It was on this date in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as in 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled former Massachusetts Governor, 2012 presidential candidate, and now, the junior U.S. Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney. Romney’s endless wave of “clueless rich guy” gaffes in the 2012 campaign just kept coming at a rapid fire pace only equaled perhaps by his staggering ability to act like fact-checkers weren’t paying attention, and take being mendacious while running for national office to a whole new level (at least, until he got upped by the 2016 GOP standard bearer). Whether it was his comments about “the 47 percent”, that “Corporations are people, my friend”, the revelation that he and his wife took a $77,000 tax-write off on a prancing show horse named “Rafalca”, talking about going on a road trip with his dog strapped to the roof of a car in a carrier, admitting he was “not concerned about the very poor”, that Michigan’s “trees being just the right height”, feuding with British politicians about their preparations for the London Olympics, or arguing with the CEO of Jeep-Chrysler about whether or not he was closing one of his company’s own Ohio factories… Mitt was especially full of it. Trying to lie about President Obama’s remarks following the attacks in Benghazi as “an act of terror” in a debate, of course, led to the legendary, “Please proceed…” moment, to let Mitt lose the last gasp of momentum he was trying to snag going into the election. And of course, there was the legendary election night where Mitt and his family stood dumbfounded as the election results came in and they lost, because they actually had staffers “unskewing” the polls, internally, and was forced to throw together a concession speech, because he hadn’t prepared one.
Mitt Romney supposedly had retired from politics but tipped his hand that he was coming back into the fray upon the announcement that Sen. Orrin Hatch was finally going to retire when his “location” on Twitter changed back to Utah (classic carpetbagging move) in January of 2018, one of the several places around the country where Romney has a home. Six weeks later, Romney made it official and announced he was in the race. Now, we’ll note that publicly, Mitt Romney has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump as a member of the GOP, going all the way back to March of 2016. He’s not shy about saying he’s going to serve as a check on Trump’s power, and fill a much needed void in the leadership of the Republican Party standing up to Trump.
Uh huh. Mitt already tried pretending during the primary for Senate that he was more of a hawk than Donald Trump on immigration. Unless Mitt believes in not just locking asylum-seeking kids in cages, but poking them with sharp sticks through the bars, that seems like another Mitt campaign lie. And for “standing up” to Trump, Romney predicted a Trump win in 2020.
We’ve already covered, at length, Mitt Romney’s willingness to tell lies. He’s going to verbally say things like that, and when the time comes to vote for Supreme Court justices who might overturn Roe v. Wade, or votes to try and make tax breaks for the richest Americans permanent, he’s still going to vote for them, no questions asked. If you think the guy who made Romneycare in Massachusetts a thing will help save the Affordable Care Act nationally, don’t be so sure, after Mitt spent the 2012 campaign pretending it didn’t exist. And, every time Romney comes in and tries to lecture Donald Trump on his immorality, YET he comes off more like Ned Flanders trying to give the business to Homer Simpson. Rather than win over Republican voters and make them wake up to Trump’s cruelty, he somehow makes them only love the bastard even more. Can Mitt stand up to a bully that he publicly got humiliated by for applying for being a member of his cabinet only to be shunned? We saw the awkward dinner photos, Mitt, you don’t exactly look like you’re making Trump squirm there, quite the opposite.
At best, we expected him to talk about how disappointed he is when Trump uses foul language like “s***hole countries” and that’s something Mitt can’t take as a Mormon, no sir. And lo, so it was that our predictions have come true. Days before being sworn in as a U.S. Senator, Mitt Romney got headlines for writing a supposedly “blistering” op-ed where he talked about how Donald Trump’s “character falls short”. OOOOH, sick burn.
But we here at FRED pay attention to voting records, and lo and behold Romney has approved every Trump appointment, from every unqualified judge, to even picking toady William Barr to be the Attorney General. We’re very concerned, however, how Romney called Democrats’ attempts at getting Trump’s tax returns to show the criminal behavior described by his lawyer Michael Cohen as “moronic”, but then again, we already knew how touchy Mitt was about the precedent his father set for releasing your full tax returns to confirm no criminal behavior.
And he is still the oddest, creepiest rich guy. Like the bizarre spectacle of seeing him celebrate his birthday by blowing out the whitest-representative foods… Twinkies… one candle at a time. Or how about how he timed giving his wife Anne a mother’s day gift themed for Game of Thrones that compared her to Danaerys Targaryen… on the day the character committed genocide on the show.
Mitt Romney will not be up for re-election until 2024. He was the only Republican Senator to vote for the first impeachment of Donald Trump, and still one of a handful who voted to impeach him after the Capitol Attack.
Which makes sense when you realize Sen. Romney would have walked straight into the bloodthirsty mob were in not for a last minute warning from Officer Wesley Goodman. This seems to indicate that he might be trying to position himself to become “the voice of reason” to lead the GOP out of its current disgusting incarnation as the party of Trump, based on the presumption that there’s anything worth redeeming left. He barely avoiding being censured back home for that, and there’s a question of if he’ll survive a primary challenger in 2024 as a result. His political survival seems to depend on whether or not his fellow Republicans finally wake up to the fact that Donald Trump was always a con man, and they should have never supported him in the first place.
Meanwhile, it looks like Mitt is trying to put the stake through his former rival’s heart, knowing that if Trump is still around when he’s up for re-election in two years while running for president, he’s toast. That’s why he wrote an actually responsible, but definitely self-serving op-ed a few days ago, describing Trump as something that would “feed sickness” affecting the country, but laid blame on President Biden for not undoing all the lies that Trump, the GOP, and all the corporate sponsored right-wing media weave to send people over the edge, wistfully hoping for a president who COULD do that.
Mitt… is referring to himself, of course. He’s thinking about a 2024 run not to head back to the Senate… he’s putting the idea out there that he should be the guy in the White House come 2025. Never, ever underestimate the confidence of a mediocre white guy, y’all.
One Year Ago, July 10th, 2021: Mitt Romney (UT/MA/MI)… 2021 Update
Two Years Ago, July 10th, 2020: Mitt Romney (UT/MA/MI)… 2020 Update
Three Years Ago, July 10th, 2019: Mitt Romney (UT/MA/MI)… 2019 Update
Four Years Ago, July 10th, 2018: Mitt Romney (UT/MA/MI)… 2018 Update
Five Years Ago, July 10th, 2017: Vicki Dooling (NV)
Six Year Ago, July 10th, 2016: Robert Hurt (VA)
Seven Years Ago, July 10th, 2015: Mitt Romney (UT/MA/MI)… Original Profile