Mitt Romney should endorse Kamala Harris
His attempt to have it both ways is cowardly. There's still time to be a patriot.
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Mitt Romney is late to a party he started.
Romney denounced Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primary. He was the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump after his first impeachment for extorting Ukraine. He was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump a year later for his attempted coup.
Yet the senator from Utah still can’t bring himself to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, the one person standing between Trump and his return to the White House. His reasoning is both faulty and cowardly.
Asked why he won’t endorse Harris during a Hinckley Institute event last week, Romney said, “I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election, because I think there’s a good shot the Republican Party is gonna need to be rebuilt and reorientated either after this election, or [if] Donald Trump is reelected, after he’s president.” (Watch below — video via Samuel Benson on twitter.)
Romney’s winking ambiguity might’ve been bold four years ago, but it’s next to useless in our present moment.
A number of prominent Republicans who either enabled or supported Trump when Romney didn’t have now publicly endorsed Harris. This includes former Vice President Dick Cheney, former GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoffrey Duncan, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. (Kinzinger and Duncan both spoke at the Democratic National Convention.) Of course, “former” appears notably before their titles. No current Republican office holder has endorsed Harris, but Romney is not long for that group, either.
Romney announced in September of last year that he wasn’t running for a second term in the Senate, but a tough primary challenge was almost guaranteed. In his statement at the time, Romney said, “At the end of another term, I'd be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it's time for a new generation of leaders. They're the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”
But that sentiment directly contradicts Romney’s reasoning for not endorsing Harris. Back when President Joe Biden was still the Democratic candidate in May, Romney invoked the same logic for not endorsing Harris as he did during last week’s Hinckley Institute event, telling MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, “In my case, having been the former nominee of the Republican Party, I want to make sure that I’m in a position after this election to have some influence on the direction of our party in the future. So I’m not going to go out and do something that would make that more difficult to occur.”
Romney somehow imagines that he could serve as the leader of a new, less fascist GOP. He couldn’t be more mistaken.
What Romney gets horribly wrong
If the 2024 election were a disaster movie, Romney apparently isn’t that worried about stopping the giant asteroid plummeting toward the Earth. He’s moved past the potential extinction-level event and is focused more on who’ll lead what remains of civilization.
Romney’s argument about having more sway in a post-Trump GOP if he doesn’t endorse Harris is absurd. Trump’s reelection won’t provide an opportunity to constructively rebuild the Republican Party. The outcome for America, if not the entire free world, would be similar to how the late Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev described the aftermath of a nuclear war: “The living would envy the dead.”
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It’s revealing that when Romney announced that he wouldn’t run again, he spoke about a “new generation of leaders.” That new GOP generation has modeled itself in Trump’s twisted image, not Romney’s. The problem is larger than kooks like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s seemingly “mainstream” Republicans like Josh Hawley, Elise Stefanik, Tom Cotton, Mike Johnson, and Tim Scott who shamelessly defend Trump’s unhinged lies about rigged elections and migrants eating pets.
Trump’s odious running mate JD Vance is the most blatant example of the party’s transformation, as he’s abandoned all pretense of civility and fully embraced Trump’s personal brand of toxicity. If Trump wins, Vance is MAGA’s heir apparent and will have far more influence in the party than Romney.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has perhaps best managed to thread a very difficult needle. He’s resisted Trump’s overt efforts to involve him in committing crimes and stealing elections and endured his public wrath (including personal insults against his wife) while nonetheless openly supporting him. Of course, it helps that Kemp’s a governor of a key swing state. Trump views his former primary opponent, Nikki Haley, as having far less to offer him, so even after she surrendered her dignity and endorsed a man she’d called “unift” and “in decline,” he’s ignored her.
Rejecting Trump while not endorsing Harris is a position that pleases no one and annoys everyone. It doesn’t pacify anti-anti-Trump Republicans who can’t bear the prospect of a Harris presidency. Nor will it stand out amongst the pro-democracy Republicans who actively campaigned for Harris specifically because they consider Trump an existential threat.
Four years ago, it might’ve seemed easier to imagine Romney, who governed as a relative moderate in Massachusetts, endorsing a Democratic presidential candidate than lifelong conservative Liz Cheney. Yet it was Cheney who delivered a barn burner speech in support of Harris at a Wisconsin rally earlier this month. (Watch below.)
In comparison with Cheney, Romney’s tepid tap dance last week isn’t just overly calculating. It’s shameful.
