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 a politician - it's his job to lay with dogs. The Maga/Liberal belief that politicians should grand-stand and stick to their morals above all else is... wrong. Or at least unproductive.
Those "dogs" are other members of congress elected by the people to represent them whether you like it or not. They have the same legitimacy and authority as everyone else in congress. What we should want is for them to work together on things they can agree upon and compromise on things they don't. But then the ultra-partisans (who are growing in number) get all pissy about "It's just Biden cowing to his corporate overlords!" or "Mitt is bowing to Nazis!".
I don't share a lot of Mitt's policy views - but what I do appreciate is his respect for the unspoken rules of governance and statesmanship (statespersonship?). Being willing to compromise is a virtue for a politician. Because when you don't you get what we have in the House of Representatives right now - a party willing to "burn it all" so they can pass single-issue legislation.
This is why I like the idea of some of the rules that parliamentary systems tend to have around "no confidence votes" when certain key legislation can't be agreed upon. "We need a budget, if you lot can't do that then we'll find somebody who can" (yes yes, pros and cons and all that).
Oh yes, compromise.
One side wants to kill all the trans people and the other says that we should give them their basic civil rights. Since they can't agree, we should compromise because we're good politicians. We'll give them some of their civil rights and only kill some of them, I guess
There's plenty of room for political compromise on most issues. On some there are none. If you want to see what compromise looks like, look at the IRA. How many Republican votes did it get again?
They are not a real political party. They are just a force for evil.
100%. There are times to put a stake in the ground. But most often there are not. I see people on Lemmy all the time saying things like "I'm not going to vote for Biden because he didn't forgive all student debt". I mean - WTF?
They share power with you though - you can't simply ignore them. Some are a lost cause to be sure. MTG and Bobert are clowns who don't understand statecraft or even basic governing. But if you write off people like Mitt because "he lays down with dogs" then you're going to be cutting your nose off to spite your face.
EDIT: To clarify the first point - we're at a point where "both sides" (yeah, yeah, but your're virtuous and they are evil) are putting stakes in the ground over everything. And now threatening to just destroy it all unless they get their way (more the GOP but the hyper-partisans on the left sound very similar). Even if your cause is just it doesn't mean it's worth the cost of, say, destroying the nations credit rating.
I could tell you are a bothsideser, but thanks for being transparent about it so it wasn't just me speculating.
What are the stakes Democrats have laid down, again? Let's give a few examples here where the Democrats are being clear about having a no-compromise position. Is it just that they don't want to let McCarthy and McConnell endlessly change the agreed upon Congressional budget by threatening national default if they don't 100% get their way every year?
I make compromises ALL THE TIME. I voted for and defend voting for Joe Biden, after all. Most of the left is willing to make INTENSE compromise. But it's never good enough for the right. You meet them half way only to see their backs as they sprint away. And Romney is part of that. If he wants to claim he's not, there is a straightforward way to do it -- either change party or call them out and leave politics. He's doing the latter, so he gets credit from me there, but it's not nearly enough to undo the harm he has wrought by helping keep a veneer of normalcy on a radical right that has none.
You want compromise in politics? Only one "side" is doing so. The other isn't, and that's Romney's.
But Romney did...