Mitt Romney scours the GOP with a dose of Clorox

“A very large portion of my party really doesn’t
believe in the Constitution.” 

— Mitt Romney, as told to his biographer, McKay Coppins for his bio Romney: a Reckoning.

Mitt Romney is not seeking re-election to the United States Senate. At 76, he feels he is too old. (Hear that, Joe and Donald, Nancy and Mitch?)

The Republican party’s legions of Election Deniers say Good Riddance! Our 2012 presidential nominee is their master RINO. They call him a traitor, the ultimate irony considering that it wasn’t Romney who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It wasn’t Romney’s mob who pummeled Capitol police, busted their way into Senate chambers, and chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” But scapegoats are needed and Romney long ago left the fox hole where too many conservative constitutionalists remain cowering in electoral fear.

The WaPo columnist George Will famously said Republicans are afraid of their own voters. Romney confirms that to Coppins.

“There are worse things than losing an election. Take it from somebody who knows,” Romney would tell fearful colleagues. 

McKay Coppins tells Romney’s story in a book just out, Mitt Romney, a Reckoning. That book is excerpted in the Atlantic magazine. We chose these fair usage segments for this blogge.

‘Think of your children!‘

When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.

As dismayed as Romney was by this line of thinking, he understood it. Most members of Congress don’t have security details. Their addresses are publicly available online. Romney himself had been shelling out $5,000 a day since the [01-06-21] riot to cover private security for his family — an expense he knew most of his colleagues couldn’t afford.

Senators laugh at Trump

Perhaps Romney’s most surprising discovery upon entering the Senate was that his disgust with Trump was not unique among his Republican colleagues.

“Almost without exception they shared my view of the President,” Romney told me. In public, of course, they played their parts as Trump loyalists, often contorting themselves rhetorically to defend the President’s most indefensible behavior. But in private, they ridiculed his ignorance, rolled their eyes at his antics, and made incisive observations about his warped, toddler­like psyche. Romney recalled one senior Republican senator frankly admitting, “He has none of the qualities you would want in a President, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.”

One afternoon in March 2019, Trump paid a visit to the Senate Republicans’ weekly caucus lunch.  … The President was met with a standing ovation fit for a conquering hero, and then launched into some rambling remarks. He talked about the so-called Russia hoax and relitigated the recent midterm elections and swung wildly from one tangent to another. He declared, somewhat implausibly, that the GOP would soon become “the party of health care.” The senators were respectful and attentive.

As soon as Trump left, Romney recalled, the Republican caucus burst into laughter.

On Ron Johnson: 

Romney drew a distinction between the Republican colleagues he viewed as sincerely crazy and those who were faking it for votes. He was open, for instance, to partnering with Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin … ­Once, Romney … blurted, “Ron, is there any conspiracy you don’t believe?”— you could at least count on his good faith. What Romney couldn’t stomach any longer was associating himself with people who cynically stoked distrust in democracy for selfish political reasons. “I doubt I will work with Josh Hawley on anything,” he told me.

Perhaps most disconcerting was J. D. Vance, the Republican candidate in Ohio. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance.”

Trump’s Clorox bleach

Romney relished the idea of running a presidential campaign in which he simply said whatever he thought, without regard for the political consequences. 

“I must admit, I’d love being on the stage with Donald Trump … and just saying, ‘That’s stupid. Why are you saying that?’ ” He nursed a fantasy in which he devoted an entire debate to asking Trump to explain why, in the early weeks of the pandemic, he’d suggested that Americans inject bleach as a treatment for COVID-19. 

“Every time Donald Trump makes a strong argument, I’d say, ‘Remind me again about the Clorox. Every now and then, I would cough and go, ‘Clorox.’ ”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: The sad thing is, too many in our Republican party would rather believe Mike Gableman, Sidney Powell, Tucker Carlson and their insane theories of one unified massive, multi-state conspiracy involving Jewish space lasers, Hugo Chavez, and USB ports “passed around like they were vials of heroin or cocaine.” Dissenters like Mike Gallagher, Robin Vos, and Mike Pence? All those court decisions (including Trump’s 3 high court appointees)? Republican governors of Arizona and Georgia? AG Bill Barr? His own White House counsels, like Patrick Cippolone? Trump’s head of cyber security? RINOs!

How many other secret Biden operatives other than Romney
do you know who want high gasoline prices?