Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

national news

So long, Mitt; I’ll miss you

Mitt Romney has decided to call it a career, announcing today he won’t seek re-election to another term in the U.S. Senate in 2024.

What am I supposed to think about that? Here’s what is crossing my mind at the moment.

The Utah Republican did not get my vote for president when he ran in 2012 against President Obama. Indeed, I didn’t much care for him when he sought to undo the good things Obama accomplished in his first term in office.

Then along came Donald Trump, the political party hijacker who commandeered the Republican Party and turned into something unrecognizable. Romney resisted Trump’s tug on the party and then called him out in 2016, referring to Trump as a “phony” and a “fraud.” Mitt Romney did not endear himself to the MAGA faithful who continue to hang onto Trump’s every dimwitted pronouncement.

Which leads to me to believe that Romney knew what stood before him in a 2024 re-election campaign … that the Trump acolytes would be targeting Romney for defeat.

Sen. Romney represents the “establishment” wing of the GOP, which is about to lose an articulate champion for what is left of a once-great political party.

national news

Why punish ’em because of one man?

Never will I understand the “rationale” that has gripped the modern Republican Party, which is turning its ire on politicians who have the temerity to oppose a single individual … with zero regard to their established records.

You know to whom I refer. Donald Trump has established a cult following among so-called “core” Republicans. That core takes its vengeance out on politicians and political candidates who bitch out loud about the immorality and unfitness for public office that Trump exhibits multiple times daily.

Such political petulance has cost the GOP core several key figures in the ranks of politicians who formerly carried the party’s message forward.

Liz Cheney is one of the victims. She had the nerve to declare Trump to be an existential threat to our national political fabric. Her punishment was to be voted out in the 2022 GOP primary in Wyoming, which she represented in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She is as conservative as they come. Her record opposing abortion, gun control legislation, excessive taxes and so many other hot-button issues is intact. It’s not good enough for the MAGA morons who dominate the political landscape in her state.

Same for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. He voted to convict Trump in both of his Senate impeachment trials. Now comes word that the MAGA minions will “primary” him when his term comes up. What the hell? He was the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and remains a staunch, avid and vocal conservative. He also believes Trump is a chump, a phony and a fraud.

Those are just two prime examples of the disease that has infected a once-great political party. The GOP has become one man’s play thing to the detriment of those who believe in actual conservative values, not to mention to the rest of us who worry about the future of our democratic republic.

It’s all so sad and sickening.

medical news

‘More to life than … politics’

Mitt Romney wasn’t speaking to me in real time when he told a black-tie crowd in 2012 that “There’s more to life than … politics.”

The Republican presidential nominee was speaking of his relationship with his opponent in that year’s election, President Barack H. Obama and how their differences in policy didn’t create undue personal animosity.

Well, Romney’s words are speaking loudly and clearly to me now. My wife in the midst of a struggle against a potentially serious illness. Her challenge has become my challenge, too, along with our immediate family. Indeed, this time in our life will test all of us.

However, I am going to take a page from my bride’s playbook, as she is the most resolute person I ever have encountered.

What is the nature of this illness? She underwent surgery this week to remove a growth in her brain. The surgeon submitted samples of the tissue to a pathologist to enable him to “know what to call it.” We are waiting to learn the results.

Her fight consumes us fully. Thus, I have decided to take a break from the normal contents of this blog, which often includes political commentary that contains its customary ration of criticism of pols and their policies.

Why is that? Because I, too, have learned the vivid truth of what Mitt Romney said more than a decade ago.

There truly is “more to life than politics.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Now will GOP reassess itself?

Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama in the 2012 presidential election prompted the Republican Party to determine it needed a thorough examination of its future.

The party pledged to search its soul and look for ways to appeal to more Blacks, Hispanics, suburban women and other demographic groups known to be friendlier to Democrats.

I don’t know what the party came up with, but four years later it nominated a certifiable racist, sexual assailant, pathological liar as its presidential candidate. Donald Trump then won the 2016 election. The party since has taken many steps backward from where it was when Romney led the GOP.

I want the Republican Party to reassess its position these days as much as Republicans do … if only for different reasons.

I remain committed (more or less) to Democratic Party principles. I also want a return to honest debate pitting philosophies against each other. Today’s Republican Party is too enamored with The Big Lie, with MAGA demagoguery and with fealty to Donald Trump.

Furthermore, I want to state for the record once again that Trump entered politics in 2016 without spending a moment of his disgusting life working to improve people’s lives. Even after serving a term as president, public service remains an unknown concept to Trump.

