Third time's the charm?

With the midterm elections almost upon us, the 2016 guessing game is kicking into high gear. And in the latest iteration, The Washington Post reports Sunday that Mitt Romney is quietly emerging as a top GOP campaign surrogate this year and thus raising speculation that he will throw his hat into the ring once more.

Despite Romney's insistence he won't run again, his loaded schedule has his old backers "yearning for him to give it a go and arguing that he would be a stronger candidate than last time."

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R), whom Romney recently endorsed for reelection, said in an interview that Romney remains the GOP's best hope of winning back the White House.

Asked whether he and other Republican officials are coalescing around Romney as a 2016 favorite, Mead said: "There is a movement afoot. . . . I'd tell him, 'Governor Romney, people here in Wyoming and around the country would encourage you to take another look at it.'" [The Washington Post]

The Romney 2016 speculation has percolated since last year, though it's gained momentum of late as other potential GOP candidates fizzled or became embroiled in scandal. A few admittedly early polls have found Romney running competitively in a GOP primary too, further fueling speculation he would be a formidable candidate should he run again. Jon Terbush

Monday night's presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was a major television event, and "there's pressure to appear to know what's going on, to be informed," Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday's Kimmel Live. So on Monday afternoon, Kimmel sent a crew out on the street to ask people what they thought about Sunday night's debate. "There's no way any of these people should have an opinion on what happened," Kimmel said, since the interviews were conducted hours before the debate began, "but did that stop them from weighing in? Oh no it did not." As always with Kimmel's "Lie Witness News" segments, it is truly impressive to watch people brazenly discuss fictional events in great detail, but the interviewer's dad-shaming at the end will leave a mark. Watch below. Peter Weber

Before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton took the stage at Hofstra University on Monday night, "there was a lot of what seemed like spin about how little Trump was preparing for the debate," Seth Meyers said on Monday's Late Night, "and it turns out, he really didn't." Before the debate, "it seemed like the Trump campaign was setting expectations so low, all he would have to do is stand still for 90 minutes and he would be the winner, but in the days leading up to the debate, they were actually worried that bar may be too high."

If Trump was unprepared for the debate, "as is her style, Hillary was overprepared with one of her patented lukewarm zingers," Meyers said, referring to "trumped-up trickle down." He referenced that again when he compared Clinton to an aunt dancing to Beyoncé at a wedding. But Clinton did have to contend with a "double standard heading into the debate," he added, summarizing pre-debate advice from MSNBC: "Basically, her tasks look like advice you'd give a secretary before a job interview in 1950 — Smile and let them see you're a dynamite gal! — meanwhile, his sounds like advice you'd give a murderer at a parole hearing: They need to believe you won't kill again." Watch below for Meyers' recap of the more standout moments of the debate, including Trump's water-drinking, plea for help from Sean Hannity, and tripping over race relations. Peter Weber

The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was on Monday night, and "the whole point of this debate tonight, the main prize the candidates are vying over, is the elusive undecided voter," Stephen Colbert said on his special live Late Show. "And there are a lot of them," as many as 1 in 5 voters in some polls. "If after all this time, the entire election is going to be decided by these few undecided voters, I wanted to talk to one myself," he said. The one he spoke with was Rob Lowe, portraying undecided Ohio voter Charles Hensen. The two of them go back and forth about the plight of the undecided citizen ballot-casters and the difficult choice they have to make, and by the end, you half expect to see "Magic 8 Ball-Ouija Board 2016!" bumper stickers on 1 in 5 cars tomorrow. Watch Lowe's amiable flip-flopper below. Peter Weber

The Late Show went on live Monday night, right after the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and "coming into tonight's debate, Democrats were divided between two strong emotions: panic and pants-crapping," Stephen Colbert said. "Democrats have not been this nervous since Anthony Weiner asked to borrow their phone."

"The expectations for the two sides were very different," Colbert noted. "For Hillary to win, she had to be confident but not smug, knowledgeable without being a know-it-all, charming but not affected, commanding but not shrill, also likable, warm, authoritative, and not coughing. Meanwhile, Donald Trump had to not commit murder — on camera — and that low bar was reflected in Donald Trump's debate prep," which reportedly involved eating burgers and coming up with zingers. "He may not have prepared, but it also looked like he didn't," Colbert said. "Meanwhile, Hillary was so prepared my new nickname for her is Preparation H."

