Thank You Mitt Romney
That’s a phrase I’d never thought I’d hear myself say. I can’t say I agree with Mitt on much of anything politically. But I can certainly respect him as a human being.
As the only Republican with the courage to vote against party lines to find Donald Trump guilty of abuse of power, he cast a historic vote. This is actually the first cross party vote for a guilty verdict in any of the three presidential impeachment trials. None of the rest of Senator Romney’s colleagues were willing to show backbone and vote their conscious rather than show party unity.
The whole trial was a sham and the results were a foregone conclusion. Except Romney’s vote. That sends a message to other Republicans that they can speak up. They can stand against this cult of personality. While I would have preferred a presentation of new evidence that led definitively to a bipartisan verdict (guilty or innocent) this is honestly the best we could hope for.
Given what’s happened over the last I now have to wonder what would have happened had Romney beaten Obama eight years ago? Would that have held off the death of the Republican soul and stopped the rise of Trump nationalism?
If Romney had won in 2012, I don’t think things would have changed all that much from Obama. Scalia dying wouldn’t have led to McConnell destroying decorum and sitting on a Supreme Court justice for a year. That would have kept some norms intact going into 2016. Romney would have been an incumbent so the odds of Trump rising to challenge him would be low.
Would this have allowed the wave of dissent that the country felt to be channeled into the Democratic primary? We would have had a VP Paul Ryan pushing for much of the same tax and entitlement cuts we have now. Maybe even more. Rather than fueling latent racism toward Obama, this dissatisfaction could have fueled a class wave. Might Bernie Sanders have won the nomination despite expectations? I’d have loved to see that. Democratic Socialism vs pseudo Libertarianism/Elitism/Unregulated Capitalism.
We’ll never know. But I can say, despite some of the harsh words I had for him at the time of his presidential run, he’s a better human being than I gave him credit for.
