Are people mentioning that Romney may not have survived the nominating convention/primary? Maybe he just wanted to retire—perfectly reasonable for a 76 year old—but maybe he also didn’t want to run & lose against a Republican.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 13, 2023
“A very large portion of my party,” he told me one day, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.” https://t.co/7ypi74XnWn
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) September 13, 2023
Romney is a sociopath, IMO, but he’s not stupid. He considered another six years spent surrounded by the mouthbreathers, internet gremlins, and conspiracy fanatics of the modern GOP death cult — people like his fellow Utan Senator Mike Lee (… roy Jenkins!), even assuming he wasn’t successfully primaried by another of that ilk. And he decided, sensibly enough, to instead announce his retirement and a (so far quite successful) “Nothing Became Him So Much As His Manner of Departure” farewell tour.
(McKay Coppins, if you don’t recognize the name, is a nice Mormon journalist with a talent for getting right-wingers to say unguarded things. I won’t buy his Romney bio, but I’ll read the inevitable media extracts with great interest.)
This is the nut graf that’s been exciting so many people:
… It begins with a text message from Angus King, the junior senator from Maine: “Could you give me a call when you get a chance? Important.”
Romney calls, and King informs him of a conversation he’s just had with a high-ranking Pentagon official. Law enforcement has been tracking online chatter among right-wing extremists who appear to be planning something bad on the day of Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in Washington, D.C. The president has been telling them the election was stolen; now they’re coming to steal it back. There’s talk of gun smuggling, of bombs and arson, of targeting the traitors in Congress who are responsible for this travesty. Romney’s name has been popping up in some frightening corners of the internet, which is why King needed to talk to him. He isn’t sure Romney will be safe.
Romney hangs up and immediately begins typing a text to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. McConnell has been indulgent of Trump’s deranged behavior over the past four years, but he’s not crazy. He knows that the election wasn’t stolen, that his guy lost fair and square. He sees the posturing by Republican politicians for what it is. He’ll want to know about this, Romney thinks. He’ll want to protect his colleagues, and himself.
Romney sends his text: “In case you have not heard this, I just got a call from Angus King, who said that he had spoken with a senior official at the Pentagon who reports that they are seeing very disturbing social media traffic regarding the protests planned on the 6th. There are calls to burn down your home, Mitch; to smuggle guns into DC, and to storm the Capitol. I hope that sufficient security plans are in place, but I am concerned that the instigator—the President—is the one who commands the reinforcements the DC and Capitol police might require.”
McConnell never responds.…
And Romney… shrugged and kept his mouth shut. Like a good GOP soldier.
The cool thing, then, was when Mitt Romney continued supporting the party that backs Trump and specifically the leader who ignored this text. https://t.co/GkrmaneONG
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) September 13, 2023
Romney article just more evidence that soon the argument about whether or not someone can still be a decent person despite their politics will mostly be moot (for elected republicans, at least). anyone with any personal integrity whatsoever is going to select out of the party.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) September 13, 2023
All the Mitt Romney hagiography from people who find his kindler, gentler form of white supremacy preferable to the open bigotry of the MAGA movement.
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) September 14, 2023
Mitt Romney ran a far right economic campaign about how poor people were all lazy moochers who wanted free stuff, and said racist shit like "nobody ever asked to see my birth certificate." And white Republicans were outraged that Obama didn't just let him win. https://t.co/Nro2h2Y67h
— The Biden Accomplishments Guy (on Threads) (@What46HasDone) September 14, 2023
Romney is going to be replaced with another Mike Lee-esque freak with a staff full of nazis. I don't think we'll ever see a GOP again that could be described as anything but insane. https://t.co/ynUHZIXerB
— Jean-Michel Connard 🎃 (@torriangray) September 13, 2023
Two Posts In One
Maxim
Wasn’t there an LDS prophecy that was widely assumed to be about Romney? I seem to remember that that was a not-insignificant impetus behind his running for preznit.
Baud
Romneyed is the new Borked.
Anne Laurie
There is, apparently, a longstanding LDS prophecy about ‘A Man on A White Horse’ who will reunite our fractious globe under his holy mantel… but IIRC, it was only attached to Willard Romney after he announced his presidential run. (I’d certainly never heard of it when Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, and we certainly heard more than enough about him during those years.)
piratedan
in a previous thread, I made the observation that Mitt Romney is a political chickenshit, while that makes him marginally better than some of his party peers, it’s by no means any great hurdle that has been cleared.
If he had any stones, he would have placed his supposed faith in the Constitution on display with his erudite speaking skills to try and halt the fascism that was taking place in his party, instead he wrote a fucking book.
here’s your slow golf clap Mitch. Fuck You.
Another Scott
Transcript of the MotherJones video:
He spat “entitled”. All of us pay taxes for those things – those things that we call “civilization”.
People who don’t vote for the GQP are “those people”.
He’s a lying, shape-shifting, monster.
Good riddance.
Grr…,
Scott.
