Newly sworn-in Utah Senator Mitt Romney, a man who was once effectively the face of the Republican Party, seems hellbent on destroying it.
Ahead of taking his seat in the U.S. Senate on the heels of a long career in both business and politics, Romney made it clear that he has every intention on being Jeff Flake 2.0. With an op-ed penned in the Washington Post of all places, the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee ripped into President Donald Trump, condemning his apparently divisive rhetoric.
To be fair, Romney didn’t have a whole lot to say about Trump’s actual policies — and how could he? For all of his faults on the character level, President Trump has presided over the most conservative administration in modern American history. Apparently this doesn’t matter, however, because the president says mean things on the internet sometimes.
In the piece, Romney played up the idea that the president is supposed to embody the spirit of America — and that the commander-in-chief is a sacrosanct position that must be approached with the utmost decorum.
Can somebody remind Mitt Romney that the White House isn’t a church?
The President of the United States is an elected office. It isn’t royalty. Americans don’t have some spiritual connection with the office — nor should they. The country itself was founded on the idea that heads of state are are not holy figures, and shouldn’t be treated as such. And if we’re going to have a conversation about improper presidential conduct, you have to go back a few decades if you’re being at all intellectually honest. The Clintonian 90s made it clear that character isn’t always at the top of the docket.
It’s also worth wondering what Romney was trying to accomplish in the first place. What value does using your political capital to trash your party’s own leader really bring to the national conversation?
If he’s trying to make inroads with the mainstream media, that’s a huge mistake. Mitt Romney is a straight white Christian male with an ‘R’ next to his name. He is everything they hate, and that’s never going to change. Sure, he may get the occassionally late night pat on the back for taking jabs at Orange Hitler — but this affection is always temporary. Remember, it wasn’t long ago when Romney himself was the Nazi racist bigot homophobe.
All of this is a sobering reminder of 2012 — a year many conservative commentators agree was the year that broke America. As they had done in 2000 and in 2008, Republicans that year selected the safest, smooth-talking, non-threatening, politically experienced candidate they could possibly find.
For everything we’ve said about Mitt Romney in this piece, his record is objectively stellar — he’s led successful business ventures, and served as governor of one of the most liberal states in the country despite his own affiliation. Sure enough, his tenure in Massachusetts is not above criticism — Obamacare’s roots come from this record. However, there’s something to be said about being able to be a Republican governor of Massachusetts. But…none of that mattered in 2012. Barack Obama was president, and the mainstream media did everything they could to keep it that way. If that meant continually slandering a good man’s life by telling children they weren’t going to be able to watch Sesame Street anymore, then so be it.
It’s uncertain why Romney continues to bash heads with Trump — perhaps he wants to primary him in 2020. Maybe he is expecting everything to implode, and he’s saying the right things now so he can reference it in 2024. Who knows. What is perfectly clear, however, is that Romney’s humiliation in 2012 taught him absolutely nothing.
~ Liberty Planet
