Photo: AP

Mitt Romney, someone the Republican Party used to be friends with, has written a Facebook post about politics that is now cluttering their newsfeed. He would like everyone to vote for Ted Cruz, if they would like to see Cleveland descend into glorious, cleansing chaos.

This is not an endorsement, in that Romney never tells anyone else to vote for Ted Cruz, and never says that he thinks Ted Cruz should be president. Romney is instead endorsing “not-Trump,” but without committing to a candidate who isn’t Trump, much as he tried to do earlier this month, when he delivered an anti-Trump speech that had the effect of either not changing anything or else possibly increasing support for Trump.

“I will vote for Senator Cruz and I encourage others to do so as well, so that we can have an open convention and nominate a Republican,” Romney says, which is very encouraging news for political journalists hoping to cover a wildly unpredictable and potentially explosive brokered convention.

Unfortunately, if that’s the scenario Romney is hoping for, his own support for a maneuver that the grassroots would interpret (correctly) as the party establishment subverting the will of a majority (or even plurality) of its voters makes that scenario less likely to actually happen.