Anne Laurie
Well, so many of the voters who remember the original Robert Bork controversy are dead…
(Wasn’t Bork the replacement for the ‘Impeach Earl Warren‘ brigade?)
brantl
I remember Romney looking like he’s swallowed a bowling ball, the day he felt he had to say that he was voting to see the evidence, in the second impeachment trial (or was it the first?), and I felt a little sorry for him. Now, I wish that bowling ball was burning phosphorus.
moops
Bravely ran away and wrote a tell-all book. Profiles in Courage. He was always a sniveling Party man, and when he didn’t get to be President he was a complete cry-baby about it for a year.
now, he is going to run away instead of try to stop the GOP from becoming one of its final Dragonball Z forms: Ultra Super MAGA.
Alison Rose
“among the most decent people to ever run for president”
See, okay. Among Republicans, sure. I could grant you that with that exceedingly low bar, he was more decent than most of them, in some ways. But just in general? Including Democrats? Ell oh fucking ell.
lowtechcyclist
“Mitt Romney considers himself a man of destiny.”
Nah, he meant ‘density.’ And if he didn’t, he should have.
brantl
Well, when the going gets tough, the Mormon politicians soil their magic inderwear, then run away.
hells littlest angel
Oh
KentMcKay, I’d be lying if I said my men weren’t committing crimes.Alison Rose
@Anne Laurie:
Gandalf?
Mike in NC
John McCain. Mitt Romney. Donald Fucking Trump. The far right has an unlimited supply of rich, entitled pricks who inherited a lot of money and want to be our overlords.
Leto
“A healthy GOP” wouldn’t have let their party be taken over by fringe lunatics. But that ship sailed over six decades ago and here we are.
@Anne Laurie: I’m about to finish Matthew Dallek’s “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right”, so I get that impeach reference. The book is yet another data point in how we got here, and how conservatives just have no soul, morals, or ethics. Never have, never will.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: John McCain married his money. His hereditary privilege was as a USNA legacy and Admiral’s kid.
mrmoshpotato
I read that “Romney isn’t a sociopath, IMO” at first and was all “What’choo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
brantl
@Mike in NC: And those are the only guys they have run in the last 60 years. The last guy that they ran that was nearly decent was Eisenhower, and he had that slime, Nixon, run with him.
Other MJS
@lowtechcyclist:
You are my density!
Leto
@Alison Rose: “the most decent man” to strap his fucking dog, in an animal carrier, to the roof of his car for a multi-hour trip for a family vacation. They’re all fucking ghouls.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
This is dumb and offensive bullshit. But I hear stuff like this all the time. The crazy thing is that a business or corporation that pays no income tax is applauded. But an individual who pays no income tax because of the standard deduction and allowable tax credits is somehow evil.
Also, Romney is a liar. A person who pays no income tax is still paying into Social Security and Medicare.
And a good chunk of individuals who pay no income tax vote Republican. So Romney is lying again and falsely demonizing people who are just ordinary citizens trying to live their lives the best way they can.
But this is typical of a certain conservative mind set. They believe that the breaks and special favors they craft for themselves are right and proper, but anyone who is not in their group are thieves and villains.
Fuck him.
ColoradoGuy
He’s timed his dramatic exit so he will be anointed “The Last Moderate (sane) Republican” by the national media, marking the complete takeover by MAGA and the neo-Confederates.
And he will have a point. What Nixon started in 1968 with the Southern Strategy has ended up with the modern version of the Confederate Party, quite willing to burn down the country if they don’t get their one-party Southern dictatorship.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
Mike Lee (… roy Jenkins) is an instant classic and imo should be a new blog tag! 👏🏻
Alison Rose
@Leto: Kinda hoping Gail Collins drops a mention of that in her next column. One more for old time’s sake!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
He was always so tone deaf. My favorite was when he said he struggled to make ends meet in college on a $900,000 trust fund his rich daddy had set up for him, after he returned from dodging the Vietnam draft in… (Checks notes)… Paris.
mrmoshpotato
Ancient tweet – written 30-40 years ago.
Maxim
@Alison Rose: I was thinking one of the Four Horsemen.
lowtechcyclist
@Other MJS: Yeppers, that’s what I had in mind. :-D
delphinium
@Maxim:
That was my first thought too.
Alison Rose
@Maxim: @delphinium: Which one of them has a “holy mantel”? I mean…they all sound fairly unholy.
lowtechcyclist
@Alison Rose:
Maybe Goodgulf Grayteeth riding Saniflush the Swift.
CaseyL
@Maxim:
\@Anne Laurie:
I do remember, during the 2012 campaign, a report saying that the Romneys were absolutely certain God had called him to run and would decree a victory for him. As i recall, his loss hit Ann especially hard, so possibly she was the one who very deeply believed that.
(That God! Such a kidder!)
Brachiator
It is amazing how Mitt discarded an appreciation for the white privilege his father was able to retain even as his Mormon family had fled to Mexico to escape religious persecution.
These experiences made George Romney more empathetic and a strong advocate for civil rights. But Mitt … something shriveled in his soul.
Tony Jay
Remember reading in history class about the nationalist, militaristic, aristocratic, hard-right authoritarian faction in Weimar Germany who thought they could milk the dumb-as-fuck lower class NSDAP for votes while keeping their populist leader at bay with promises of big things?
I used to wonder how they could have been so blindly stupid. Like I used to wonder how the pre-Revolutionary French aristocracy could have been so blindly stupid, or the late Imperial Era Romans.
I no longer wonder. It’s because they were rich and comfortable and they literally couldn’t see any possible future where they weren’t in charge. And if that future arrived it certainly wasn’t their fault.
