Mitt Romney has never missed an opportunity to be an opportunist. Romney the leveraged buyout pioneer took advantage of the U.S. tax code to pocket tens of millions of dollars from investments in companies that failed. Mitt the mythical Massachusetts moderate transformed himself into the “severely conservative” 2012 presidential nominee by turning his back on his own health care reforms and confirming that he was “a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly,” as his adviser Mike Murphy said in 2006. That last reinvention required then-Gov. Romney to betray a woman he had previously revealed to voters was a “dear family relative.”
Now, with growing public support for the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump, Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney is seizing a new chance to place himself on the national stage. While Trump is being buffeted by the blowback from his illegal solicitation of 2020 election assistance from Ukraine and his grotesque scheme to extort the government in Kyiv, Romney is waging a public relations campaign to claim the mantle of the conscience of the GOP. With furrowed brow and pained expressions of concern, Mitt, to great media acclaim, declares himself “deeply troubled” by Trump’s “appalling” behavior. Yes, Mitt Romney is once again offering himself as the white knight Republicans can turn to to replace their vulgarian in the White House.
While Romney’s criticism of the lawless occupant of the Oval Office is certainly welcome, it does not go nearly far enough. Mitt Romney, of all Republicans—of all Americans—has a special responsibility to immediately demand and take a prominent role in leading the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. There should be no mystery as to why. After all, when he accused the president of believing “the best interests of America are to bow to the interests of Russia” and of sympathizing with those who waged terrorist attacks against Americans, Romney wasn’t talking about Trump, but about Barack Obama. In penance for his baseless slanders of the 44th president of the United States, Mitt Romney must publicly take the lead in removing the 45th from office.
From the beginning, it’s been clear that Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was far more than “crazy” and “frightening.” The president wasn’t merely committing a criminal act in asking for foreign intervention in an American election. In demanding an investigation of the Bidens in exchange for Kyiv receiving almost $400 million in U.S. military assistance, Trump was obviously blackmailing the Ukrainians. (And with President Zelensky’s capitulation on the “Steinmeier Formula” for elections in eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s victory there is assured.)
Nevertheless, the usual suspects on the right rallied to Trump’s defense.
As this exchange from Sept. 21 shows, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer predictably turned to whataboutism of the worst kind:
As I responded to Fleischer:
This is a new low for you, which is saying something.
Obama’s March 2012 open mic comment to Medvedev was merely stating the obvious: arms control talks would go nowhere during an election year due to GOP demagoguery. Romney’s opposition to the START treaty proved his point.
Facing criticism from others, Fleischer dug his hole deeper:
If the press accounts are accurate, it was inappropriate. Not impeachable. Let the voters decide.
But the hypocrisy is sickening. Obama does something similar, if not worse, and it’s a two day flap, w many reporters defending O. If Trump does it, it’s the end of the world.
As it turns out, Fleischer was wrong on every count. President Obama did nothing similar to Trump’s crimes. But thanks to Mitt Romney, a man for whom Iran, Islamic terror, and China had been America’s top national security concerns until that point, after March 2012 Russia became “our number one geopolitical foe” for the rest of the campaign.
March 26, 2012, was the day President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made a joint appearance before reporters in Seoul, South Korea. After their statements reflecting the continued gap between the U.S. and Russia on the deployment of an American missile defense system, an open microphone caught this exchange between the two leaders. As the The Washington Post relayed:
In an unscripted moment picked up by camera crews, the American president was more blunt: Let me get reelected first, he said; then I’ll have a better chance of making something happen.
“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama can be heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president — and outgoing prime minister — Vladimir Putin.
“Yeah, I understand,” Medvedev replies, according to an account relayed by an ABC News producer, who said she viewed a recording of the discussion made by a Russian camera crew. “I understand your message about space. Space for you . . .”
“This is my last election,” Obama interjects. “After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Medvedev, who last week demanded written proof that Russia is not the intended target of U.S. missile defense efforts, responded agreeably.
“I understand,” he told the U.S. president. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
Because 2012 was an election year in both countries, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes explained afterwards, “it is clearly not a year in which we are going to achieve a breakthrough.” The next day, Obama himself reiterated that point, stating the obvious point, “The only way I get this stuff done is if I'm consulting with the Pentagon, with Congress, if I've got bipartisan support and frankly, the current environment is not conducive to those kinds of thoughtful consultations.” As David Corn pointed out the next day, one need only look at the START ratification process to understand why: “But the Romneyites—and much of the reporters and commentators who have covered the so-called hot-mic gaffe—have missed the context: Obama’s 2010 fight to ratify the New START treaty ... a tale of Republican recalcitrance that nearly upended decades of bipartisan arms control policy.”
For Mitt Romney and his allies, it was an opportunity to completely upend the election of 2012. So within hours of the words leaving Obama’s lips, for Romney Russia was suddenly now national security priority No. 1.
