Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

national news

Way to go, Mitt

I am developing a sort of vicarious relationship with a man I opposed when he ran for president of the United States, but whose conduct as a U.S. senator is making me quite proud of his courage.

That’s you, Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah.

I voted proudly for President Obama in 2012 when he ran for re-election against Mitt Romney. I would do so again were the two men to seek that office against each other.

However, Sen. Romney is exhibiting the sort of spine that has been undiscovered among almost all of his Republican Senate colleagues. He is challenging Donald Trump openly and with vigor.

I will not forget that memorable speech Sen. Romney delivered on the Senate floor when he declared his intention to vote to convict Donald Trump on abuse of power during the president’s impeachment trial. He was the lone GOP senator to break ranks from the cult that has developed on Capitol Hill that seeks to protect Trump against those who seek political justice to be delivered to a man who is unfit to serve as president.

He has been excoriated for his vote. Trump has threatened him via Twitter. Mitt has stood his ground.

And now he is marching with “Black Lives Matter” protesters who are demonstrating against the kind of police brutality that killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. He is standing with those who are shocked and dismayed at Floyd’s death. He is one of distressingly few GOP public officials willing to stand on the right side of history.

Trump’s reaction to Mitt Romney has been to skewer him for acting on his own conscience and for doing what he believes is right.

I will stand proudly with Mitt Romney. If only others within his party would exhibit the level of courage that Sen. Romney continues to put on display.

medical news

Hell freezes over: Trump tells the truth!

I never thought this day would come, but it did … yesterday, during a White House campaign rally-style riff by the president of the United States who supposedly was briefing the nation about the health outbreak that has gripped the world.

A reporter asked Donald Trump whether he declined to appoint U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, to join a task force to reopen the country in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic out of anger at Romney’s criticism of him.

Trump said he is “not a fan of Mitt Romney. I don’t want his advice.”

So, the answer is “yes,” Trump is still angry at Romney because the Republican senator voted to convict the president of abuse of power during the Senate impeachment trial.

See what I mean? Trump actually told the truth that he does hold a grudge against Romney!

This fit of truth-telling isn’t worth any sort of praise, given the smallness and pettiness it represents about what passes for Trump’s thought pattern.

national news

Trump continues to seethe at Mitt

Donald Trump asked members of the U.S. Senate to join a task force to help craft a plan to restart the nation’s economy that has been shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

He asked almost the entire Republican caucus in the Senate to join. Trump left one GOP senator off the list: Mitt Romney of Utah.

Gosh, why is that? Oh yeah! Romney was the lone GOP senator to vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial; he voted “yes” on the abuse of power article brought to the Senate by the House of Representatives. He made history with that vote, becoming the first senator to vote to convict a president of his own party.

Trump is steamed. It’s not that he and Romney were longtime pals. Mitt spoke in 2016 about how he believes Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud.” He didn’t want him to be the party’s presidential nominee.

Romney has been periodically critical of Trump over the past three years. The Senate trial vote was the last straw.

Trump’s congressional team comprises a lot of smart folks from both parties. Mitt Romney could have added considerable expertise and perspective to the discussion. Donald Trump, though, won’t sweep aside a grudge … even when the nation’s economic health hangs in the balance.

medical news

Mitt emerges as major thorn in POTUS’s backside

The more I hear from Sen. Mitt Romney, the more I am liking what I hear.

The Utah Republican was the lone member of his party to vote to convict Donald Trump of abuse of power in his Senate impeachment trial. Trump hates Mitt’s guts for voting his conscience, which tells me far more about Trump than it does about Sen. Romney.

Now we have the junior senator telling Trump he’d better back off and let a bipartisan congressional committee conduct proper oversight of the $2.2 trillion relief package that is coming in response to the collapsing economy … which is a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the planet.

Romney put his name on a letter he co-wrote with Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., endorsing the notion of the oversight panel.

Do you think Trump will heed the senator’s call? Oh, probably not. I just am enjoying hearing a bona fide Republican politician challenge the fake Republican president on an important issue of government transparency.

national news

Has Trump been ‘chastened’ by impeachment? Not even!

