Mitt Romney, who has been encouraged by his allies to consider another run for the White House, will meet with several of his former political advisers for a private dinner in California, the Washington Post reports.

“Romney’s visit to the San Francisco area comes as former Florida governor Jeb Bush moves closer to formally launching a campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, while chatter about a possible third presidential run by Romney has quieted. But some Romney associates, including prominent donors and consultants, have privately insisted that he remains interested in a possible return to the national stage, and that he is waiting to see how the GOP field unfolds before he makes a final decision on his future.”

Lynn Vavreck: “These three pieces of evidence — that Mr. Romney was thought to be no less conservative before the primaries than during or after them, that his average rating didn’t shift much at all during the entire year, and that he was ideologically closer to most voters than Mr. Obama — bust the myth that Republicans lost the 2012 election because of ideological shifts in the primaries.”

“Mr. Romney did not lose the 2012 election because he was too conservative for general-election voters — or even for those who call themselves independents. The data could not be clearer on this point.”

“The new group has drawn consternation from longtime Romney advisers, who worry it could be a scam, designed to rip off vulnerable supporters of the 2012 Republican presidential nominee… Launched late last week, Ready for Romney appears to be, at best, political amateur hour,” the Daily Beast reports.

Said Romney fundraiser Spencer Zwick: “It would seem to me we would know something or at least one of the names connected to a legitimate organization. In this case, I don’t know any of the individuals. Nor do they appear to have been big Romney supporters. I likewise don’t know any Romney donors or former campaign leadership at all connected to this group.”

Byron York: “People in Romney’s circle realize that some of his standing in the polls reflects nothing more than name recognition; everybody knows the guy who ran for president in 2012. But they believe there’s more to it than that. In discussions this week, they pointed to what they think is a widespread belief among voters, certainly among Republicans, that Romney was right about some key issues in the 2012 campaign.”

“While some people close to Romney insist he hasn’t moved from saying he has no plans to run, the 2012 Republican nominee has sounded at least open to the idea in recent conversations, according to more than a dozen people who’ve spoken with him in the last month,” Politico reports.

“In his private musings, Romney has sounded less than upbeat about most of the potential candidates in the 2016 Republican field.”

A new study on the use of Twitter during the 2012 presidential campaign reports that Mitt Romney’s digital team “had to go through an extensive vetting process for all of its public communications, meaning that the temporal workflow of the campaign did not match the speed of social media.”

Said digital staffer Caitlin Checkett: “So whether it was a tweet, Facebook post, blog post, photo — anything you could imagine — it had to be sent around to everyone for approval. Towards the end of the campaign that was 22 individuals who had to approve it… The digital team unfortunately did not have the opportunity to think of things on their own and post them… The downfall of that of course is as fast as we are moving it can take a little bit of time to get that approval to happen.”

[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]And Mitt Romney was a management expert? [/speech_bubble]

“Mitt Romney held meetings with donors in New York this week that left one attendee convinced he is running for president again in 2016,” Business Insider reports.

“The source, who was at one of the meetings, said other attendees included developer Stephen Ross, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, and hedge funders Julian Robertson and Paul Singer.”

A new CNN/ORC International poll finds Mitt Romney leading the GOP presidential field with 20%, followed by Ben Carson at 10%, Jeb Bush at 9%, Chris Christie at 9% and Mike Huckabee at 7%.

When Romney is left off the survey, Bush takes the top spot.

[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]Carson is running ahead of Bush, Christie and Huckabee? [/speech_bubble]

A new Quinnipiac poll finds Republican voters nationwide prefer Mitt Romney as their presidential nominee again. Romney leads with 19%, followed by Jeb Bush at 11% and Chris Christie and Ben Carson at 8% each. No other Republican tops 6%.

With Romney out of the race, Jeb Bush leads with 14%, followed by Christie at 11%, Carson at 9% and Sen. Rand Paul at 8%.

[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]This is just another indication of a wide open GOP presidential race. [/speech_bubble]

In a talk at Brigham Young University, Mitt Romney spoke about some of the lessons he learned from running for president.

Said Romney: “One of the best and the worst things about a campaign is that you get a lot of advice. Usually several times a day, someone in an audience would hand me a letter with their 100% sure-fire way for me to win the election. I was told to take bigger steps when I walk to show that I’m young and athletic. Another said I should stop shaving for a few days to look more sexy.”

“The president has got to learn that he lost this last election round. The American people spoke loud and clear.”

— Mitt Romney, quoted by The Hill, saying President Obama should not be using executive actions to advance his policy agenda.