Who’s Mitt Romney hiring as his top advisers — Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Un?

According to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, a “top Romney adviser” says that if Mitt loses Florida on Tuesday, “we’re going to have to try to reinvent the smoke-filled room which has been democratized by all these primaries and come up with someone as an alternative to Newt Gingrich.”

Finally — a Republican campaigning against the scourge of democracy! First we’ll go back to the good old days of the “smoke-filled room,” then we’ll bring back Prohibition and get rid of women’s suffrage, too!

Personally I can’t think of a better way to be perceived as an entitled elitist than to have your supporters announce that, unless you win, the voting shouldn’t count. And it’s not just Romney’s team.

Establishment Republicans are in “full panic mode,” as Newt called it yesterday, filling the press with hopeful speculation about a “brokered convention.” That’s when no candidate has won a majority of delegates at the ballot box and the GOP insiders get to pick who they want.

It’s the perfect outcome for folks who prefer a Politburo over a polling place.

But that’s how desperate the establishment is to nuke Newt. The terrified look on the face of GOP pundits as they talk about a possible Newt victory reminds me of the babysitters in the “Friday the 13th” movies waiting for the guy in the hockey mask to kick in the door.

The horror, the horror . . .

And so the old guard is on the attack. Former Speaker Tom DeLay — himself forced to resign from Congress — says Newt’s “not really a conservative.” Sen. John McCain attacked his leadership style. Even William F. Buckley’s National Review has sunk to the level of an anti-Newt gossip mag — post after post on Newt’s divorce, depositions and snarky details from his personal life.

Fellow columnist Jonah Goldberg spotted the irony: “Six months ago it was absurd to call Newt an outsider. But now that the insiders have thrown him out, he is one.”

The message is clear: Washington Republicans really hate Newt. And the conservative response? “Is there some way we could vote for him twice?”

The GOP establishment of Bush, DeLay and McCain gave us massive spending increases, huge debts and poorly-executed wars. They also gave us candidates who lost the popular vote in every election since 1992.

After the electoral fiascoes of ’06 and ’08, it wasn’t the Washington GOP that turned things around. It was the conservative base and the Tea Party. They helped elect Sen. Scott Brown here and handed the House back to the GOP.

And now party bosses wonder why the base refuses to take our “Mitt medicine” and do as we’re told. Maybe it’s because we’re tired of losing.

That’s the real message Republican voters are trying to send. No more losing politely with some moderate squishy candidate who cares more about what East Coast elites think of him than conservative voters do.

You really want to stop Newt? It’s simple. Dump Mitt. Stop whining about Gingrich winning, stop flogging the GOP’s “designated establishment loser of 2012” and back someone else.

As for the Romney camp’s idea of canceling democracy if Mitt loses Florida, wouldn’t it make more sense to cancel Mitt? For Romney to drop out and endorse someone else — Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush — if Newt really is as awful as they claim?

As long as the Republican Party stamps its feet and demands conservatives support the unsupportable Mitt Romney, they’re going to lose.

Either now, or in November.

Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.

LINK:  http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?&article...