Could powerful moderates in the Republican Party be desperate enough to want to bring back Mitt? The guy who raised $1 billion for his presidential race and still managed to lose the election? He doesn’t seem to have changed. Still, the little tufts of gray hair by his ears. The way he reacts to difficult questions by looking as if he just whiffed an unpleasant smell. The good old heh-heh-heh.

These are trying times for Republicans. Actually, things are pretty bad for both parties: The Democrats could lose the Senate, and Hillary Clinton’s book sales are iffy. But, at the moment, the Republicans’ traumas are a lot more action-packed. The defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, terrified many of the party establishment’s supporters, particularly since Cantor’s opponent ran against Wall Street, big business and bank bailouts.

It’s a problem, if you’re a big-money donor, to be worried that your party is being taken over by crazy people who will alienate the voters in a national election by opposing immigration reform and contraception. It’s a catastrophe to be worried that it’s being taken over by economic populists.

Mitt Romney is never going to run as a man of the people. You will remember how well that worked the last time around. Instead, he’s talking foreign policy. It’s the topic of the moment. And unlike, say, Chris Christie, Romney has the aura of a serious guy. Unlike, say, Jeb Bush, he is not related to anybody who invaded Iraq.

To win against Hillary Clinton, Romney said on “Meet the Press,” “the playbook, I believe, is to look at her record. I think you have to consider what’s happened around the world during the years that she was secretary of state. And you have to say it’s been a monumental bust.” The Obama administration, he said, should have armed Syrian rebels and made the president of Iraq ask American troops to stay in his country.

We will try to move past the deep, deep, deep irony of Republicans trying to score political points on Iraq. Really try. It’s just Mitt Romney. And he’s not even running for anything.