Before Donald Trump announced his third presidential campaign Tuesday night, Jim Lyons, the chair of the Mass. GOP, wrote two Facebook posts that included photos from Mar-a-Lago and were cross-posted to the official page of the state party. One thanked Trump for inviting him to his campaign kickoff. The other read, simply: “Make America Great Again.”

That Lyons would strike a supportive note around Trump’s latest bid is no surprise: on his watch, the Mass. GOP enthusiastically embraced the Trump brand while repudiating the more moderate Republicanism of Charlie Baker, the state’s popular outgoing governor. But other Massachusetts Republicans have a very different take on Trump’s formal return to the electoral fray.

“I think it’s predictable, but I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Kevin O’Connor, who ran for the U.S. Senate against Ed Markey in 2020. “I feel pretty confident that he will lose in the primaries, and that will be good for the party and the country.”

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Asked who he’d like to see as the Republican nominee in 2024, O’Connor pointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — all of whom he described as having a more mature approach to politics than the former president.

“They are all, I think, proven, capable people with the kind of discipline and focus that President Trump lacks,” O’Connor said. “And I think most importantly, they all have an appetite to unify people. They differ in terms of style, but ultimately I believe they’re trying to bring people together, and President Trump is just clearly not interested in that at this point.”

Bob Hedlund, a former state senator who’s now the mayor of Weymouth, said he was both unsurprised by and disappointed with Trump’s decision to run a third time.

“I think his thought process is often dominated by ego,” Hedlund said.

“The current occupant of the White House is failing in the job, and it’s an opportunity for Republicans ... to retake the White House and reverse some of the damaging policies implemented by the Biden administration,” Hedlund added. “And I don’t think Donald Trump can win an election in this climate.”

Jennifer Nassour, who served as chair of the Mass. GOP from 2009 to 2011, echoed the idea that Trump has become an electoral liability, suggesting that his self-absorption in the last election cycle created a drag on the GOP.

“I kind of blame President Trump for Republicans not doing as well in the midterms as they should have, because he was taking the focus and making it about him, teasing what he might say yesterday right before the election,” Nassour said. “We saw that when he was out stumping for [Ohio Senator-elect] J.D. Vance. We saw that when he was out stumping for [Iowa Sen.] Chuck Grassley. And I think that that’s a mistake.”

Trump’s decision to run again, Nassour added, will likely elicit frustration from younger voters eager for generational change.

“A lot of us are really interested in seeing a newer, younger generation of leaders out there,” she said. “I think that a lot of us, on both sides of the aisle, see what it’s like to have a person in their late 70s running the country. ... I’m in the camp of, let’s see what the 40- and 50- and 60-year-olds out there can do.”

As Lyons’ posts suggest, though, other Mass. Republicans seem less certain that it’s time to turn the page on Trump.

One of them, activist Wendy Wakeman, described her own mindset shifting over the course of the former president’s announcement speech Tuesday.

“I would have been happy for Trump not to have announced last night,” Wakeman said. “He’s a specter over the party, right? Causes nothing but trouble.

“But listening to the speech, I was reminded that times were better when Trump was president,” Wakeman added. “The economy was better. I felt safer as a human being living on this Earth because our foreign policy was better. And ... Trump’s border policy had a lot more success with stemming the tide of fentanyl coming into this country. So after listening to him for about half an hour I thought, ‘Boy, I could use Trump coming back again.’”

Disagreement about whether Trump’s return is good for the party could become a fault line inside the Mass. GOP, where Lyons is facing at least one leadership challenge — and possibly more — after a dismal election cycle.

“If the party is going to align themselves with Trump, and not stay in some kind of a neutral position ..., I think that does create a problem,” Hedlund said, referring to the aforementioned posts. “And there should be a discussion about the leadership of the party, if that’s something the party is going to engage in.”

But O’Connor, the former U.S. Senate candidate, said the party’s woes need to be confronted no matter where its leaders and members ultimately land on Trump’s return.

“It’s almost irrelevant,” he said. “The state party has failed by every measure, whether it’s winning elections, raising money, coming up with creative strategies. So I think we need a wholesale replacement of leadership at the state party level. ... We need a change either way, regardless of whether Donald Trump is running or not.”

Lyons, the Mass. GOP chair, did not respond to requests for comment.