That’s Mitt Romney.
gene108
I kinda feel sorry for Romney.
He positioned himself as a center-right candidate, who worked with a Democratic legislature, while governor of MA, and signed into law the first attempt at universal healthcare by a state.
Then the Tea Party happened, and whatever experience he had in office didn’t matter anymore. He couldn’t boast about healthcare reform, because Republicans were dug in with their opposition to Obamacare. He just couldn’t play to the mob, as much as the mob wanted in a candidate.
catclub
@Maxim:
Actually Evan McMullan. he will save the GOP from itself. /jk
twbrandt
@Brachiator: When George Romney was CEO of American Motors, he turned down a pay raise because the gap between his pay and the workers would have been too much.
Can’t imagine Mitt doing that.
Splitting Image
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
The one I remember was the time someone pointed out that Mitt’s dad was the man who began the tradition of candidates opening up their tax returns when running for President, so that George could truthfully say he had nothing to hide. The journalist asked Mitt if he would follow his father’s example.
Mitt answered, “Maybe….”
Feckless would be far too kind a word.
Then there was the time he was offering advice to some students about entering the working world. Just go to your parents and borrow the 20 grand or so it would take to start your own business.
And yet at this point he’s the best of them.
Uncle Cosmo
@Anne Laurie: The original LDS form had it half right – in fact it was “The White Southern-End-Of-A-Northbound-Horse” Prophecy. (Or should that be “Southron”?)
wjca
Wencit of Rum
Scout211
Did Angus King ever share that information publicly?
We’re all over Romney and the GOP members for saying nothing (rightly so) but Angus King? WTF?
wjca
Ford. Granted, he probably wouldn’t have been nominated from a standing start. But still.
MisterForkbeard
@Another Scott: I saw a republican today defend that whole insane offensive rant as “discussing tax implications”
No asshole, he was saying that no Democrats or poor people were responsible adults, and that you had to treat them like idiot children.
Ohio Mom
Mitt Romney reminds me a little of my former Senator Rob Portman. Both are horrible Republicans with awful values (and voting records to match) but who dress nicely, comport themselves with some dignity, are soft spoken, have good manners. That outward appearance fools a lot of people.
Romney even said as much in the piece Another Scott quotes, Romney was counting on the “ 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents…that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like.”
We traded Rob Portman (who retired) for JD Vance, who says stupid things but votes pretty much as Portman did.
trollhattan
Topics listed under You Mean They Don’t Already?!? include this.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article279260534.html#storylink=cpy
Betty Cracker
@ColoradoGuy: That’s exactly why Romney’s cowardice is so contemptible. As his party’s prior nominee, as a man who sees the cult for the dangerous scam it is, as a senator who’s spilling the tea, Romney is uniquely positioned to call Repubs out. But he resigns on a both-sidesy “everyone is old” note? What a chickenshit!
NotMax
@wjca
Setting aside politics and just in terms of the most basic tenets of human decency, Bob Dole?
catclub
@NotMax: I put Dole well behind Ford and Eisenhower, not much ahead of Nixon.
wjca
@catclub:
Dole was miles ahead of Nixon. Barely on the same continent.
NotMax
@catclub
Ford was too much of a dum-dum (too many tackles early in life?), what decency there may have been evinced by default rather than principle. IMHO.
Roger Moore
@Anne Laurie:
I’m still angry the media buys the whole “Borked” narrative, since it’s 100% BS. For one thing, Bork received a vote before the whole Senate and was rejected by a bipartisan vote. More importantly, Nixon promised Bork a Supreme Court seat in exchange for his role in the Saturday Night Massacre, and Reagan was delivering on that promise. Everyone around knew it, and they knew allowing him to get a seat on the Supreme Court was deeply corrupt. That made the nomination a deliberate provocation, and anyone with any brains in the media knew it. Anyone in the media who went with the “Bork unjustly denied” story line was a Republican water carrier.
Roger Moore
@brantl:
Ford was nearly decent, which is why it took criming by both Nixon and Agnew to give him a shot.
NotMax
@NotMax
i mean, WIN buttons as a policy prescription? Really?
Lyrebird
I give Romney credit for speaking the truth on some occasions when most of his R colleagues were spewing lies.
I also want to give everyone on this thread a delicious memory of then-Gov Granholm roasting Romney’s reputation on a spit. It’s not her whole convention speech but it is wholly awesome.
Lyrebird
@Roger Moore: truth!
Another Scott
@wjca: Ebola vs. Marburg??
Dole was a monster, also too.
Wikipedia on Dole’s 1974 re-election campaign
Grr…,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Scout211:
And why weren’t the “high-ranking Pentagon official” and “law enforcement” communicating with Congressional leaders and not just some random back-bench senator? (Do independents even get a seat on the bench?)
And that Romney text to McConnell is another smoking gun pointing at colossal misfeasance in law enforcement in the run-up to January 6, if not actual malfeasance.
That text is from four days before January 6. It was known what was very likely to happen and who was behind it. Romney even used the now cliché phrase “storm the Capitol”! And all of them kept their mouths shut.
It’s also somewhat sinister (by inference) that Democratic leadership was presumably kept out of the loop on the alerts, because surely they would have taken steps or raised the alarm.
