During the Wednesday edition of Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough observed that “nobody” was expecting Republican hopeful Mitt Romney to beat President Obama in 2012.

“Nobody thinks Romney’s going to win,” Scarborough said candidly. “Let’s just be honest. Can we just say this for everybody at home? Let me just say this for everybody at home.”

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“The Republican establishment — I’ve yet to meet a single person in the Republican establishment that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election this year,” Scarborough continued. “They won’t say it on TV because they’ve got to go on TV and they don’t want people writing them nasty emails. I obviously don’t care. But I have yet to meet anybody in the Republican establishment that worked for George W. Bush, that works in the Republican congress, that worked for Ronald Reagan that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election.”

“I don’t totally agree with that,” Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin interjected. “But even if you think Romney’s going to lose, there’s still, look ’16. If Romney loses, there’s so many strong candidates out there.”

“Who?” Scarborough asked.

“Who? Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour — uh, not Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush…”

“Are you serious?” Mika Brzezinski asked.

“There’s a bunch of them!” argued Halperin.

“A lot of their times have passed,” Scarborough noted. Watch his prediction below, via MSNBC:

(h/t Newsbusters)

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