It should be noted Romney’s not totally alone — George W. Bush, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis are other prominent Republicans or conservatives who clearly detest Trump but have stopped short of endorsing the one person who can stop him.
There’s room for Romney in the Democratic coalition
Romney was once clear-eyed about the influence he held over Trump’s GOP. He told MSNBC back in May, “My wing of the party is like a chicken wing, all right? It’s a little, tiny thing that doesn’t take the bird off the ground. So we’re going to have to change that, in my view.”
But there’s no changing or redeeming the modern GOP until it’s defeated completely. Since 2016, the party has only suffered outright defeats (2018, 2020) and unexpected setbacks (the 2022 Red Wave that wasn’t) under Trump’s leadership. He still commands enough support from the GOP base to win the nomination three times in a row, but it’s the “normie” Republicans like Haley, Kemp, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin who keep the threat alive by making Trump/MAGA competitive in general elections. (Youngkin’s CNN appearance yesterday was a quintessential portrait of cowardice. Watch below.)
Romney has minimized any influence his public endorsement might have: “My particular vote doesn’t have a big impact,” he told MSNBC in May. “I’m from Utah.” But this is about more than a single vote in a non-swing state. Romney could serve as a powerful advocate for centrist and center-right policies that are also palatable to Democrats.
Most Republicans who’ve endorsed Harris have framed their decision as one where they put country over party. Cheney said last year, “We can survive bad policy, we cannot survive a president who torches the Constitution,” and last week Never Trump conservative commentator Charlie Sykes told Wisconsin reporter Charles Benson: “Ultimately, this is not about whether I agree on tax policy or … will agree on student loan debt, which I don’t. It’s about whether you’re going to have fidelity to democratic norms. It’s whether or not you’re going to be a decent person or someone who’s going to tear apart the fabric of this country.”
Romney has the respect of economic conservatives and the credentials that would bolster the argument that Trump isn’t just bad for democracy but for everyone’s pocketbooks too. Romney might support more tax cuts for billionaires, but he probably understands that if Trump imposes inflationary 19th Century-style tariffs on imported goods, it could wreck a thriving economy.
Even Romney’s position on immigration is more in line with Democrats, who’ve taken a harder yet still sensible line on border security. When he ran for the Senate, Romney said, “I like legal immigration. If we didn’t have any legal immigration, our population wouldn’t grow.” That’s a stark contrast to Trump/Vance’s divisive rhetoric about how immigrants taint the “culture” and are a strain on resources. Romney supported the recent bipartisan immigration bill and repudiated Trump for killing the bill so he could keep blaming Biden/Harris for the “border crisis.”
Romney’s foreign policy views more closely align with mainstream Democrats than Trump’s isolationist GOP, which would withdraw from NATO (unless our allies “pay up”) and abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. Non-MAGA Republicans like Matt Lewis have observed that on actual foreign policy, the Democratic platform now resembles the Reagan-era Republican Party. That wasn’t enough for Haley, the former UN ambassador who’s resorted to doublethink about how Biden and Harris are “weak” while Trump — a traitor who steals classified documents and shared scarce covid tests with Russia — somehow projects strength on the world stage. But to the extent Romney sincerely values preserving democracy at home and abroad, Harris is far preferable to the alternative.
There’s room for a robust pro-democracy center-right wing within the Democratic Party, or at least adjacent to it, and if Romney truly wants to make a difference when it counts, he needs to pick a side. There’s no profit in steering the wreckage of the Titanic.
That’s it for today
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“Asked why he won’t endorse Harris during a Hinckley Institute event last week, Romney said, “I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election, because I think there’s a good shot the Republican Party is gonna need to be rebuilt and reorientated either after this election, or [if] Donald Trump is reelected, after he’s president.””
Mitt is a perfect example of a person having “delusions of grandeur!” If Trump wins, Mitt won’t have a voice, he’ll be left in the cold. Apparently, Mitt peddles in alternate facts, because he has no idea what’s in store for this nation, if Trump wins.
That said, I respectfully disagree. Mitt’s endorsement is a red herring. The MSM keeps harping on endorsements by RINO’s. No one cares!
The Haley and Romney wing of the party is either “in or out,” they don’t need positive reinforcement at this time. If they can’t see clearly what’s happening, and what Trump and MAGA stands for by now, then they never truly cared to begin with, or they’re just too stupid, to know the difference.
IMHO!…:)
Well put. Self serving and crass are words to describe this fence sitting inability to endorse Harris. It’s Party over Country even when the party is rotten to the core. And I am afraid many vote this way.