I am definitely not an expert on the politics of Utah, but I suspect that if Sen. Orrin Hatch retires, as is now being predicted, and Mitt Romney runs to replace him, we’ll have a Senator Mitt Romney to contend with. I’m sure that Steve Bannon will have something to say about it, but I doubt Romney can be defeated in either the state Republican convention (that’s how the Utah GOP picks its candidates) or in a general election.
For my part, Mitt Romney is the least honest politician I have ever encountered, as was ably documented by Steve Benen both here at Political Animal and at MSNBC during the 2012 election.
On the other hand, he delivered one of the most impassioned anti-Trump speeches of 2016 before he reversed course after the election and sat down with Trump over a course of frogs legs to apply for a cabinet position in the president-elect’s administration.
I wouldn’t expect Romney to be a positive addition to Congress, but he wouldn’t be a rubber-stamp for Trump, either. He’d probably be somewhere between the principled and outraged man who railed against Trump in a March 2016 speech and the complete suck-up who dined with Trump late last November.
I think that would place him as slightly above average for a Republican senator, and that’s about how I’d currently rate Orrin Hatch.
What’s with Dane Boente resigning? This is a rare occasion where I’m thinking, “this means something, but I don’t know what”
I’m guessing the fact that he publicly sucked up and got nothing for it rankles him. It had to be humiliating and he looked like a fool. He may be looking for a chance to use the knife.
Mr. Longman somewhat understates Mitt Romney’s inclination toward subservience. In addition to the memorable meal he recalls, Romney made a special trip to Las Vegas in 2012 to do fealty to Trump as a means of gaining his apparently invaluable endorsement, at a time when Trump was mainly known politically for his birtherism campaign. Implicitly endorsing Trump’s vicious racism was evidently not too high a price to pay for this supposedly moral Mormon.
And we should not forget that Romney was such an epic liar during his campaign (in which he was substantially assisted by his running mate, Paul Ryan) that Steve Benen kept a weekly tally of Romney’s falsehoods. Both in his acquiescence to racism and his dedication to lying, Romney paved the way for the Republican Party to become Trump’s party. This achievement should be recalled when we estimate how Romney would behave in the Senate.
Trump recently gave a hostile and jingoistic speech at the U.N. where he threatened to “totally destroy North Korea”, and Romney praised it as a “strong challenge to UN members”.
Yes, he will be a rubber-stamp for Trump.
Romney gave up all pretense of being a Never-Trumper the day he went, hat-in-hand, hoping to become Secretary of State. He has not been involved in any resistance to Trump’s agenda since then. Not over the wall, not over the Muslim ban, not over the firing of James Comey, or the number of foreign agents tied to his administration, or the coziness with Putin’s regime, or his embrace of totalitarian leaders, or the decimation of the State Department, or the rampant corruption, not even over his attacks against free speech, civil liberties, women, minorities, refugees, Gold Star moms, or hurricane victims.
His only criticism of Trump in the last year was to disagree that Nazis are sometimes ‘good people’.
Romney will fit in quite nicely with the Republican party. He is not going to do anything to save us from Trump.
Romney is just like every other Republican politician in America. They hate Trump, despise him and can’t wait to be free of him. But at the same time they have to toady to him because of his power over the base they need to be elected.
He will be as subservient as he feels he needs to be. And as independent as he can because he doesn’t really want to be subservient.
All these venal people are just waiting for the right moment to slip the knife into Trump’s back – with safely to them.
And that moment is going to come. Trump isn’t winning his war against the entire world. And the Trumpites know they are losing ground. The majority is against them and that majority is growing larger all the time.
I’d rate him as a suck up or whatever it takes to get his way.
At least Hatch believes (used to? Maybe changing back to old beliefs?) in anti-trust and would support marijuana reform. Would Romney? Nope. Romney imo would therefore be worse.