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.
He's outspoken about dogs with fleas, but lay down with them anyway.
I don't know about you, but I don't count that in his favor.
You don't have to like politics. Most people don't. It's a nasty business of deals and compromise.
But that's how it works.
You have two people trying to decide on where to have dinner. One wants a vegan restaurant because "beef is murder" and the other wants a burger place because, I dunno - "strongly held belief here". If they can't pick a place they both starve. What the hyper-partisans want is for all of us to starve rather than cave. "Better dead than red" as they said in the '50s.
I'd rather end up with a mediocre salad with "turkey sausage" (the worst of sausages) than nothing at all. That's politics.
What you're arguing for is, essentially, enlightened centrism. An enlightened centrist will view one side wanting to kill 1000 people and another side wanting to kill 0 people and say we need to meet somewhere in the middle. You can see how that's actually not good, I trust.
Oh - we get to just straw-man each other?
In that case, what you're arguing for is, essentially, fanatic partisan terrorism to get your own way justified by your self-righteous beliefs.
Whatever you need to think to be able to sleep at night dude. You were arguing for enlightened centrism which doesn't work and isn't good nor ethical.
And you're arguing for fanatic partisanship that will lead to the decay of our democracy. 'night!
You're arguing that Nazis are good people who should be heard. C'mon man. Even you can't think that.
I'm not - and if you think I'm arguing that then you're not arguing in good faith. You're just arguing against a straw-man.
You're arguing for enlightened centrism. Sorry you don't like your ideology under scrutiny.
Whatever you say 🙄
It is perfectly reasonable and fair to judge someone's character by the company they keep. Particularly if they know the company is disreputable.