Which Republican non-candidates should have run?

[eric82oslo]

Likewise I can't see Mitt doing as well as everyone says, sure he'd be at 10% but it would be easy for Trump/Carson/Rubio to cast him like Jeb saying he's part of the past

47% of Republicans would still vote for him in the primaries, no matter whether he's a severely conservative Mormon who claims that Romneycare has 0% resemblance of Obamacare whatsoever or not. The reason why he wouldn't get to 50% though is not because he loves to trim his dogs in the storm on the top of his car or that he loved to bully gays in high school (and much less that his grandpa was a serial bigamist), but rather because of the car elevator in his house.

Now, I'd love to see Romney take down Trump in a debate. Besides Chris Christie, he's the only one that I could actually picture effectively doing so. And yeah, I do put forward a 10,000 dollar bet that Romney would make Trump look really pretty bad.

[Orthogonian Society Treasurer]

None of the above. This is the year of the outsider and with the exception of Mitt and perhaps Paul Ryan, these candidates would be polling Graham numbers.

[Likely Voter]

I think Mike Pence might have done well.  However the whole debacle with the Indiana Religious Freedom Act happened just as people were jumping into the race in March/April. Not sure he could have got past that.   

[Orser67]

I think Mike Pence might have done well.  However the whole debacle with the Indiana Religious Freedom Act happened just as people were jumping into the race in March/April. Not sure he could have got past that.   

I agree, Pence was well situated ideologically to be very formidable in the primaries. Even without the controversy over the religious freedom act, though, he probably had to choose between running for re-election as governor and running for president.

[Mehmentum]

Sarah Palin would have fit in perfectly with this field.