Never let it be said that Willard “Mitt” Romney has the courage to follow through with his convictions. After a Washington Post story revealed that the failed Republican presidential candidate was a part of a cabal of dead-enders seeking to sabotage Donald Trump and put the Clintons back in the White House, old Mitt has thrown in the towel – the crying towel. The man who just wouldn’t go away looks to be doing exactly that and may the door not hit him in the ass on the way out.

CNN reports that ”Mitt Romney ends recruiting efforts for an independent candidate”:

Mitt Romney won’t launch a third-party presidential campaign of his own and has stopped trying to recruit somebody else to do it.

The 2012 Republican nominee had attempted to recruit a challenger to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. But prospects like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said no, and Romney is now dropping his efforts, a source familiar with Romney’s thinking told CNN. The news was first reported by Yahoo News.

It’s the latest blow to the “Never Trump” movement — a group of conservatives led by Romney, blogger Erick Erickson and The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol — to find an alternative to Trump.

Romney still hopes a candidate will emerge. But an adviser to the “Never Trump” efforts confirmed Tuesday night that the efforts are looking grim.

Part of the challenge, a key “Never Trump” official said, is that prospective candidates need to hear a campaign plan that involves money, staffing, viability, key states to target and a plan to get onto the presidential debate stages.

But the people making the pitches, the official said, “aren’t campaign managers. They’re writers, activists and politicians. You need someone to say, ‘this is how I’d make this real.’ The odds remain low.”

Team Romney took a big hit the other day when Ohio Governor and presidential candidate John Kasich – a top target – said thanks but no thanks. There was freshman Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who is a nobody with zero accomplishments but after home state Republicans delivered him a stinging rebuke at the Nebraska Republican Convention over the weekend his chances went up in flames. Dallas Mavericks owner and reality TV personality Mark Cuban also refused Romney’s overtures.

The Never Trumpers are now left with a woebegone pack of consultants who couldn’t find their asses with two hands, cranky activists like Curly Haugland and media personalities like neocon fruitbag William Kristol and blowhard Red State founder Erick Erickson – both of whom may find that their influence has been badly damaged for their futile attempt to sink their own candidate in order to remain relevant.

The old warhorse Pat Buchanan was right when he smoked Romney on Monday, all but calling him a gutless coward and shaming him compared to his father George Romney whose dirty work helped to sink Barry Goldwater in 1964. Buchanan took Mitt to the woodshed in his column “Is Mitt on a Suicide Mission?”:

If Romney believes that Trump is an unacceptable nominee and would be an intolerable president, and that Republicans have a moral obligation to prevent this, why does Romney not man up and take on the assignment himself?

Now, admittedly, Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, where Romney attended, does not have a long tradition of producing suicide bombers. Yet, Romney is asking others to undertake a mission that will kill their careers and make them pariahs in their party, but will not do it himself.

His father shared Romney’s mindset: If the voters have made a mistake, you are not obligated to support it. Just days after Sen. Barry Goldwater locked up the Republican nomination in the California primary, Gov. George Romney was at the Cleveland governors conference plotting to stop him.

In 1968, George Romney was so far behind Nixon in the early polls he dropped out, two weeks before New Hampshire. Though he quit the race, at the Republican Convention in Miami Beach, he allowed his name to be put in nomination for vice president, to protest Nixon’s selection of Spiro T. Agnew.

Agnew crushed him. But whatever you say about the political savvy of George Romney, he was stubborn as a bull in his convictions, and he had the courage to go down to defeat fighting for them.
Son Mitt, however, is pushing others into doing what he will not do.

AND

What the Never Trump folks refuse to face is this transparent reality:

Either Trump or Clinton is going to be the next president. To the degree they succeed in wounding or killing Trump’s candidacy, they advance Clinton’s chances of succeeding Obama.
The Romney-Kristol cabal is Hillary Clinton’s fifth column inside the Republican Party.

Perhaps this is finally the end of Mitt Romney as a public figure, a man who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel and whose incompetence gave America four extra years of Barack Obama on a silver platter needs to just slink off forever.

The Never Trumpers sans Romney now face an even tougher rock to roll and little time to do it.