For the next few minutes, Colbert walked thorough some of the debates zestier moments. "For months now, Donald Trump has questioned Hillary's health, repeatedly, and I've gotta say, there was one possible health scare on stage tonight: Trump sounded like he was fighting off a cold, with cocaine," he said. "He sounded like the coked-up best man in the bathroom at a wedding." He touched on substance a little bit, but mostly went for the easy laughs — see Law & Order — with some discussion of the hot topic of fact-checking. "Trump told the biggest lie of the debate," Colbert said, playing a clip of Trump touting his temperament. "Of course, we we'll never know if his temperament is really his strongest asset, because he won't release his tax returns," he said. "In the end, there was really only one word that summed up how this whole debate — this whole election — feels, and Donald Trump captured it." Watch below. Peter Weber

Donald Trump came out on top during Monday's debate — at least on Twitter.

Millions of tweets surrounding the debate were made throughout the night, with 62 percent about the Republican nominee and 38 percent about Hillary Clinton, Twitter announced. The most tweeted about moment was when Trump discussed his temperament, and other hot topics were the economy, foreign affairs, guns, terrorism, and the environment. Speaking of which, a 2012 tweet made by Trump about climate change wound up being the most retweeted of the night.

After Clinton said her opponent "thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese," Trump quickly shot back, "I did not. I did not. I do not say that. I do not say that." His Twitter page shows otherwise: On November 6, 2012, he tweeted, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing jobs non-competitive." Trump said later he was joking, but to avoid future confusion, he might want to consider adding winking emojis and /s to his comedic tweets. Catherine Garcia

In the spin room after his debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump told several reporters that all the online polls say he won the debate. He did not mention the professional snap poll conducted by CNN that showed Clinton winning the debate, 62 percent to 27 percent, and if that poll should be viewed with the caveat that it skewed slightly Democratic, the online polls should be taken with a Trump-sized grain of salt. First, the Trump-friendly headline aggregator Drudge Report — which has its own online poll (spoiler: Trump is winning handily) and doesn't mention CNN's poll — directs its readers to two online polls, where Trump is winning by smaller margins. Trump also has the help of an informal army of online supporters at Reddit who are directing one another to all online polls they can find.

Every campaign wants to claim victory as soon as possible after a debate, with the hopes that the public will buy into that claim — Clinton's team also declared the night a win for Hillary. Still, if you're on the fence about who actually "won" the first debate, you could do worse that watching GOP pollster Frank Luntz's focus group of undecided voters for CBS News. The group, in Philadelphia, broke for Clinton 16 to 5, a "bigger than almost any debate I've done in a long time," Luntz said. "This is a good night for Hillary Clinton, it is not a good night for Donald Trump," he concluded, "but there is still time and there are still undecided voters." And, he didn't have to add, two more debates. Peter Weber

Jimmy Kimmel is running for vice president, solo, but he's not bitter about it. "I'm not on anyone's ticket, but I'm not sitting down," he said on Monday's Kimmel Live. "I issued a challenge to Hillary Clinton's running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, and I said 'Let's go head to head on this,' and he accepted on one condition: We had to find a neutral site." They found one at a national chicken-wing chain restaurant. Clinton and Donald Trump had just duked it out on a stage at Hofstra University; Kimmel and Kaine tried to settle their differences sitting in a booth.

"So, um, I mean, what's your plan for the country?" Kimmel asked, and when Kaine said that he and Clinton have proposals to "build an economy that works for all," Kimmel stepped in: "Hillary and I would have a good plan, too." Kimmel then laid out some of his proposals, including making Super Bowl Monday a national holiday, restricting the use of social media, and regulating concert seating by height. "I don't have an argument with you about that," Kaine said of the last proposal. "I didn't think you would, because it makes perfect sense," Kimmel said. "It's called common sense, it's something I have a lot of. I feel right now like you would vote for me for vice president." "Yeah, I mean, I frankly think you are probably superior to me, it's just that when Hillary was making a choice, you know, she had a couple of criteria," Kaine said. "I mean, looks was a big, important thing to her." Spoiler: Kimmel won the debate. But if you like harmonica jams, especially, watch till the end. Peter Weber