Mitt Romney met with Weekly Standard editor William Kristol earlier this week to discuss a possible third-party run in the November presidential elections, multiple media outlets are reporting.

The meeting occurred just blocks away from the White House in a Marriott hotel between Mitt Romney and William Kristol on Thursday, the Washington Post reported. William Kristol explained that the reason for the meeting was to assess a potential run for Mitt Romney as a third-party candidate.

“[Mitt Romney] came pretty close to being elected president, so I thought he may consider doing it, especially since he has been very forthright in explaining why Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should not be president of the United States… It was not like, ‘You should do it.’ I wouldn’t presume he’d do it. But I’m hoping that he begins to think about it a little more.”

At the very least, William Kristol said he sought Mitt Romney’s support of a willing third-party conservative candidate to contest Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee in November.

“Obviously, if there were to be an independent candidacy, Romney’s support would be very important,” Kristol said. “I wanted to get his wisdom on whether it was more or less doable than I thought.”

Mitt Romney would serve as an excellent third-party candidate due to his previous nomination and household name recognition, political expert and former Hinckley Institute Director Kirk Jowers said during a recent interview with the Salt Lake City, Utah, Fox affiliate.

“Trump and Clinton are historically unpopular candidates, and people would love to find someone besides those two to run. [Mitt Romney] has almost a hundred percent name recognition, so that step one is done. He can raise money like nobody else. He could have hundreds of millions tomorrow if he threw his hat in. So for that reason, he is highly attractive and you will see people continue to push to get him in this race.”

If Mitt Romney is going to make a run as a third-party candidate, the time to move is now. Kirk Jowers indicated that waiting much longer to make such a political could have devastating consequences.

“We’re really close to being too late for anyone to get in as a legitimate Independent candidate. That’s because different states have different requirements, different signature requirements and other processes that you need to go through.”

Mitt Romney may not run for the highest elected office in the nation, but his recent speeches and announcements certainly point toward distancing himself from the Republican party and its presumptive nominee in Donald Trump. According to CNN, Mitt Romney has planned to skip the Republican convention this summer due to his opinion of Donald Trump and his presidential campaign.

On Saturday, Mitt Romney again took a veiled shot at Donald Trump in a commencement speech at Trine University in Indiana. In an otherwise politics-free speech, Mitt warned the recent graduates to be wary of “demagogues” without specifically pointing to any candidate by name.

“Demagogues on the right and the left draw upon our darker angels, scapegoating immigrants and Muslims or bankers and business people.”

If Mitt Romney decides to run as a third-party candidate, Donald Trump could easily be considered the reason. In March, Mitt gave an impassioned speech to rally conservatives against the real estate mogul. Now that those efforts have failed, Romney could be poised to enter the race as a third-party candidate to present, in his own words, “better choices” to the American voters, Vanity Fair reported.

“I happen to think that the person who is leading the nation has an enormous and disproportionate impact on the course of the world, so I am dismayed at where we are now. I wish we had better choices, and I keep hoping that somehow things will get better, and I just don’t see an easy answer from where we are.”

For his part, Mitt Romney has consistently said he would not seek a third-party candidacy. He did so again Thursday night at an awards gala for American Friends of the Hebrew University.

Mitt Romney is skipping the GOP convention, joining a list of presidents and leaders https://t.co/YnXAHkTx6c pic.twitter.com/xGvfulMisC — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 8, 2016

Now that Mitt Romney plans to skip the Republican National Convention this summer, rumors of a contested convention leaving the former Massachusetts governor as the Republican nominee will go by the wayside. The Inquisitr previously reported that Mitt Romney would loom as a dark horse figure in the presidential nomination process, waiting for a contested convention to announce his candidacy. That no longer appears to be a possibility, as Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee as his rival Republican candidates have dropped out of the race.

What do you think about Mitt Romney running as a third-party candidate for the 2016 election? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

[Photo by George Frey/Getty Images]