I feel inspired to offer Trump some equal time on the site by this tweet from earlier today, which Iowahawk called possibly the funniest ever written. Sure, Trump’s had a gigantic advantage over the rest of the field in free media coverage for most of the past year, and sure, most of the Fox News line-up of hosts are clearly warm to his candidacy. But doesn’t he deserve some more free coverage to respond to the first major public comment Mitt Romney’s made since 2012? When will Fox News start being fair to Trump?

Should cablenews give equal time to someone to respond to Romney?

— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) March 3, 2016

Apparently one FNC host described Trump’s rebuttal to Romney at his rally in Maine this afternoon as “pretty polite” even though the bit everyone’s talking about (excerpted below) involves Trump claiming Romney would have “dropped to his knees” if Trump had made that a condition of his endorsement in 2012. We’re now destined to spend the remaining few hours before the debate watching some Trump fans scold his critics for thinking Trump meant anything untoward by that — all he meant was that Romney begged! — while other fans high-five and laugh at Trump having totally laid a BJ joke on that establishment stiff. (Romney predicted this morning that Trump would respond with “low road insults.”) The reaction from the crowd at his rally to the comment was a mixture of hearty laughs and oooohing, which makes it safe to say there were plenty of people there who chose the second interpretation. Either way, it’s pure Trump. You don’t win by rebutting your critics, you win by humiliating them rhetorically and reinforcing your own dominance. And of course that’s why Rubio ended up making dick jokes at Trump’s expense. You’ll never get anywhere fighting Queensbury style against a pro wrestler.

Exit question for Chris Christie: Is this how it, er, went down for him too when he endorsed Trump? He’s term-limited as governor, had no path to a Senate seat in New Jersey, and had just been roundly rejected by voters in New Hampshire. Glomming on to Trump and doing whatever he asked was his only ticket back to political relevance. Maybe that explains that haunted, vaguely violated look on his face at Trump’s presser on Tuesday night.

Update: Eight thousand posts or so after I started “Romney 2016?” trollblogging, the dream is finally alive. Dude, it’s happening:

Mitt Romney has instructed his closest advisers to explore the possibility of stopping Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention, a source close to Romney’s inner circle says.

The 2012 GOP nominee’s advisers are examining what a fight at the convention might look like and what rules might need revising.

“It sounds like the plan is to lock the convention,” said the source…

But implicit in Romney’s request to his team to explore the possibility of a convention fight is his willingness to step in and carry the party’s banner into the fall general election as the Republican nominee.

Romney, who just spent the morning blowing up the demigod who leads the Trump movement, is going to unite the party in Cleveland? Alrighty then.