Mitt Romney Announces Exploratory Committee For His Own Spine, Attacks Trump
Photo courtesy of Getty Politics Features Mitt Romney
Is this a criticism of Donald Trump by former Trump-criticizer turned lackey Mitt Romney, Utah’s junior senator? IT MIGHT BE!
When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019
By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 4, 2019
In fact, I’m going to go a step further: I think it is! It is a criticism of Trump!
Now, you might be tempted to think Mitt has re-grown his backbone, but be careful making that kind of assumption. To understand their history, you need to know that after Mitt was critical of Trump in the 2016 election, he almost literally ate crow at a dinner with Trump, and even up to this year has been spineless and spineless and spineless some more. Here’s the iconic photo from their 2016 dinner that’s worth a million words, which you also see above:
What this actually means—and this is good news, no doubt—is that Romney senses a change in how Trump is being perceived, and feels that criticism is now safe. It’s not necessarily an act of courage, but it is a signal to fellow Republicans, and that can only be a good thing. That said, burying Trump before he’s actually politically dead is practically a D.C. sport at this point, and nobody yet has won that game, so it’s not worth doing any victory dances. But it is significant, because Romney wouldn’t do this if he didn’t think Trump was in a losing position.