May 13, 2014 08:15 AM UTC

"Multiple Choice Mitt" Endorses "Both Ways Bob"

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• by: Colorado Pols

As FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports, it's a match made in heaven:

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is endorsing Colorado gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, FOX31 Denver is first to report.

Romney, who lost the 2012 presidential contest to President Barack Obama, will officially endorse Beauprez in an email that will be sent out later Tuesday morning.

“As a former governor, I can tell you that Bob Beauprez has exactly what Colorado needs to lead,” Romney’s email states. “Bob’s unique combination of passion, drive, conservative values and experience will make him an outstanding governor.”

As the guy who just lost the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney's cachet as an endorser isn't all that great. Romney was famously the GOP "frontrunner" nobody wanted that year, and silly-season contender Rick Santorum in fact won the Colorado caucuses. Romney's reputation as an unapologetic flip-flopper, most prominently as a Republican who reformed health care in Massachusetts in a way that strikingly resembles "Obamacare," left him distrusted by both sides–an effect we're seeing again in Colorado Republicans Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman as they try to sanitize their own records.

If "Both Ways Bob" Beauprez does win the GOP primary, seeing him try to walk back the civil war stuff–or the Shariah law stuff, or the climate change is a hoax stuff, or the "birther" stuff, you get the idea–is going to be most entertaining.

It's not surprising to see Mitt Romney endorse Bob Beauprez in the Colorado GOP gubernatorial primary, since Beauprez served as Romney's chief surrogate in Colorado during the 2012 presidential campaign. With that said, for all of his own prodigious liabilities as a candidate, Beauprez is definitely winning the endorsement race among the Republican establishment at this point–and making as big a splash with them as he can early, in hopes of claiming frontrunner status in the race against Scott Gessler and Tom Tancredo.

As for Democrats, we see little for them to do other than smile and pay out the rope as needed.