The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins is out with the first excerpt of his highly anticipated biography of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), timed to the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s announcement today that he will not seek re-election.
Why it matters: Romney — the only GOP senator to vote to convict former President Trump in his first impeachment trial — was brutally honest about his Republican colleagues over the course of two years of interviews with Coppins, a fellow Utahn.
Highlights:
- On Jan. 2, 2021, Romney texted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to warn about extremist threats law enforcement had been tracking in connection with pro-Trump protests on Jan. 6. McConnell never responded.
- Romney kept a tally of the dozen-plus times that Republican senators privately expressed solidarity with his criticism of Trump. “You’re lucky,” McConnell once told him. “You can say the things that we all think.”
- Romney shared a unique disgust for Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who he thought were too smart to believe Trump won the 2020 election but “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”
- He also was highly critical of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who reinvented his persona to become a Trump acolyte after publishing a best-selling memoir about the working class that Romney loved. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney said.
Zoom in: After House impeachment managers finished a presentation about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, McConnell told Romney: “They nailed him.”
- Taken aback, Romney said Trump would argue he was just investigating alleged corruption by the Bidens — the subject of House Republicans’ present-day impeachment inquiry.
- “If you believe that,” McConnell replied, “I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”
The bottom line: Romney said he never felt comfortable at a Senate GOP conference lunch after voting to convict Trump in 2020. “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” he told Coppins a few months after Jan. 6.
Compare and contrast to Jeff Flake, who also knew his days were numbered but did nothing on the way out. Most are Jeff Flakes so a Romney is better than nothing.
Hell, an on-the-way-out-Republican brought us the the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex speech. Was it lip service on the way out? Sure, but it’s better than silently being complicit.
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex speech is a perfect counter example to your own point, because Eisenhower was the main drive to build the Military-Industrial Complex.
He was the reason the buildup continued past WW2, and then even accelerated the buildup when he became president. Then on the way out he was all “hey guys, there’s this problem that I caused, I could have done something about it, but nope I’m out”.
And there were already people talking about how the growing Military-Industrial complex was a problem.