The more we learn about January 6, even after almost three years, the worse it looks. I really hope that Jack Smith eventually rolls up a lot of GQP apparatchiks who aided and abetted the plot and the coup. Fat chance, I know (Cf. Fitzmas and Mueller day).
Ksmiami
The older I get, the more I realize the Republican Party is a disease.
moonbat
Senator “Corporations Are People, My Friend” is looking to cover himself in some of the good reputation his dad enjoyed, but that ship sailed with the stupid Benghazi stunt in the presidential debates.
Goodbye, Mr. Waffles. Take your corporate raider ass and pouffy hair back to Utah and quit giving the GOP the tiny fig leaf of respectability they’ve enjoyed having one person that seems to give a flip about objective reality.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: It looks like King is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rmoney is on Homeland Security.
It seems like both of them had seats that should have given them some idea of what was going on before January 6.
Still, someone should ask King what exactly he knew and when he knew it and what was done with that information.
It’s not clear to me that McConnell had any role as a gate keeper or something. Both King and Rmoney were big boys and could make noise on their own and didn’t need to get Moscow Mitch’s (or anyone else’s) approval or instructions.
Grr…,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
It gives the impression that they were already too scared to act or that they were waiting to see how the autogolpe turned out.
Jackie
@wjca: Ford pardoned Nixon. That doomed his political career. He might have beat the Peanut Farmer but for that.
wjca
@Another Scott:
Just for the record, I wasn’t the one who suggested Dole. I merely pointed out that he was nowhere near Nixon’s level (depths).
wjca
Pardoning Nixon was a mistake, a horrible mistake even. With 20/20 hindsight.
Even at the time, I thought it was a mistake. But I could also see where Ford was coming from. A classic case of the road to hell paved with good intentions.
Side note: if Ford hadn’t pardoned Nixon, perhaps he would have beaten Carter as you say. That, in turn, might have allowed us to avoid Reagan. Which, again with hindsight, shows what a mistake it was. Room for an interesting alternate history story there.
mrmoshpotato
OT – Go Nats! Go Cubs! Go Pantsless!
Fuck Draft Kings!
mvr
@mrmoshpotato: There are other ways to be without a moral compass worth a crap. Mostly misguided moral compasses are the main one and I think that’s part of the problem here. Also getting one’s moral bearings from the mostly rich but also sycophantic people around you. So myself I’d stick with those ways as his main failing. Sociopathy seems like a different thing that may not even be as bad in its effects, unless you get the version we got with the guy who was in office from 2017 to 2021, So saying he is not a sociopath is not to absolve him. Just to try to be more precise about what the problem is in this case.
kalakal
My initial reaction to that was
“Holy shit! The richest country on earth and just under half the population is so poor they don’t even reach the minimum task bracket? That’s a disgrace. What are you going to do about it?”
Instead the media and every GOP asshole used it to beat down on the poor.
It’s crap anyway, there’s more taxes than income tax and the great unwashed pay plenty of those.
mvr
@Roger Moore:
Yep. Bork was a loon as well. Read his book and you know how bad he would have been. Or look at Alito.
mvr
@wjca:
This depends on which decade Dole we are talking about. By the end he was MAGA.
mvr
@Another Scott: I kind of think King did what he could with it given that Trump was in charge. Both Shumer and Pelosi certainly knew it already. He didn’t need to tell Trump who was after all a ringleader. He did what he could be picking the least bad Republican he could think of to convey the message. The least bad Republican was not effective.
Citizen Alan
@wjca: Nothing good that Gerald Ford ever did can make up for pardoning Nixon. It was the beginning of the end of accountability in the Republican Party.
wjca
Sociopathy gets a bad rap. It’s really just a lack of empathy, an inability to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. But it doesn’t mean you can’t know right from wrong, and consistently pick right. I know this from personal observation.
In short, while there is certainly a close correlation, it isn’t actually causal. And saying “XYZ is a sociopath” to explain bad behavior is really giving him an excuse he doesn’t deserve.
Anotherlurker
@lowtechcyclist: “Bored of the Rings” reference! You are my hero!
ancien regime
You folks are going to miss old Mitt when he’s gone. Whatever comes next in Utah is going to be a lot worse. The man voted twice to convict Donald Trump, which required a fair amount of courage. As for the rest, in 2012 he was by far the most moderate Republican seriously running for the nomination and spent his entire political career well to the left of the right-wing crazies.
Like it or not, this country is going to have a conservative political party, and it’s in everyone’s interest that the leaders of that party be devoted to democratic and constitutional values. Romney is about the best we’re likely to get. His passing should be mourned by liberals, not celebrated.
Scout211
Lauren Boebert is truly sorry, people. Link
She only denied that she was vaping during the theater performance because she truly didn’t remember. Truly! Genuinely! And she’s sorry. Now. Today. But she has an excuse, people. She’s been going through some things. Poor thing.
wjca
It was indeed a step down the road. In retrospect. But at the time, it was far from obvious where it might lead.
So, a mistake? Absolutely. But the case for it being a massive moral failure on Ford’s part? Pretty weak.
Jackie
@Scout211: My response to Boebert:
🎻🎻🎻
I only wish I could shrink them smaller.
NotMax
Not to harp on it but I’ll grant Ford points for affability as opposed to decency.
@Scout211
Say what now?
The Lodger
@Lyrebird: Damn, I miss Jennifer Granholm.
