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Mitt Romney Weighed 2016 Unity Ticket With ‘Demagogue’ Ted Cruz: Book

Two allies approached Romney to pitch him on the idea of teaming up with the Texas senator, calling it “the ‘Robert Kennedy’ strategy.”

Mitt Romney chewed over taking another shot at the White House in 2016 as part of a longshot bid to stop Donald Trump, and briefly considered teaming up with avowed foe Ted Cruz to take the real estate mogul down, according to his forthcoming biography. McKay Coppins’ Romney: A Reckoning, claims that five days before the 2016 New Hampshire primary, Romney heard two allies out on a pitch that would have seen him pair up with Cruz on a last-minute unity ticket, according to The Guardian. They “called this the ‘Robert Kennedy’ strategy—get in late to build momentum, win enough delegates to keep the frontrunner from clinching the nomination,” Coppins writes, “then march into the convention girded for a floor fight.” The book says that Romney entertained the idea of the Texas senator, a man he’d described in his journal as “scary” and “a demagogue,” and told his allies his “number one priority [was] to stop Trump.” Ultimately, though, he “didn’t think the gambit would actually succeed in taking down Trump,” Coppins writes.