It’s even goofier than that Examiner article a few weeks ago speculating that Mitt was setting himself up for a 2024 presidential run by … defying Trump on the issue of calling witnesses at the president’s impeachment trial. (That was published before Romney cast his vote to remove.) Is pissing off Trump fans, as Mitt has done regularly, a shrewd career path to higher office in the modern Republican Party, do you think?

I mean, really:

Mitt Romney on a potential pardon for Roger Stone: “That would be a mistake”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 13, 2020

As for Falwell, there are only three possibilities about the “speculation” he’s hearing regarding Romney joining the Democratic ticket. One: He’s listening to voices in his head. Two: He’s listening to idiots. Three, the all-but-certain truth: He’s making this up whole cloth to please Trump and the Dobbs audience by impugning Romney gratuitously, as if Romney doesn’t vote reliably with Trump and the party on policy in the Senate. In fact, here’s the list of Senate Republicans who crossed the aisle today to vote with Democrats on limiting Trump’s power to go to war with Iran. Who’s missing?

The 8 Republican senators who voted to pass the Iran War Powers resolution:

• Sen. Alexander
• Sen. Cassidy
• Sen, Collins
• Sen. Lee
• Sen, Moran
• Sen. Murkowski
• Sen. Paul
• Sen. Young

— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) February 13, 2020

The dumbest thing about the “Romney’s a Democrat” attacks is how justifiably eager righties have otherwise been over the last week to point out the opportunistic cynicism of Democrats’ Strange New Respect for him. This is the guy whom they smeared over “binders full of women”; whom they let Harry Reid accuse of being a tax cheat; whom they accused of letting people die of cancer; whom they famously derided as naive on foreign policy because he dared call Russia our foremost international enemy. They’re applauding him now because he’s politically useful to them for five minutes. He’s not a Democrat. Democrats hate him. When he votes to confirm Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee, they’ll wail about how the last “good Republican” has betrayed them again or whatever.

All of that being so, why the hell would any Democrat put him on their presidential ticket? Especially since it’s now overwhelmingly likely that the party’s nominee will be 77 years old on Election Day — or older. Whoever ends up being tapped as VP this year stands a better-than-usual chance of inheriting the office. Imagine asking progressives to turn out for a nominee who’s named as his heir apparent … a Republican businessman and former GOP presidential nominee.

I think there’s an outside chance that Bloomberg, if elected, would name a Republican to a cabinet position in order to signal his centrist independence. But it likely won’t be Romney, and Bloomy’s the only potential nominee who’d have the political capital to do that as president.

Exit question: Does Trump really not understand what Romney meant when he said that his faith guided him on his impeachment vote?

I guess if it was the religion, he should have voted for the other half [of the articles of impeachment]. You know, he voted on one positively and the other negatively. He should have probably, if it was his religion, should have voted on both, if you think about it.

Romney didn’t mean that God told him to remove Trump from office by any means necessary. He meant that when he swore an oath to God that he’d do impartial justice in rendering his verdict, it forced him to vote based on the strength of the evidence as he saw it. He couldn’t let partisan considerations influence him. He really did have to be impartial. The evidence was there on the “abuse of power” charge, as he saw it, and it wasn’t there on the “obstruction of Congress” charge. Sheesh. You’d think a POTUS with an adoring evangelical fan base — which includes Falwell, of course — would have a better handle on how this “religion” stuff works.