Gin & Tonic
@Scout211: When I experience the natural anxiety of being in a new environment, I generally do not react by groping the genitals of my companion.
Redshift
@ancien regime: Give me a break. I’m not going to miss Romney because he never gave me any reason to think about him other than the two occasions he cleared a low bar for doing the right thing. He’s not going to be missing from the leadership moderating his party because he wasn’t a leader and didn’t do that. You had to make up liberals “celebrating” to pretend to be contrarian.
Jackie
@wjca: Ford pardoning Nixon basically suggested a President is above the law, in part put us where we’re at right now.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Scout211:
Her eyes are brown, right? She’s full of shit…
Redshift
@Lyrebird: I was in the arena for that speech, it was great! She was the best speaker of the night other than Obama. I remember being sad to learn that she was born in Canada and couldn’t be president.
TriassicSands
I’m not sure where the sociopath verdict comes from. Romney has lots of problems from the standpoint of humane politics, but is he a sociopath? If all one means by that is that he doesn’t have empathy, then most Americans are probably sociopaths. But my understanding is that sociopathy is a subcategory under ASPD (anti-social personality disorder). To qualify for that diagnosis, a person rejects social norms, often acts recklessly, even illegally,
The DSM 5 criteria (must have three) for ASPD are:
Failure to conform to social norms concerning lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest (Romney? No.)
Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure (Romney no — I’m not saying he never lies, but contrast him with Trump, someone who nails this category. Oh, and he’s a politician, which means a certain amount in untruth on the spectrum is expected.)
Impulsivity or failure to plan (Romney? No.)
Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults (Romney? No.)
Having no regard for the safety of self or others or exhibiting the behavior of violent offenders (Romney? No. This is talking about people, not dogs tied to the roof of a car. That’s just cluelessness and stupidity.)
Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations (Romney? No.)
Lack of remorse, or inability to feel guilt, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another (Romney? I seriously doubt it.)
Trump runs the table, but I don’t think Romney has any of these to a pathological degree. This is America, a lack of empathy, selfishness, greed, are all virtually norms in this country.
I’m not defending Romney. I just don’t think he’s a sociopath or that he has ASPD. He’s a Republican, but hardly the worst and probably closer to the best. His politics suck, but he’s nothing like Trump.
He voted twice to convict the Orange POS, setting a historic example that no one else in his party matched or is likely to match in the foreseeable future. That demonstrates the ability to tell right from wrong (to some degree) and to recognize all of the above listed traits in Trump.
Asshole? Yes. Sociopath? Not if the term has any real meaning.
YMMV
ETA: Romney is wealthy, comes from a privileged background, is religious, and a Republican. In his world, the norms are quite different from what most of us here accept.
Omnes Omnibus
This is the greatest response to the Boebert situation.
Jeff Greenfield @greenfield64
·Might want to rephrase this….
Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
·Jul 17, 2020
I’m a Christian. So they may try to drive me to my knees, but that’s where I’m the strongest.
TriassicSands
@Jackie:
I wouldn’t even limit it to “suggested.” It essentially put Nixon, an ex-president, above the law. It was easily the worst national political presidential decision of my lifetime. (I exclude Trump’s decisions from consideration, because of who and what he is and because virtually everything he does is essentially inexcusable.)
sdhays
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Oh, yeah. And didn’t he say people should do what he did and get a $40k interest-free loan from daddy to start a business or something?
Really bootstrapped himself there. What an ass.
ancien regime
@Redshift:
Possibly you’ve forgotten Romneycare. Or maybe you never knew. Strongly supported by Ted Kennedy and one of the most progressive health care initiatives passed in any state. A precursor to Obamacare.
Wikipedia has a pretty good write-up of his history. You might want to consult it.
He was a governor, a presidential nominee and a high-profile senator. Seems like a leader to me. The problem is that over time the party became populist rather than conservative, and the wing he represented was more or less driven out by the Trump acolytes.
This country would be far, far better off with a Republican Party led by Romney and his supporters than by Trump. Only a fool would deny that.
sdhays
The one thing I’ll say for Mitt is that during the 2016 campaign, as I watched Jeb(!) fritter away hundreds of millions of dollars and a leading primary campaign by ignoring Trump and whimpering “please clap”, I often thought to myself, “Say what you will of Mitt Romney, but I don’t think he’d let Trump take the nomination away from him by ‘playing patty cake'”.
I think if Romney had been in Jeb(!)’s position in 2015/2016, he would have taken the gloves off early and used his cash advantage to try to puncture Trump’s aura as a successful businessman.
Ken
Civilization.
Omnes Omnibus
@ancien regime:
He was responsible for the MA healthcare law in the same way Nixon was responsible for the Clean Water Act. An overwhelmingly Democratic legislature passed the law, and they signed it. Also, dysentery is better than Ebola, but I don’t want either.
sdhays
@ancien regime: No one calls it Romneycare because Romney ran away from it. He did a decent job implementing the law, but wasn’t it presented to him with veto-proof majorities? Hardly something he led on. Would he have signed it if he could have made a veto stick?
“Better than Trump” is the lowest of bars. If you want to say he’s better than Trump, no one’s going to argue with you. But he and people like him enabled Trump and his supporters takeover of the party. And they still aren’t willing to do much of anything about it than whine impotently to reporters.