Some of the congressional Republicans — House members and senators alike — who voted to acquit Donald John Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress talked about him learning the lessons of the impeachment and trial.

Hmm. Has the president learned anything? Is he feeling chastened by the acquittal in the Senate?

Umm. No. He isn’t. He has learned a single constructive thing.

Instead, he is feeling emboldened. Trump is proceeding as if the acquittal actually means something other than Republicans (more or less) standing behind him. Except for GOP U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah voting his conscience on the abuse of power impeachment allegation, the rest of the Republican caucus refused to budge.

Trump, though, sees it this way: an acquittal is an acquittal. It doesn’t matter how it came to pass.

He issued those 11 pardons and commutations. He fired Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire because the DNI briefed members of Congress on reports that Russia is attacking our election system this year just as it did in 2016. The president is purging his administration of those who would seek to provide critical analyses, replacing them with yes men and women, with blind loyalists.

What’s more, the president is dismissing reports about Russia’s renewed attack on our election. He is disparaging, just as he has done so many times already, the hard work of our expert and patriotic intelligence analysts who speak with a single voice on one critical point: Russia is attacking us! 

Donald Trump is unleashed. He should frighten all of us.

national news

Yep, Trump has turned our politics on its ear

To my mind, the most glaring example of just how much our political world has been turned upside down occurred in the wake of a noted Republican U.S. senator’s vote to convict Donald Trump of abuse of power.

Think of it more a moment.

Mitt Romney, a Republican’s Republican — the party’s presidential nominee in 2012 — was the lone GOP senator to break ranks with the party by deciding to convict Trump of an impeachable offense during the Senate impeachment trial.

The reaction to Romney’s courageous stand? It was to vilify him by Republicans who are standing foursquare behind the man I consider to be the Republican In Name Only in chief. Yes, Donald Trump is the RINO in chief. He’s a man with no history of backing GOP policies prior to running for president as a Republican in 2016.

The president who never sought a public office prior to seeking the presidency four years ago has clamped a stranglehold on the party. Meanwhile, an actual Republican — such as Mitt Romney — is being pounded, pummeled and pilloried because he was voting his conscience.

The head of the Conservative Political Action Conference told Romney to stay away. Others on the right wing said Romney could place himself in physical danger were he to attend the CPAC event.

Trump, who embodies the phony Republican, has become the real thing in the eyes of those who are beholden to him. Yes, the man with no ideological or moral grounding except to policies that benefit him personally has become the epitome of a political party with which he has no history.

Bizarre.

national news

Standing with a courageous GOP senator

I want to stand with an embattled Republican U.S. senator who chose to honor his sacred oath rather than following a path toward blind partisan fealty.

Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, voted to convict Donald John Trump on an allegation of abuse of power when the Senate cast its vote to acquit the current president.

That has brought a barrage of scorn and recrimination from Trump’s loyalists. One of them is Fox News talker Jeanine Pirro, a former judge from New York who said this, according to The Guardian: “get the hell out of the United States Senate,” while claiming that “your dream of endearing yourself to the Trump-hating left is a joke.”

Sigh …

Pirro doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Sen. Romney, a freshman from Utah, is more of a Republican than Pirro or her Fox pals ever have been or ever hope to be. He is a man of deep religious faith. He takes the oath he took to deliver “impartial justice” as seriously as he could take any oath he’s ever taken.

So he voted to convict Trump on a single charge brought to the Senate from the House of Representatives impeachment. Trump was still acquitted. Romney’s vote didn’t matter, a point he made while declaring his intention to cast a “guilty” vote in a speech on the Senate floor.

I am reminded a bit by a former Republican House member I got to know well while I worked as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

Larry Combest represented the 19th Congressional District, which for a time included the southern portion of Amarillo. In the mid-1990s, Combest resisted a GOP-led farm policy overhaul. It was called “Freedom to Farm.” Combest stuck it in then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s eye when he opposed the Freedom to Farm legislation.

