Failed establishment Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney does not think frontrunner Donald Trump will win the party’s presidential nomination.
“I will support the Republican nominee. I don’t think that’s going to be Donald Trump,” Romney reportedly said at The Atlantic‘s Washington Ideas Forum Wednesday. “My party has historically nominated someone who’s a mainstream conservative.”
Romney added that he would not “disqualify someone just because they hadn’t served in Washington or hadn’t served in a state house,” but predicted that though “there’s a lot of attention given to the insurgent bracket… you’re going to see one or two people emerge on the [establishment] side.”
Trump has blistered Romney for giving away an election in 2012 that Republicans should have won.
Last week in Oklahoma, Trump, who is gaining the support of blue-collar and working-class Americans who never warmed to Romney, said “millions and millions of people stayed home because they were not energized” by Romney’s candidacy and “if the people that are here tonight are energized, you’re going to win.”
“If the people were energized in the last election Romney would have won but they weren’t,” Trump said. “They’re energized now.”
Making a Reggie Miller-esque choking gesture, Trump said Romney “choked like a golfer who can’t sink that last putt” in the 2012 election.
“Mitt Romney let us down,” Trump said. “Something happened to him.”
Trump added that “with Romney there was no energy” and said Romney was a “good-looking guy but nothing else worked.”
“He had the look but he had nothing else,” Trump said.
Trump said after supporting failed presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, respectively, he decided to not taking any chances in 2016 and run for the presidency himself.