Lyrebird
That’s fantastic that you were there!
And even watching on a so-so laptop screen far away, I had the exact same reaction.
Jackie
I approve this message!
Nettoyeur
@Omnes Omnibus: I once asked a former Navy officer (a physicist / engineer like me, and an admirable guy) who came from a Navy family about McCain, the Admiral’s son. He made a disgusted face and told me about McCain’s illicit affair with a subordinate, which scandalized the officer corps. Made a big impression.
Another Scott
@ancien regime: You could substitute Liz Cheney for Rmoney in that comment and make a stronger case.
Remember the picture of Rmoney with TIFG at the fancy restaurant when Rmoney thought he had a chance to be SoS?
You give him too much credit.
IMHO.
Cheers,
Scott.
Nettoyeur
@Steeplejack: I do think they were waiting to see if the autogolpe was successful.
wjca
Maybe it was peculiar to here on the far side of the country. But I did indeed hear it called Romneycare. May not have been warranted, but the label was applied.
TriassicSands
@Another Scott:
There are no “good” Republicans in 2023. Liz Cheney opposed Trump, but is otherwise an absolute nightmare politically. I think ancien regime is correct up to a point. If Romney represented the majority of the GOP (voters and elected officials), I think it would be a better party than if that role fell to Cheney, the zealous neo-con. Neither one would come close to offering us anything appealing in terms of national leadership.
Note: I think that if Cheney had somehow been governor of a state where “Romneycare” passed in the legislature, she would have vetoed it, despite the certainty that her veto would have been overridden.
Sure Lurkalot
@Scout211:
I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I discussed the night’s events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the musical and for having my brand new and improved boobs felt up.
ancien regime
@sdhays:
100% wrong. Here’s Wikipedia:
Hoppie
@twbrandt: Back in WW2, the rich still had noblesse oblige. JFK’s older brother (Joe) was killed in a bomber, and JFK was a big hero who almost died. Shrub Sr. was shot down, and very lucky to survive. A good friend of mine (copper heir family) had two flyer uncles killed. That tradition is dead.
Archon
Romneys unforgivable sin was losing to Obama in 2012. Republicans could kind of understand losing to him in 2008 but for Obama to be re-elected and his Presidency basically ratified?
Republicans have never recovered from Obamas re election.
AlaskaReader
@ancien regime: Oh, stop it, …I’m gonna miss Mitt?
Like I’d miss a boil on my ass.
ancien regime
@AlaskaReader:
If the boil on your ass got replaced by ass cancer believe me you’d miss it.
AlaskaReader
@ancien regime: Ass cancer is a close descriptor of what you’re trying to sell.
mrmoshpotato
@ancien regime:
Why is this too long for a rotating tag? Dammit!
mrmoshpotato
@AlaskaReader: Lolly Lolly Lolly get your ass cancer here?
lowtechcyclist
@Anotherlurker:
Why thanks! Glad to find another BotR fan. I first read LotR as a 14 year old in 1968, and have loved the parody since I first read it two years later. Dildo Bugger, Arrowroot of Arrowshirt, Tim Benzedrine, the Ballhog, magic cloaks that blend in with any background – green grass, green trees, green rocks, and green sky. White robes for white magic? No, white robes for white flag! Pity stayed his hand – “it’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets.” I love that book.
lowtechcyclist
@TriassicSands:
I’ll give her points for recognizing that global warming is a real threat. And also she’s sane about Covid.
So that’s three things where she’s not an absolute nightmare politically. Who knows, there may be more: diverging from her party on those things would certainly suggest that she’s not into RWNJ conspiracy theories in general, and that’s what today’s GQP is all about.
Of course, her dad gave the whole making-up-facts business a big push >20 years ago with the Office of Special Plans to create bullshit facts to get us into Iraq.
lowtechcyclist
@wjca:
The Democrats also had agency here. After Nixon resigned, they could have gone ahead with the House and Senate votes to impeach and convict, in a just-as-a-formality sort of way, to get it on the record that both parties were united in their conclusion that Nixon had obstructed justice.
I felt this way at the time, as a not particularly insightful 20 year old, and in retrospect it would have shut up all the ‘hounded out of office’ bullshit that we heard for the next couple of decades.
One difference between Nixon then and Trump now is that Nixon had already been elected twice, so once he resigned, he wasn’t coming back. Trump obviously could be re-elected next year, which makes his criminal trials much more necessary than Nixon’s would have been.
(I would love it if Democrat-controlled states kept Trump off the primary ballots next year on the grounds that, having been elected President in 2016, and by his own account, having been re-elected in 2020, he is ineligible to be elected President again.)
Another Scott
@TriassicSands: OTOH…
Times were different back then.
The press was covering the congressional investigations and hearings daily, with serious coverage. The trials in Sirica’s court and elsewhere were covered seriously.
Nixon took the trials and investigations seriously. He fought like hell, but he followed the courts’ decisions.
Firing Cox was called the “Saturday Night Massacre”. It wasn’t treated as “alternative facts” or laughed about.
