Romney and me
Put America First and Stop the Stupid
Lots of people are saying they didn’t know Mitt Romney had it in him. They can’t believe he would tell the truth about the GOP’s descent into Donald Trump’s cult of personality.
Given Romney’s moral sensibility I am not surprised at all. However, I have been a little taken aback by how much he is spilling about the craven self-interest of so many supposed leaders of the Republican Party. With the aid of journalist McKay Coppins, the outgoing senator from Utah is saying:
Most, if not all Republican Senators knew Donald Trump deserved to be convicted in his post-January 6 impeachment trial but were too frightened to vote their consciences.
Chief among the Romney cowards was Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, whom Romney heard call Trump “an idiot.” McConnell was so desperate to hold on to political power that he ignored his own judgement and backed Trump to keep the Senate from turning Democratic.
During the first impeachment, Paul Ryan, then a moralizing speaker of the House, ignored Trump’s crimes and lobbied Romney to vote to exonerate the 45th president. (Romney voted to convict on one of two charges.)
Of the always-pious Vice President Mike Pence, Romney said no one was "more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God's will to things that were ungodly than Mike Pence.”
More generally, Romney concluded, that “a very large portion” of Republicans “doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
The details Romney is divulging match my own experience as a member of the House who, like Romney, crossed the party during the second impeachment to support holding Trump accountable. I can relate to his experience as he is both praised for taking a stand and condemned as a coward for waiting too long to do it publicly.
Having served in the House through Trump’s full four years in office, I struggled to recognize how bad things were. For a while I told myself that I should try to get along with the president so that I might either moderate him, or work around him to get a few good things done. (As politicians, we all feel like we can save the day. Such is the ego required to run for office.)
I also felt the pressure others felt about losing their jobs if they were to alienate Trump. I saw this early on with the behavior of a colleague and friend Rep. Billy Long who had joined me to support suicide prevention, regulating rural broadband, and fighting climate change. After Trump punished a few wayward Republicans by supporting candidates to challenge them in primaries, Billy abandoned all the things we had worked on, choosing self-preservation over policies that would help his constituents. He knew that almost no one paid attention to his House record but today every GOP primary voter judges him according to his relationship with their cult leader.
I saw the fear of Trump again in the weeks after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. I tried to build an alliance with all of the other Republicans who voted for impeachment. Each one responded positively to my idea for an organization called Country First, that would promote centrist principles and candidates. Within months they had all changed direction, abandoning me to go it alone.
I hope you aren’t surprised to hear that members of the House and Senate change their minds when they must put up or shut up. What you may not know is that in the Trump years this practice became nearly universal as the House was swept by paranoia. With each passing day members of Congress became more worried about who to trust. Many refused to speak-up during conference calls and caucus meetings because they knew, with a high degree of certainty, that someone would record what was said and deliver the audio record to the White House. In this atmosphere a record number of members decided they couldn’t function in a place of such treachery and resigned.
Trump’s reign of fear has produced, today, an entire party of officials who are either too concerned about their own power, too frightened of Trump, too weak to act with any independence, or too ignorant of history to know better. Romney is an exception.
I recall Romney of the past as a man of great intelligence, kindness, and moral strength. He weathered attacks from Republican extremists while demonstrating more wisdom on foreign policy than the man he challenged for the White House in 2012. President Obama poo-poohed Romney’s belief that Russia and not China posed the greatest threat to America. Obama then let Russia annex parts of Ukraine with nary a protest and no useful military support for Kyiv.
After Obama came Trump who further screwed-up American foreign policy by alienating allies, blackmailing Ukraine with threats to withhold military aid, and undermining democracy worldwide.
Romney was also a great team player. He and I once worked together on a big fundraising effort that raised a record $20 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Unlike most politicians, who love to complain about fundraising, Romney was always generous with his time and energy and understood that people who opened their checkbooks deserved gratitude, not secret disrespect.
Romney and I are not close friends, though we text on occasion. However, we have followed similar paths, reached the same destination as party pariahs, and remain committed to civility, public service, and the preservation of democracy. We are brothers in a cause that I pray will grow.
PS: I did ultimately put together an organization called Country First, and we’re slowly building a campaign for reason. Romney is musing about a building a third party, which he calls the Stop the Stupid Party. He’s only half joking with that name.
I remember an eighth grade social studies teacher long ago telling our class that after Stalin finished a speech, the applause would go on and on and on because no one wanted to be the first to stop. I couldn’t believe it. I stayed skeptical for some thirty years, right up until I watched House Republicans take turns giving speeches before the first impeachment vote. McCarthy stood out especially as he enunciated with performative slowness “The President of the United States is Donald John Trump”, as if the mere invocation of the name was itself a defense. Of course the apparatchiks went wild. It went on and on and on...
I appreciate your insider revealations -- they are verifying what I suspected from watching events unfold through media of various flavors during Trump's rise (he has not fallen). The most disturbing aspect of your commentary details the cowardice of other politicians in the face of Trump's power over his supporters, and their willingness to do and say anything to remain powerful themselves. I suspect that Trump has the same kind of gift that Adolf Hitler bragged about in Mein Kampf: The ability to segregate what is critical to him in politics (all things that lead to collecting and exercising power) vs. what is not critical (attempts at implementing policy fairly or implementing any policy at all that doesn't aggregate more power to himself). Trump sees straight into that terrible power grid as clearly as Hitler did; this reality is what his supporters will never see (or else cynically deny). But brave people who oppose him and the political energy he has tapped must act to unravel what he is creating -- they don't appear to be members of the GOP unfortunately. All those were (mostly) expunged. And I think those words, while sounding dire, really are.