ah, Mitt Romney. You may remember him from such career highlights as getting walloped by Barack Obama in 2012, delivering a rancid speech against Republican primary frontrunner Donald Trump in 2016, pathetically begging to be Trump’s secretary of State after the election, and running to be the new John McCain of the Senate in 2018. Well, now Romney has got his seat in the Senate, and he’s making the most of it, becoming the first Republican to stand up and criticize President Trump for his dealings with foreign nations.

“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” Romney tweeted on Friday. “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

Trump, never to let a slight go unanswered, replied: “Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney. He never knew how to win. He is so bad for R’s!”

In a follow-up over the weekend, Trump even gave his opposition a rare compliment: “The Democrats are lucky that they don’t have any Mitt Romney types. They may be lousy politicians, with really bad policies (Open Borders, Sanctuary Cities etc.), but they stick together!”

But Romney’s opposition to the president may go beyond virtue-signaling tweets.

“BREAKING: Senator Mitt Romney has been calling conservative donors asking about a potential 2020 primary run against President Trump,” tweeted Jack Posobiec on Friday.

Hmm. Is Bill Kristol considered a “conservative donor”? He ran a poll asking Twitter to tell him who they considered more honorable, Romney or Trump. Inevitably, the results came back overwhelmingly in favor of the president.

What about Anthony Scaramucci? Is he a conservative donor. He, too, tweeted his support of the Mittster.

“Mitt’s Decency over Trump’s Indecency. Mitt’s Patriotism over Trump’s Fascism. Mitt’s Democracy over Trump’s Dictatorship. Mitt’s Grace over Trump’s Disgrace. Mitt over Trump in 2020. If he ran he would win,” the Mooch predicted.

Well, Romney may be able to beat Trump, but can he beat [checks notes] Joe Walsh? What about [squints eyes] Mark Sanford?

In all honesty, we don’t see a shred of evidence to suggest that there’s any appetite for a Romney run against the president, but he does have the name recognition (and media attention) that could actually make for an ugly primary contest. Trump would crush him – we have no doubt of that – but he would potentially go into the general weaker than he would have otherwise. A Romney run, in other words, would be nothing more than a present to Democrats.

Mitt, think better of it.