Romney accused President Obama of making common cause with America’s adversaries. Appearing on conservative host Hugh Hewitt’s radio show that same day, Romney branded Obama “a president who continues to try and appease and accommodate, and believes that the best interests of America are to bow to the interests of Russia.” Despite acknowledging that the Russians “don’t represent a military threat to us at the present,” he further told Hewitt’s audience, “I hope the American people understand that what we heard from the President is revealing about his character in terms of what he tells the American people and revealing about his direction and sentiment with regards to Russian, which is after all our number one geopolitical foe.”
And so a talking point was born. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that same night, Romney explained why he newly believed Russia to be the greater threat than Iran, China, or North Korea: "These are very unfortunate developments and if he's planning on doing more and suggest to Russia that he has things he's willing to do with them he's not willing to tell the American people, this is to Russia this is without question our number one geopolitical foe, they fight every cause for the world's worst actors, the idea that he has some more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed."
Ultimately, of course, Barack Obama won the election of 2012, dispatching Romney’s sound bite during the final presidential debate by joking that the 1980s were calling “and want their foreign policy back.” But the rest is not, as they usually say, history.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats predicted that the pro-Western success in Kyiv after the miracle on the Maidan would trigger Russian intervention in Ukraine. And if Romney or other Republicans had any issue with Putin’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, neither he nor they were protesting it.
After all, in 2016 Romney suggested that Donald Trump—the same man whose endorsement he welcomed in 2012—was a bigot and a tax cheat. That March, Romney called him “a phony, a fraud” whose “promises are worthless.” Yet despite candidate Trump’s threats to lead the United States out of NATO and to refuse to live up to American mutual defense obligations to NATO allies in Eastern Europe, Romney tried—and failed—to become his secretary of state. After Americans learned in January 2017 of U.S. intelligence agencies’ unanimous conclusion that Putin’s Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf, Romney did not call for punishment and countermeasures. And the revelations that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposed any bipartisan statement on Russian meddling in fall 2016 did not result in any condemnation from Mitt.
To his credit, Senate candidate Romney blasted Trump’s performance at his June summit with Vladimir Putin, declaring, “President Trump's decision to side with Putin over American intelligence agencies is disgraceful and detrimental to our democratic principles.” (Romney later said that Trump’s refusal to keep notes of or allow other American personnel into his meeting with Putin was “inappropriate.”) Nevertheless, in his first big Senate vote on Russian sanctions, Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake lamented on Jan. 17, Mitt Romney failed his first test on Russia by supporting Trump’s move to ease sanctions against Putin-allied oligarch Oleg Deripaska. As former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted:
Im really surprised that @MittRomney voted against keeping sanctions on these Russian companies. I hope someone will ask him how his vote = being tough on Russia.
As Lake put it, “The senator declined to join the 11 other members of his party, a party whose 2012 presidential nominee memorably warned that Russia was America’s ‘No. 1 geopolitical foe,’” adding. “I wonder what happened to him.”
What happened to Mitt Romney is what always happens to Mitt Romney. Wherever opportunity may be found at any moment, Romney will take off in hot pursuit. In hot pursuit, that is, regardless of what barriers his principles, past positions, and common decency may pose. And on Sept. 11, 2012, opportunity could be found in Benghazi, Libya. Within hours of the brutal attacks on the U.S. compound there that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American security personnel dead, Gov. Romney didn’t express his sorrow or vow justice. Instead, he essentially called President Obama a traitor.
His response was shameful and simply beneath the dignity of anyone who would serve as commander in chief. Romney didn't know the facts. He didn't know the timeline of events. He didn't know who was responsible for the embassy breaches in Cairo and Benghazi. Yet even before Americans had learned of and could mourn their deaths, Romney used their murdered countrymen to slander the president of the United States. When the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call came, Romney let it go to voice mail, where his recorded message called the president "disgraceful" and charged that Obama "sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks."
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Following Romney’s lead, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus regurgitated a similar sound bite. “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt,” Priebus tweeted at 9 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2012. “Sad and pathetic.”
What was truly pathetic, of course, was Mitt Romney’s appalling response to an American national tragedy. As BuzzFeed summed it up, a large—and mostly bipartisan—consensus of foreign policy experts expressed shock at the Massachusetts governor’s disgusting and vicious charge: "’Bungle... utter disaster...not ready for prime time... not presidential... Lehman moment.’ And that's just the Republicans.”
As the The Washington Post reported the next day, the response from most Republican leaders was appropriately muted. “I know all Americans today are shocked and saddened by the news in the Middle East,” Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, said, adding, “Our hearts are heavy. And our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.” Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for President George W. Bush, was left shaking his head at Romney’s grotesque display: “It almost feels like Sarah Palin is his foreign policy adviser. It’s just a huge mistake on the Romney campaign’s part — huge mistake.”
John Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee and future Obama secretary of state, hit the opportunist on the head: “I think Mitt Romney is very sad. There ought to be some limits to ambition and trying to exploit every opportunity.”
Seven years later, the opportunist is back to look for advantage in an unfolding tragedy in the Middle East. This time, Mitt Romney is grabbing the spotlight over Trump’s jaw-dropping and dangerous betrayal of America’s Kurdish allies in Syria and Iraq.
