'We don't need to elect another Clinton': MSNBC's Joe Scarborough leaves the door open for a 2016 White House run, but New Hampshire Republicans are underwhelmed

'We have lost our way over the past several years,' said the former GOP congressman

The New Hampshire Republican Party event will include Scarborough in a straw poll of attendees

After Scarborough spoke, MailOnline polled 25 GOP stalwarts, and none of them said they would seriously consider voting for him

The lone Republican to host an MSNBC show has been cagey about re-entering politics

Joe Scarborough, the center-right MSNBC personality who served in Congress from 1995 to 2001, is leaving the door open for a 2016 presidential run, but Republicans in the critical primary state of New Hampshire don't seem to care.

Wearing a Democrat-friendly blue tie, the 'Morning Joe' host told the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference that he would leave the door open for a return to politics, especially because 'we don't need to elect another Clinton for eight years.'

Scarborough entered a Nashua, N.H. hotel to cheers. But after he moderated a panel discussion with four 2012 campaign operatives, GOP activists seemed not to take him seriously.



'Do you think Joe Scarborough is serious about running for office?' MailOnline asked 25 conference attendees. 'Would you consider supporting him if he did?'

Scarborough was 0-for-25. Not a single attendee selected at random answered yes to either question.

Scarborough entered to cheers but left many N.H. Republicans thinking he's not worth a presidential glance

Serious Joe? Instead of commanding a central speaking slot, Scarborough emceed a panel discussion with campaign operatives from the 2012 presidential primaries

Scarborough's center-right morning show is a bright spot in MSNBC's otherwise lackluster ratings, but he angered conservatives when he came out in favor of gun control proposals Many Northeast Republican Leadership Conference attendees see Scarborough as an entertaining pundit but dismiss him as a political leader

And the results of a straw poll, announced hours later, must have brought disappointment to Scarborough if he fancies himself a serious candidate.

Although WPA Opinion Research announced this week to great fanfare that Scarborough's name would be on the ballot, he won so little support that he was entirely absent from the results. Republicans in Nashua were left to assume that his supporters were lumped into the nebulous 'other' category.

The lowest vote totals reported before dinner on Saturday belonged to Sen. Marco Rubio and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, with 3 per cent apiece.



New Englanders who spoke with MailOnline seemed to see it coming.

'Are you serious? He's still an entertainer on MSNBC,' replied a man from Manchester, jabbing at the network's much-discussed leftward tilt.

Scarborough himself tried to dismiss his affiliation with the network that broadcasts Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow.



'Yes, I am a conservative,' he said, 'despite the network I work at. And Reverend Al says hello.'

The joke earned him only a few titters.

'It's not like I would pick Scarborough over Hillary [Clinton],' a student from Plymouth State University told MailOnline, 'but, come on. I think he's trying to sell books, or maybe he's in a mid-life crisis.'

In Nashua, Scarborough signed copies of his November 2013 tome 'The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics – and Can Again'



Scarborough is pegging himself as a party unifier with crossover appeal, trying to bridge the ideological gulf between conservatives and more moderate Republicans.

But in an era where neither the Mitch McConnell centrists nor the Ted Cruz tea partiers seem eager to compromise, a self-appointed referee is likely to attract scorn from both sides.

First in the nation: Republican pols made the trip to Nashua, New Hampshire hoping to build momentum toward the 2016 GOP primary

Scarborough signed books in New Hampshire but didn't go far in winning electoral support among Republican Party activists

Media circus: A day earlier, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown attracted a crush of national attention by announcing that he would try to return to the Senate as a New Hampshirite

And his switch of allegiances on gun control following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, won him new fans – on the political left.

I had a little talk with him about the Second Amendment,' coastal New Hampshire resident Kimberly Morin told MailOnline. 'It didn't go well for Scarborough.'

Scarborough's low-taxes, limited-government messaging has broad appeal, but that won't necessarily convince activists on the right – who largely drive results in early presidential primary states like New Hampshire – to elevate him from background strategist to contender.

'The media loves it' when far-right conservatives stir the pot, he said, 'but crazy never wins.'



He rode into Congress following the Republicans' landslide in 1994, joining Newt Gingrich and other conservatives in a 'Contract With America' agenda of privatizing federal agencies and a U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations.

His bill shutting down the U.S. Department of Education passed in the House as part of a larger budget resolution, but was ultimately left on the cutting room floor in negotiations with other Republicans in the Senate.



But instead of pushing crowd-pleasing ideological positions, or directly taking on President Barack Obama, Scarborough talked tactics.