The big news of the week is that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is retiring from the US Senate next year, but this may not be what it looks like.

The Atlantic magazine wrote a gigantic, 10,000-word article about Romney’s retirement and had published it simultaneously when he made the announcement. It also curiously coincides with the release of a brand-new book about Mitt Romney, which is usually a signal that someone is going to jump in the race for president.

Romney doesn’t have any hope of defeating Donald Trump in the primary and everyone knows it, so what’s really going on?

One of the big takeaways from the book, which is titled, “Reckoning,” is that Mitt Romney is super mad that Republican voters prefer the politics of Donald Trump over that of failed globalists like Mitt Romney. One of the side projects that Mitt Romney has been working on for years is to create a third party with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). This third party doesn’t have a name yet, but the working slogan for it is, “Stop the stupid.”

The book talks about Mitt Romney’s fantasies about debating Donald Trump and winning voters back to the Bush-Cheney-Obama-Clinton globalist position. No, really. This is what Mitt Romney thinks about in his spare time. He almost entered the 2024 race, based solely on his daydreams that he would defeat Donald Trump in a debate.

Romney did some internal polling, however, which has never been released to the public before. He discovered that if he ran against Donald Trump, he would mainly end up siphoning votes away from the Democrat candidate, while not actually pulling any support away from Trump.

The book was written by McKay Coppins, who describes the big plan as, “We’d say, ‘This party’s going to endorse whichever party’s nominee isn’t stupid,’” Romney told me.”

As far as marketing plans go, that has to be right up there with putting Dylan Mulvaney on a can of Bud Light. “Let’s call the voters stupid to win them over!”

As we’ve mentioned previously, October 16th is the big date to be watching for. Once the calendar reaches that point, new candidates will not be allowed on the ballot in certain states. It gets worse through November and December, but losing the chance at those electoral votes means that if Romney is going to jump into the race with his Stupid Party, or if the Democrats are going to torpedo Joe Biden, it has to happen before October 16th.

Aside from Romney’s presidential ambitions, there is one additional striking thing about the piece in The Atlantic. On January 2, 2021, Romney sent this text message to Mitch McConnell:

“In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon who reports that they are seeing very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protests planned on the 6th. There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator—the President—is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.”

Romney is obviously an idiot for believing the intelligence agencies, which we know were involved in the planning of the January 6 mostly peaceful protests. But why didn’t Romney, King or McConnell ever mention this intelligence that was being given to Senators to the January 6 Committee?

We also know that Trump had called for more security at the Capitol that day, but Nancy Pelosi told the National Guard to stand down. Romney is such a fool that to this day, he believes Donald Trump tried to foment an insurrection, despite all the evidence that says otherwise.

Charlie Kirk raised another possibility on his podcast on Wednesday, talking about Romney’s third-party dreams. What if Romney just runs third-party in Utah? If he could siphon enough votes out of Mormon loyalty and prevent Donald Trump from winning the state’s 6 electoral college votes, thus making it easier for the Democrats to steal the 2024 election.

Romney may be overestimating the loyalty of Mormon voters, though. He’s dropping out of the Senate because they prefer his primary opponent over him next year. There’s little indication that they’d support him over Donald Trump. They’re ready to say goodbye to him, just like the rest of us.