The election of Donald Trump has made strange bedfellows. I find myself agreeing with Washington Post conservative writer Jennifer Rubin, conservatives Anna Navarro and Bill Kristol and Republican strategist Rick Wilson. This would never have happened without Donald Trump in the White House. But desperate times calls for desperate measures and I’m looking for allies anywhere to help stop the debacle that has been the Trump administration.
But Mitt Romney isn’t one of them.
First of all, I find it infuriating that political pundits who just last week claimed that Hillary Clinton should go away and take up knitting after her loss in 2016 are now clamoring for a Senate seat run for Mitt Romney who lost his presidential election in 2012. As far as the media is concerned, a woman has to go into hiding after she loses any election (except Sarah Palin, the one woman that should have been hiding) but a man can run multiple times and is still a viable candidate with a voice that must be heard. A white man like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Bernie Sanders can lose elections and are still booked on all the talk shows and can do book tours without being told to shut up. The double standard is unbelievable and it is no coincidence that many of the pundits who grilled Hillary while hand holding Donald Trump have been accused of sexual misconduct.
The bar is currently set so low, that Mitt Romney for Senate sounds like a good idea. He can’t be as bad as Trump so there’s that, right? But in the rush to crown Mitt Romney because of his weak #NeverTrump stance, let’s not forget Romney’s greatest hits:
- “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.... My job is not to worry about those people.” - May 17, 2012
- “Corporations are people, my friend ... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings, my friend.” - August 11, 2011
- “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” - January 9, 2012
- “I went to a number of women’s groups and said ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.” - October 16, 2012
Romney was the Steve Mnuchin of 2012, super rich; out of touch with everyone who wasn’t rich and constantly outraged that the rest of us didn’t understand his struggles. The Romney’s tales of struggling as college students, eating tuna fish sandwiches off an ironing board because they couldn’t afford a table omits that the Romney’s lived off Mitt’s stock investments. His advice to struggling students was to ask your parents to loan you money to start a business. And while the Romney’s might have been smart enough not to get photographed with sheets of money like the clueless Mnuchins, that’s basically it. Again, the bar is set so low its underground.
And while these quotes are really, really stupid, the policies Mitt Romney has advocated for as Governor are equally bad. Romney also:
- Supported Paul Ryan’s Hunger Games like path to prosperity budget;
- Was against campaign finance reform;
- Wanted to increase the size of the military by 100,000 troops in 2012 and an expanded Naval armada; and
- Supported personhood legislation guaranteeing constitutional protections to the unborn from the moment of fertilization.
During the 2016 election, Romney was one of the Republicans who didn’t support Trump. He was a vocal opponent coming out often to warn about the dangers of a Trump presidency. But once Trump won the election, he summoned Mitt Romney dangling the carrot of a Secretary of State Job and Romney came running. It seems his #NeverTrump stand ends at the door to the Secretary of State office.
If Romney is elected as Senator from Utah, he will go right back to voting party line including the Republican budgets which punish the people who didn’t have the skills to be born rich. Romney will go right back to thinking that 47 percent of Americans aren’t worthy of consideration. He will follow the Republican’s policies of governing by the meanest, cruelest methods possible for the people who have the least. And he will not hold Trump accountable for his actions. Look for Romney to go back to groveling like he did for the State job as long as Trump has a base of supporters and a pen to sign whatever legislation Paul Ryan puts in front of him.
If the Republicans like Rubin and Navarro really want to make a difference, join the Democrats and elect Jennifer Wilson for the Utah Senate seat. Wilson is serving her second six-year term on the Salt Lake City Council, the first woman to serve in the council. Let’s elect a real ally. And maybe then, we can curtail the actions of Donald Trump before a tweet like this one, gets us all killed.