Romney to NH GOP:

Don’t vote in anger in the 2016 primaries and nominate someone who can’t win

Take it from a guy who lost by more than 120 electoral votes to an incumbent struggling with eight percent unemployment

: Electability in a nominee is key.

From ABC’s RICK KLEIN: “Mitt Romney did something interesting last night: He lent his voice to a policy debate that’s roiling his party in Congress. His speech last night, at a New Hampshire GOP fundraiser, included a surprise warning against those (hello, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and even Marco Rubio) threatening a government shutdown in an effort to deny funding to Obamacare. Romney won’t win many points with conservatives with an attack on the tea party’s favored legislative strategy, or a sliver of a defense of Obamacare. But he doesn’t have many points he could win with that crowd, post-election, anyway. More intriguing was his warning not to ‘cast an emotional vote, a protest vote, an anger vote’ in the 2016 primaries. He went on to say ‘there will only be one or perhaps two who could actually win the election in November.’ Romney didn’t name names. Of course, he didn’t have to.”

He also warned against trying to defund ObamaCare by shutting down the government, which is interesting just because him saying that obviously helps the tea partiers who support the idea much more than it does those who oppose it. Which Republicans who regard the shutdown as nutty, like Tom Coburn or McCain, think they’ll be more likely to persuade the base of that by pointing to the fact that Mitt Romney thinks it’s nutty too? All this does is give the Pauls and Cruzes new ammo to show grassroots righties that only the failed establishment old guard, personified by the party’s last nominee, think folding on the big defunding fight is wise. It’s strange to me that Romney doesn’t realize that. Maybe he just doesn’t care, but Dubya at least has the good sense to stay away from backing specific policy proposals for fear that the tainted Bush brand will be used to undermine them.

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