After Trump announced on Twitter that he would greenlight Turkey’s invasion of territories controlled by Kurdish forces, Romney joined his co-chair on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, Democrat Chris Murphy, in declaring that the president’s decision “will have grave humanitarian and national security consequences. After enlisting support from the Kurds to help destroy ISIS and assuring Kurdish protection from Turkey, the U.S. has now opened the door to their destruction.”
On Wednesday, David Ignatius explained the easily foreseen consequences of Trump’s windfall for Turkey, Iran, Russia, and Syria’s Assad regime: “President Trump has opened the door to what could become a genuine nightmare for the United States and its allies: the revival of the deadly terrorist organization that called itself the Islamic State.” Trump was unmoved, offering a response that was, as cited in The Washington Post, incoherent at best and insane at worst: “President Trump said Wednesday that it would be ‘easy’ for the United States to form new alliances if Syrian Kurds leave the fight against the Islamic State to fend off a Turkish attack, noting that ‘they didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us in Normandy’ and were only interested in fighting for ‘their land.’”
For his part, Sen. Romney struck a determined pose, prepared to do anything short of taking action to show his disapproval of the Trump’s rapidly unfolding disaster:
But at the end of the day, Mitt Romney’s pose is just that. And as it turns out, it’s one he’s been perfecting for months. Back in May, Politico offered a fawning view “Inside Romney’s Trump Strategy.” Portraying himself, as his father did before him, as a lonely champion of principle, the Utah senator proclaimed, “The lane that I’ve chosen has almost no one in it.” “There’s a long history and a family trait of saying what you believe and not worrying about what other people think,” he claimed.
But far from leading the call for Trump’s impeachment, Romney’s advice to Democrats has been to “let the American people decide” in the 2020 election.
After the whistleblower revelations regarding Trump’s criminal enterprise in Ukraine, Romney secured another glowing profile, this time in the The New York Times. On Sept. 26, the Times reported, “He has pronounced himself ‘deeply troubled’ by Mr. Trump’s effort to enlist a foreign leader for political assistance, and has refused to rule out impeaching the president.” And even as he insisted he was not attempting to nudge other Republicans, it was impossible to miss his indignation: “’I can’t imagine being in the Senate or in any other position of responsibility and looking around to see who’s with you,’ Mr. Romney said. ‘You stand for what you believe in.’”
After Donald Trump committed another open mic crime, Romney responded by saying, “By all appearances, the President's brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.” That statement prompted CNN conventional wisdom regurgitator Chris Cillizza to ask, “What is Mitt Romney’s end game?” His answer, as is usually the case, is provided by someone else. This time, that someone is Gabriel Sherman, writing for Vanity Fair:
According to people close to Romney, he’s firmly decided against primarying Trump, an enterprise he believes to be a sure loser given Trump’s enduring GOP support. Romney has also told people that, as an unsuccessful two-time presidential candidate, he’s the wrong person to take on Trump. Instead, a Romney adviser told me, Romney believes he has more potential power as a senator who will decide Trump’s fate in an impeachment trial. “He could have tremendous influence in the impeachment process as the lone voice of conscience in the Republican caucus,” the adviser said. In recent days, Romney has been reaching out privately to key players in the Republican resistance, according to a person briefed on the conversations. “Romney is the one guy who could bring along Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse. Romney is the pressure point in the impeachment process. That’s why the things he’s saying are freaking Republicans out.” (Romney, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.)
“Now,” Cillizza drools, “That is very interesting.” And just why is it so interesting? “[This] gets us back to Romney and the role he sees for himself as this impeachment investigation wends it way through Congress. Is he an emerging ringleader (as the Vanity Fair reporting suggests) or simply a man who believes he is following his conscience without any broader political considerations?”
Of course, Cillizza ignores the third and most likely possibility: Mitt Romney is ever the opportunist, hoping to rise from the ashes of the imploding Trump presidency as a man Republicans will gratefully anoint as the savior of their party and whom Americans will finally put in the White House, to complete what his wife Ann Romney described as his “destiny.”
But Romney doesn’t deserve to be the beneficiary of the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump from office. He must do what he’s never done, which is to stick his neck out and lead the resistance to Trump’s lawless subservience to Moscow and his disaster in Syria. Even more than those Republicans who engineered the Benghazi inquisition and the Clinton impeachment, Mitt has a special responsibility to hold Trump to account. After all, Romney baselessly accused President Barack Obama of bowing to Russian interests and of sympathizing with Islamic terrorists. Now that Americans actually have a president who is both a Russian tool and on the verge of resurrecting ISIS, Romney must be at the forefront of those working to secure Trump’s downfall.
Anything short of that, as Gabrielle Gurley wrote in The American Prospect, and “the man who wants to be so much more than a junior senator from Utah should consider sparing the country any more of his endless equivocations.” But that is not what the article headline called “Mitt Romney’s Impeachment Dilemma.” It is his moral duty.
