Senator-elect Mitt Romney (R-Utah) doesn’t like President Trump.
And he said so in a self-righteous piece in the Washington Post that purported to explain, as the headline put it, that Trump’s “character falls short” of what a president needs to “shape the nation.”
Romney’s piece doesn’t offer too many specifics about Trump’s wrongdoing. Presumably, we’re all supposed to know.
The people for whom Romney wrote the piece — the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Council on Foreign Relations, the NeverTrump neocons — know without being told.
On the subject of President Donald J. Trump, Romney and the NeverTrump establishment herd nod in bovine agreement.
He’s a bad man. Or as Romney put it, “divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest [and] destructive.”
And Romney’s going to fight him.
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Two-time Loser Has Advice
Romney, who lost the White House to Barack Hussein Obama in 2012 by a crushing 126 votes in the Electoral College, now proposes to instruct Trump, who beat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College 304 to 227, in the finer points of running the country.
The two-time presidential failure opined that the “Trump presidency made a deep descent in December” for a number of reasons. Two key Trump officials, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, quit. Trump appointed “senior persons of lesser experience,” while the United States suffered “the abandonment of allies who fight beside us.” And the president unbosomed the “thoughtless claim that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs.”
How these allies had “abandoned” us Romney didn’t explain, so again, we’re just supposed to know. At any rate, all these things “defined his presidency down.”
Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who carpetbagged to Utah after Obama beat him like a rented mule, allowed that Trump had appointed some fine Americans to serve in key positions, although Trump did not “refrain from resentment and name-calling” during his campaign.
Romney even admitted that “not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided.”
Trump “was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years. But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.”
But that’s not enough, because “a presidency shapes the public character of the nation,” and “a president should unite us and inspire us to follow ‘our better angels.’”
Trump, of course, doesn’t do that.
Wrote the multimillionaire who traveled about the country until he found just the right state to win another election:
A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.
“The world,” Romney wrote, “is also watching.”
The rest of Romney’s carefully written but weakly argued attack on Trump ends with a not-so-subtle accusation that Trump is a racist because of his strong stand on the border.
That virtue signal was Romney’s message — I’m on your side — to the NeverTrump establishment:
I will act as I would with any president, in or out of my party: I will support policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country and my state, and oppose those that are not. I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.
Trump Responds
Unshaken, The Donald answered with a short Twitter blast:
“Here we go with Mitt Romney, but so fast!” the winner of the 2016 election tweeted at the loser in 2012. “Question will be, is he a Flake? I hope not. Would much prefer that Mitt focus on Border Security and so many other things where he can be helpful. I won big, and he didn’t. He should be happy for all Republicans. Be a TEAM player & WIN!”
Message for Trump: Romney is a team player — for the other (globalist) team.
Photo: AP Images