I would welcome a return to honest and vigorous debate. I relish a good fight between politicians with serious policy disagreements. We aren’t getting that quality of discourse now. Instead, as we just witnessed, we saw a stable of Republicans defeated because they had earned the anointment of the twice-impeached former POTUS, who backed them because they swilled the Big Lie Kool-Aid.

We can do better than that.

Mitt Romney’s narrow loss a decade ago should have taught Republicans a valuable lesson. It didn’t. Maybe now the GOP will heed the message that voters are telling them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

There’s no talking to them

I am going to wave a white flag of surrender. I give up. I no longer can — nor will I — seek to persuade the Donald Trump cabal of cultists that they are wrong in clinging to their man’s world view … whatever the hell it is!

Truth be told, I made that decision some time ago. I don’t think I have declared my intention publicly, out loud, for all the world to hear.

I have a few critics of this blog who weigh in when I have something critical to say about their hero. As a general rule, I don’t engage them in debate.

Which brings me to my point: which is that there is no point in arguing with someone whose mind is made up, who does not listen or comprehend what I know to be the truth about their guy.

He is, as Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — a fellow Republican — said in 2016 a “phony” and a “fraud.” He cannot tell the truth. However, the sad reality is that truth-telling doesn’t matter to the cult cabal. They buy into his lies, they repeat them and then dare the rest of us to challenge them. I can challenge the lies, but I cannot challenge the purveyors of the falsehoods.

You’ve heard the saying — or something like it — that warns against trying to talk sense into someone who is blind to any possibility that their guy suffers a fatal flaw. That, in my view, sums up the Trump cabal.

I know what you might be thinking: If I am going to accuse the Trumpkins of being blind to the truth, am I as equally blind to the views expressed on the other side of the great divide?

Not a chance. They are wrong.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Be careful, Democrats

“It’s not illegal but it sure is stupid. Be careful what you wish for. You may select somebody who actually wins and then you hurt the country as well as your own party.”

Who said that? None other than U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican and one of the few GOP senators to (a) declare that Donald Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud” and (b) congratulate Joe Biden on his election as president in 2020.

Here we are, two years later, and the chatter is all over the place about Democrats reportedly boosting Trumpkin candidates’ chances for nomination in their respective state primaries. Why? Because they suspect that general-election voters will reject them.

Not … necessarily, as Mitt is warning Democrats.

Mitt Romney says Democratic efforts to boost Trump-allied GOP election deniers is a ‘stupid’ approach: ‘Be careful what you wish for’ (msn.com)

I can recall similar stories of electoral tomfoolery occurring in 1980 when Republicans were deciding whether to nominate a far-right former California governor for president. Democrats crossed over to vote for Ronald Reagan in GOP primaries, believing he would be the weakest candidate to run against Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

It, um, didn’t work out.

Reagan won the presidency in a historic landslide in November 1980.

I don’t know how one should stop the MAGA crowd/Trump cultist/far-right-wing nut cases. It seems the more negativity that comes out against their guru — the former president — the more energized they become.

These individuals are nuttier than a Snickers Bar.

I believe primary voters in these remaining states should take Mitt Romney’s advice to heart. Texans no longer should worry about that counsel, as our primary is over and, yep, Republicans here nominated their share of Trump Cult kooks.

We long ago entered a sort of electoral twilight zone with the entry of Donald J. Trump into the world of politics.

I believe Democrats should take Sen. Romney’s advice seriously.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘Mitt’ becomes latest GOP four-letter word

I never thought this day would come, when members of the Republican Party – those who have swilled the snake oil peddled by a fraud – would turn on one of the party’s truest believers and use his name as a cudgel to beat their opponents bloody.

They would call them “Mitt Romney Republicans.”

Believe this or not, but the Donald Trump cultists are now using Sen. Mitt Romney’s name as an epithet. Yeah, that Mitt Romney, the junior senator from Utah, the 2012 GOP nominee for president who came quite close to defeating President Obama, the fellow who saved the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the son of a successful governor of Michigan.

How in the world did Mitt earn the title of becoming a four-letter word in today’s GOP politics?

He voted to convict Donald Trump during the two impeachment trials that Trump faced during his term in office. That’s it! He sided with the rule of law on both occasions. He delivered an impassioned and emotional floor speech in the Senate prior to announcing his decision to vote to convict Trump during the initial impeachment trial, which came after the House impeached Trump for soliciting a political favor from the president of Ukraine in that so-called “perfect phone call.”

Mitt became the sole Republican senator in that first trial to seek a conviction. The second impeachment trial – caused by Trump’s inciting of the 1/6 insurrection – saw nine more GOP senators join Mitt Romney in voting to convict Trump.