The shame and threat to the Presidency that just the prospect of impeachment represented caused Nixon to resign. It was a huge deal, and a punishment for Nixon and he took it that way (he didn’t rail about how unfair everyone was to him and his “perfect” meetings and all the rest…
Under those circumstances, pardoning him wasn’t a terrible decision. Remember that just about every step of the investigation and hearings and prosecutions had all kinds of legal arguments that they had to go back and forth about. An actual trial of the President would indeed have taken a long time, been hugely distracting, and all the rest. Ford was right to want to put that behind (even though there are strong arguments on the other side).
Ford couldn’t have known that the GQP would rise up from the ashes of Nixon’s Watergate to take over the party, and all that followed.
As a counter-factual, imagine that Nixon’s trial had ended with a hung jury, or after being convicted only had to pay a fine or do community service and give up his law license or something. Would that have been a deterrent to future monsters like TIFG, or would it have instead been an argument for them to have better lawyers and fight and fight and never give in?? Would that have disillusioned people on the left enough to stay home and to let Reagan win in 1976? (Imagine not having Carter between Ford and Reagan!)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anne Laurie
Were you alive during Watergate? It was widely reported at the time — gleefully by ‘conservative’ outlets, and ragefully by the sane ones — that Gerry ‘Extremely Average’ Ford (h/t Mike Royko) had knowingly jumped at his only chance at higher office by agreeing to pardon Nixon in return for the VP-to-become-P slot.
He knew what would happen in the short term… even if he didn’t have the brains to realize that the CREEPsters scurrying to hide would come back under Reagan / Bush / LesserBush to pillage and gut our Commonwealth. Like just about every other Repub since that day, he put Party over Country.
NeenerNeener
@Another Scott: That picture of Trump & Romney…TIFG looks like the Devil and RMoney looks like he just finished signing over his soul.
Rugosa
@ancien regime:
I live in Boston. No one calls it Romneycare – it’s Mass Health.
Rugosa
The best descripion of Romney is from commenter Hella at Alicublog: “Romney would wash his hands before stabbing you in the back.”
Another Scott
@Anne Laurie: I don’t think that fits the timeline very well, myself.
Ford was minority leader in the House. He was a well-known (in DC) inoffensive pick. He wasn’t going to make waves as VP. He was a very safe pick to put Agnew behind them.
Nixon’s approval polling was 45%/45% as late as late-June 1973, and didn’t crater to 60% against until around August-September.
My impression was that Nixon had no intention of resigning until the Senate leaders told him that he had to go and that he would be convicted if he stayed. Up until then (late July, early August, 1974), he was going to fight to stay, and figured he had enough support to do so. He wouldn’t have thought about demanding the promise of a pardon for giving Ford the job (in October 1973, and such a private promise would have been meaningless anyway).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
I wonder how Mitt might’ve turned out if he hadn’t done his Mormon mission in France dodging the draft. If, say, he’d spent two years in an Army unit surrounded by (and getting to know) people far below him in socioeconomic status. Or if his two years Mormonizing had been spent living in some less affluent and more diverse part of the Untied States. I don’t think there’s a full-blown counterfactual scenario lurking there, but combine it with a few other changes and you might have something interesting…
Subsole
@wjca:
Ford pardoned Nixon, which codified the doctrine of No Consequences for Conservatives, Ever.
Fuck Ford in the smallest hole he has. Dry, sideways, and hard.
Uncle Cosmo
@lowtechcyclist: My most-cherished BotR memory is the 40-foot tall monster with corduroy lapels, the Thesaurus:
;^D
Subsole
@wjca:
@wjca:
See, I can’t really understand it. I get the logic, but the argument makes no impression.
I wasn’t alive at the time; I grew up in the fallout from that decision. My entire life has been molded by the social and institutional wreckage that flowed from that decision. So I guess my perception is colored by the fact that I have no memory of what the guy thought he was trying to preserve, and plenty of memory of what he forced the rest of us to pay in order to keep it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Another Scott: Gerry Ford was considered an amiable doofus by his Congressional colleagues. Nominating him was a classic Nixonian twofer: Not only was Ford a lock for confirmation, he was (in Tricky Dick’s eyes) the perfect replacement for Agnew. Just as he was absolutely sure Congress would never remove him if it meant installing the crooked former MD Governor in the White House, so he was absolutely convinced that Congress would not remove him in favor of someone so clearly too small** for the job. Until summer 1974, that is…
** Intellectually, that is – Ford had been a football lineman at Michigan and even in his sixties stood over 6 feet tall and 200 lbs. LBJ once quipped that Ford had played too many games of football without a helmet, but some wag replied that the problem was he’d played center, so he’d gotten used to looking at the world upside-down between his legs.
ancien regime
@Rugosa:
Not going to argue. But when it passed it was definitely Romneycare. Also in the 2012 primary, when his Republican rivals tried to tie it around his neck.
FWIW, Romney wasn’t exactly a profile in courage around this. He did the right thing in 2006 and then spent the rest of his political career running away from it.
The point isn’t that Romney was great. It’s that he was probably the best we’re going to get given today’s Republican party. Also in that category: Murkowski and Liz Cheney, neither of whom I’d support for dogcatcher, but both far better than the Republican alternatives.
Another Scott
@ancien regime: Things never change until they do. Politics can (and has) changed very quickly at times.
Politicians want to win. After TIFG is gone, they’ll work on finding some other way to try to win. I suspect it won’t be by trying to emulate Rmoney.
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
@ancien regime:
Nah.
