“I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth … President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man … A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable.”
Take a guess who just penned those lofty but empty ideals cartoonishly typical of a career politician and, of course, a Democrat. Who is this writer warning us that, as the headline in the leftist The Atlantic screams, “America Is in Denial”? Since he evidently considers himself morally superior enough to judge the rest of us, it must be someone with advanced intelligence – and impeccable left-wing credentials, right? Maybe Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi? How about Barack Obama or AOC?
In fact, it is a senator who has distinguished himself by attacking the president of his own party with far more vigor than anyone on the other side of the aisle. John McCain? Nice try, but he is no longer with us. No, it is the man proving to be McCain redux and exactly what his conservative critics detected long ago: an unprincipled careerist masquerading as a man of principle, unwilling to leave the stage, even long after his relevance has expired. He is a lifetime politician transparently driven by envy – of both the man who closed the deal that he could not and his party’s rapid change of course away from his brand of soft, insipid globalism.
It is – surprise, surprise – Mitt Romney, described by Liberty Nation’s own Sarah Cowgill as a man who “appears presidential in his shiny lace-up shoes, gelled black hair with a touch of silver, and designer, tailored suit.” But the look wasn’t enough to land him at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Mitt Romney (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The failed 2012 presidential candidate and senator from Utah, ironically the most Republican state in the nation, has never truly entered the sphere of power around DC in general and the GOP in particular. Since his election to the upper chamber in 2018, his brand of anti-Trump self-righteous posturing (from a man who stuck his dog on the roof of his station wagon) has been akin to that of his (doubtless) comrade-in-arms/soulmate Liz Cheney. Like the congresswoman from Wyoming, his stinging words of condemnation for Trump have all but fallen on deaf Republican ears, and he has failed to attract any discernible constituency with his cries into the darkness. That is, unless you count the organization formed for the sole purpose of deep-sixing Donald Trump, the discredited Lincoln Project, described by famed investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald as an organization run by “life-long scammers, sleaze merchants and con artists” positioning themselves as “noble men of conscience, enabling them to fleece and deceive the public.”
Let’s face it. Ol’ Willard – that’s his actual first name, so it’s no wonder he uses Mitt – is flat-out envious of the man who achieved in his first shot what Romney had spent a lifetime seeking. After Obama wiped the floor with Romney in 2012, Trump stormed the stage as the anti-Romney – opposite in disposition and political instincts and, as it turned out, in his ability to win. And if you think Trump’s tone is acidic, consider that, as Trump was seeking the presidency in 2016 – four years after he publicly supported Romney in 2012 – Romney delivered an infamous speech declaring Trump a “fraud” and claimed that “he’s playing the American public for suckers.“ Of course, he was also certain Trump would be beaten soundly by Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, Romney later became something of a laughingstock in his willingness to grovel before then-President-Elect Trump, who dangled the position of secretary of state before pulling the rug out from under him.
Barring an entirely unexpected about-face by the GOP returning to its neoconservative Bush-era roots, the first-term senator from Utah, where he moved in order to run, must realize he would stand little chance against an insurgent challenger if a Republican senatorial primary was to take place today. Thus, he is straining to have his voice heard nationally. But Democrats have little use for him beyond citing his support for any initiative that reflects poorly on Trump. And the great bulk of Republican voters have long since felt betrayed by his Never-Trump grandstanding. Put simply, Romney gladly contributed to the defeat of Trump in 2020 – after trying to do the same four years earlier – and is now a man without a home, except likely in the abode of one Liz Cheney.
Might it be, as Newt Gingrich suggested recently on Fox News, that Romney is actually considering another run at the White House as either a GOP protest candidate or, more likely, an independent? He could employ the now almost hackneyed statement that “I didn’t leave the GOP, the GOP left me” – and it certainly did. He has proven himself sufficiently tone-deaf to believe he might get somewhere with it. Of course, if he does, he will at least be freed from the likelihood of an embarrassing defeat in a run for re-election to the Senate. But no matter his course of action, conservatives and Trump supporters have long since determined their sentiment regarding Romney: With friends like him, who needs enemies?
