“Morons. I’ve Got Morons On My Team!”*
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Mitt Romney, quoting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in reference to his party’s “whitewashing” the insurrection
Both of Utah’s current United States Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney were born into unimaginable legal, political, and financial advantage . . . and Mormon royalty. Before them lay red carpets of infinite length, and each continues life’s journey through doors of privilege open wide to them.
I’ve written my share of criticism of Mitt Romney. See, e.g., The Bain (Capital) of Mitt Romney’s Existence. My critique of the junior senator from Utah has focused primarily on how he gained his phenomenal wealth — which I find morally reprehensible — and his “conservative” fiscal policy positions. Yet, as Chris Hayes said, “I would take 50 Mitt Romneys in the Republican caucus offering up infuriatingly out-of-touch takes on things like student debt forgiveness over the crop of people we currently have.”
While I disagree with many of Romney’s policy positions, he was interested in governing, and within the existing political structure and institutions he swore to defend. The other senator from Utah is not.
“A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” Romney is quoted as saying to his biographer McKay Coppins of The Atlantic. He added, “Do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom? What is the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience?”
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times interprets Romney to mean that “[f]aced with a conflict between partisan loyalty and ideological ambition on one hand and basic principles of self-government and the political equality on the other, much of the Republican Party has jettisoned any commitment to American democratic values in favor of narrow self-interest.”
We don’t have to guess who some of those Republican team members are. You may remember Romney refused to endorse the other U.S. senator from Utah in the 2022 mid-terms despite Lee’s public begging. It may have had something to do with Senator Romney’s view of Lee as among the morons on the Republican team. Ever the Trump [p]sycophant, Lee worked with the White House to overturn the…