All of this speaks so badly of a once-great political party, that its rabid followers of the ex-Narcissist in Chief would stoop so low as to label a one-time ideal Republican politician a pariah and a man worthy of political scorn among his fellow conservatives.

Hey, I didn’t vote for Sen. Romney when he ran against President Obama in 2012. However, my respect for him only has grown as he has remained loyal – along with a few of his GOP congressional colleagues – to the oath they took when they began their terms. It was an oath to protect the Constitution and to follow the law.

What in the name of fealty to the founders’ intent is wrong with that? Someone has to explain it to me.

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

I apologize, Mitt

Mitt Romney appears to have earned a worldwide apology from those of us who once scoffed at a notion he put forth while he was running for president of the United States in 2012.

A decade ago, the junior U.S. senator from Utah said Russia posed the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States. President Barack Obama led the snickering and tittering — and the ridicule — of the Republican presidential nominee’s assertion. I joined in the laughter.

Well, guess what. It turns out Romney was correct.

Russia has launched an unprovoked war with Ukraine, helping plunge the world into utter chaos.

To be clear, I don’t recall that Romney foresaw what the world is witnessing when he made those Russia remarks during the heat of a presidential campaign. He offered a statement that has borne much more truth than we imagined in the moment a decade ago.

Now the senator is saying that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ought to consider responding militarily if Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. A full-throated NATO response would pulverize Russia, Romney said.

Am I going to laugh now at such a suggestion coming from Sen. Mitt Romney? Hardly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Mitt was right about Russia

My sense of fair play compels me to offer an apology to 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who once made a declaration that drew scorn from those of us who opposed his election to the presidency.

Romney, now the junior U.S. senator from Utah, declared during that campaign that Russia posed “the greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States. Do you recall the howls of derision from Democrats and others on the left? Why, how could Romney be so, um, naive? So out of touch? So, so … wrong?

Greater threats seemed at the time to lie in places like the Middle East, among terrorist groups intent on destroying “the Great Satan.” So, we laughed off Mitt Romney’s absurd notion about Russia.

Now, though, he seems prescient. Russia has emerged as a profound threat to the entire world. Certainly to neighboring countries, such as, oh, Ukraine and Belarus. And Georgia. And the Baltic States.

The Russians are engaging in cyber warfare against the rest of the world. They interfered in our 2016 presidential election, sought to do it again in 2020. They might try yet again in 2024.

Donald Trump, the president who received help from the Russians in ’16, stood next to Russian killer Vladimir Putin and endorsed his denial that the Russian interfered in our election. He and Putin became BFFs. Putin played Trump like a fiddle.

Mitt was right about Russia. I won’t cry myself to sleep over being wrong in 2012. I just want to acknowledge that Romney told us the truth when he ran for POTUS but a lot of us weren’t yet ready to hear it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news, political news

RNC takes aim at wrong target

The Republican National Committee’s censure of two stalwart members of its own party is a profound demonstration of stupidity that transcends mere ignorance.

The RNC has scolded U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger because — and this is remarkable in its idiocy — for serving on a House committee that seeks to get to the truth behind the 1/6 insurrection.

Yes, Cheney and Kinzinger — two conservative members of a once-proud party — have placed their loyalty to the rule of law over any phony loyalty to an individual, namely Donald J. Trump … who incited the traitors to riot on 1/6.

So, because they have been faithful to their oath of office — the same oath that other members of Congress and the president take — they are being punished. They have been cast aside. They have been they are no longer welcome as part of the Republican delegation.

This is unbelievable!

RNC censures Cheney, Kinzinger for serving on Jan. 6 panel – Daily News

Where is the scorn that should be heaped on the rioters? RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel instead has called their actions that horrible day as a demonstration of “legitimate political discourse.” She didn’t separate anyone’s behavior on that day; she said the entire event was OK because it constituted a protest against the government. What utter bullsh**!

“If the price of being willing to tell the truth and get to the bottom of what happened on January 6 and make sure that those who are responsible are held accountable is a censure, then I am absolutely going to continue to stand up for what I knew was right,” Cheney said.

She called the censure a “sad day for the party of Lincoln.” Do ya think?

To be fair, some GOP officeholders, such as 2012 Republican presidential nominee Sen. Mitt Romney, have criticized the censure. “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost,” Romney said in a tweet.

If Cheney and Kinzinger deserve honor, then the RNC deserves nothing but scorn and shame for its hideous action and virtual endorsement of the frontal assault on our democratic form of government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com