I am done giving these asswipes a gold-dipped diamond crown and a complimentary six-week blowjob because one out of hundreds of thousands of them did a sliver of a percentage of a portion of a fraction of the work our party does every damned day in the teeth of unceasing abuse from every angle.
Everyone deserves a second chance.
There’s 365 days in a year.
Let’s give these people more grace than they’ve ever earned and say they only went bad in 2012.
That’s 4,015 second chances, by my (EXCEEDINGLY conservative) math.
Their credit is no good here. They want to eat at our table? They can damn well sweat for it.
Y’know, like the rest of us have to do.
Because of assholes like them.
Skepticat
@lowtechcyclist:
Spot on! As someone who served on his council of economic advisers when he was Massachusetts governor, I found him lazy, aloof, entitled, and well deserving of the title Mitt the Twit.
Subsole
@wjca:
I mostly saw it applied under two contexts:
1. Twenteens Democrats who thought they could, maybe, take some of the punch out of Republican attacks on it by suggesting it came from a right-leaning background. Said misguided souls (such as yours truly) did so because we didn’t fully appreciate that the criticism was grounded entirely and exclusively in Presidenting While Black.
2. Bern-outs who wanted to shit on it purely because it wasn’t Bernie’s Totally-Not-Vaporware-We-Swear Cocaine-Encrusted-Rainbow-Shitting-Sparklepony-Healthcare-for-Everyone (but me first. Especially me first. In fact, fuck the rest of you. Just me, if we have to start making budget decisions) Plan.
Subsole
@Hoppie:
Noblesse Oblige lasts only as long as the Noblesse are kept too poor and beaten down to buy their way out of the Oblige.
Subsole
@ancien regime:
I think the issue here is that you are trying to say we’d miss one form of ass cancer if it were replaced by a mildly less aesthetically pleasing form of ass cancer.
Put it this way:
I wouldn’t miss Reagan if you brought him back. He was every bit as atavistic, bigoted, and grimy as Trump. He just hid it better. Their policies are both actively malignant carcinogens dumped into the groundwater with malice aforethought by people who get off on watching others croak. Mod-Cons do it with a smile, Tru-Cons do it with a sneer.
But here’s the thing: a sneer is just a smile deformed by the cruelty shining through it.
There is nothing to miss because it’s the same barrel of toxic waste. Romney and Trump both end up in the same place, and we know this because we had fucking Romney, and still ended up with Trump. Just like we had Mattis, and Ryan, and Boehner, and Cheney, and McConnell, and Collins, and Flake, and Roberts, and all of the OTHER goddamned chinless slimebag “adults in the room” who were supposed to step up to the plate and do the work that our endlessly reviled, despised, and ever-harried, never-acknowledged-let-alone-thanked Deomcrat coalition ended up doing. Again. Because why the fuck would this time be different?
I am glad, nay, GRATEFUL to see that useless fucker go, the same way I am glad to see a Klanner take off her hood and let us all get a good, clear, hard look at who we’re fighting.
ancien regime
@Subsole: Wow. So who, if I might ask, did you vote for in 2020? Biden? Or did you refuse to sully your purity? I mean, if Romney and Trump and the KKK are all exactly the same then Biden can’t be much better, right? From a moral purity perspective, I mean.
FWIW I voted for Biden on the theory that picking the non-authoritarian over the authoritarian is important. But it’s possible those petty distinctions aren’t visible from your lofty moral viewpoint. I wouldn’t know.
Here’s another question: if Trump and Romney were running against each other as major party candidates, which one would you vote for? Or would you throw away your vote on the theory they’re the same?
Subsole
@ancien regime:
Exceedingly dead thread, I know, but I can’t let this slip by.
Yes. I voted for Biden. Warren in the primary. Clinton (primary and general) before then in 2016. Obama before that, then Kerry before him. Sooooo. Yeah. Not really sure where the Purity Pony accusation is coming from.
Speaking of my failure to comprehend things, how on earth are you sitting there saying Biden’s no better than the KKK? Seriously? What grade of industrial solvent are you huffing to reach that altitude?
I can cast no logic at that argument, because I see no place for logic to find purchase. Mea culpa. My intellect is not sufficient to assail that lofty and rarefied fastness.
If Trump and Romney were running against each other, my first question would be “In what backwards diagonal inverse non-euclidian geometry is that a factor??”
I don’t vote in Republican primaries. I vote for Democrats, and have ever since I pissed away my vote back in 2000 on Nader. Oh yeah. I tried purity once. Left a real bad taste in my mouth. About eight years’ worth of same, actually. I try to avoid it now. Thank you for your concern.
That said I’m honestly not sure how I’d react. Both of them would be fundamentally committed to hurting people I care about. As I said. I am not sure what the practical difference is between the man who claps for the firing squad and the one who wrings his hands and gives the order anyway.
To use a practical example: I’m sure Flake was reaaaaal conflicted when he said yes to Justice Sniffles McDaterape. But like a good little mod-con soldier, he said yes, and in the end, that’s all that mattered. No more bodily autonomy for you, ladies. But hey, at least he didn’t look you in the eye while he did it…right?
Again. You’re the one saying there’s a difference between polite fascism and crude fascism. I reject that claim on the basis I see no practical difference in result.
You made the claim, you demonstrate it. Not me. That’s how that works.
linnen
@Subsole;
Preach! And, Amen!