Gingrich demanded loyalty to the party platform. Combest was unwilling to grant it. Why? Because the farmers and ranchers in West Texas — for whom Combest worked — opposed the legislation. Combest was more loyal to them than to the House party leadership.

Accordingly, Mitt Romney was more loyal to the oath he took than to the president of the United States. Mitt Romney didn’t get my vote for POTUS in 2012. He gets my undying respect now.

national news

Don Jr. ignites angry response to a real Republican’s outrage

I practically choked on whatever it was I might have been munching on the moment I read what Don Trump Jr. had said about Sen. Mitt Romney’s history-making vote in the Senate impeachment trial of Don’s dad, the current president of the United States.

Romney became the first senator in U.S. history to cast a vote against a president of his own party; the Utah Republican voted “guilty” on the charge that Daddy Donald abused the power of his office by soliciting a foreign government for personal political assistance.

Don Jr. said Sen. Romney, for voting his conscience and trusting in God to assure fidelity to the oath he took as a Senate juror, should be “expelled” from the Republican Party.

Yep, the No. 1 presidential grifter said that Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, should be kicked out of the party because he dared to honor the oath he took to be an impartial juror and to render justice according to what he understood to be his solemn responsibility.

I hasten to note that Mitt Romney has contributed more to the Republican Party — through his term as governor of Massachusetts and as an ongoing advocate for mainstream GOP policies — than Don Jr. or his father, for that matter, ever will contribute.

For a man who’s profited materially from his father’s business interests and in recent times his political standing to call for the expulsion of an actual Republican with serious policy chops is beyond reprehensible.

I get that Junior is angry. Fine. Keep it to yourself, chump.

religious news

POTUS drags politics into National Prayer Breakfast

I have been aghast at what I heard Donald John Trump say this morning at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The event is designed to be an ecumenical gathering of all faiths. From what I’ve seen of it in the past, it generally steers far and wide from politics. Then again, that was before the Era of Trump, who today dragged the Prayer Breakfast into uncharted territory.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” The target of that jab was U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the lone GOP senator to vote “guilty” on one of the impeachment counts leveled against Trump; indeed, Sen. Romney is the first senator in U.S. history to vote against a president of his own party in a Senate trial..

Romney is a devout Mormon, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. He spoke of his faith while announcing his findings that Trump had, in Romney’s mind, abused the power of his office. Trump was having none of it, actually challenging the sincerity of a fellow American’s religious faith.

Despicable, indeed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also drew some heavy fire from the triumphant president, who said he doesn’t like someone “who says ‘I pray for you’ when they not that is not so.”

What’s more, Pelosi was sitting on the dais just a few feet away from Trump when he made the catty remark.

I should say as well that Pelosi has been known for decades as a dedicated and devout Roman Catholic. She has said that she prays for the president, for the country, for its government leadership. I guess Trump was having none of that as well.

Sickening.

What I suppose makes this even more disgraceful is that this president has virtually no relationship with Scripture. He uses religion as a political tool, a doctrine to be bartered.

So he has decided to politicize what historically has been a non-political event that aims to cite the value and power of prayer.

God help us.

national news

Sen. Romney makes a historic decision

Sen. Mitt Romney made history today. To be honest, I was unaware of it in the moment I was watching him make it.

He became the only U.S. senator to vote to convict a president of his own party at the end of the Senate impeachment trial of Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president.

No Democrat bolted when the Senate put President Clinton on trial in 1999. Neither did a Democrat vote to convict President Andrew Johnson during his Senate trial in 1868.

Mitt Romney now stands alone as the only Republican to vote today to convict Donald Trump of abuse of power. He voted immediately afterward to acquit Trump of obstruction of Congress.

The Utah Republican has demonstrated that there really is honor in politics. I was proud of him today as I listened to his speech. He stood with the sacred oath he took, with the U.S. Constitution, with his conscience.

Sen. Romney, you may count me as one American who is immensely proud of the courage you demonstrated. If only it would have been contagious when he made his momentous decision.