Romney stands out, but does not surprise him, in Trump reprimand

Sen Mitt Romney was visibly angry. Hours earlier Wednesday, the Capitol was violated by violent supporters of President Trump.

As he and his peers gathered in a safe part of the complex, Romney argued that the president and his delegates in Congress were responsible for the onslaught on American democracy. Late in the evening, when the senators confirmed the victory of President Joe Biden’s victory, Romney delivered a scathing speech that excites the elected officials who put political ambition above the country – the natural culmination of a danger which Romney had been warning about for more than four years.

“We are meeting today because of the injured pride of a selfish man and the outrage of his supporters that he deliberately misinformed over the past two months and moved into action this morning,” Romney said in the Senate on Trump’s unfounded allegations that The The election in November has been completed.

“I do not know that I have ever seen him so angry,” said Katie Packer Beeson, deputy campaign manager of Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. ‘But I also thought I’ve never been so proud to be identified as a’ Romney person ‘. “

This Romney, hair that is slightly tangled, palpably furious, was different from the cool, sometimes woody candidate that Americans would remember from the campaign in 2008 and 2012, a candidate who said ‘heck’ or ‘darn it’ when he was particularly passionate wash. Shortly before he spoke, Romney sat behind Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican in Missouri who was one of the main supporters of an attempt to overthrow the results of the November election. Dressed in a face mask with only his eyes visible, it looks like Romney is shooting daggers at the back of Hawley’s head.

People close to him, as well as impartial political observers who have followed his career for two decades, say Romney’s speech was the distillation of his life experiences, knowing that his father, a former governor of the GOP of Michigan, was furious. his party because of his support for civil rights.

‘You have to go back to his father, George Romney, who stood up for justice in the’ 60s. He learned lessons from it, “said David Kochel, a longtime senior adviser to Romney.

They also point to Romney’s Mormon faith.

After Romney was the only Republican to vote for Trump’s accusation last year, he told a reporter he draws on his experiences growing up with Mormon among those who do not share or understand his religion.

After being regularly confronted with small tests of conscience, when a bigger challenge arises, ‘you are not in a position where you do not know how to stand up for something difficult’, he said according to the Atlantic.

Romney’s allies also point to his experience as a two-time presidential loser, in the 2008 GOP election and then in the 2012 general election.

‘2012 was a very hard campaign. He conceded, and he did it gracefully. He stepped out of the spotlight and did not criticize [President] Obama in the meantime, ”said Lanhee Chen, Romney’s former policy adviser, who now teaches at Stanford University. “All of these are important lessons from the 2012 campaign.”

This is not to say that Romney was a perfectly consistent politician. As governor of Massachusetts, he was a centrist, but he swung hard to the right during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, especially over immigration.

During the latter campaign, he actively sought the approval of Trump, who at the time still insisted on Obama’s false theories a ‘birther’. It culminated in a creepy scene where Trump supported Romney in his gold-grained hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

‘There are some things you just can not imagine happening in your life. This is one of them, ”Romney said at the time.

The 73-year-old multimillionaire, who is trying to derail Trump’s nomination in 2016 because he believed he was dangerous to the GOP and the nation, is being helped by the fact that he is unlikely to run for president again, and probably not the head of the Senate in Utah, a state where his family is popular and Republicans have shown particular vigilance toward Trump.

“He’s at a different stage of his life and his career,” Chen said. “But you see other people in relatively safe political situations who have not taken the benchmark he did.”

Romney encountered consequences; he was tracked down by Trump when he spoke out against him. He has been the subject of anger from Trump supporters; On Tuesday, some of them confronted him at the Salt Lake City airport and then chanted, ‘Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! “On a flight to Washington.

Still, Brigham Young University political scientist Quin Monson said he did not expect Romney to lose significant support because of his speech on Wednesday.

“I don’t think Mitt Romney hurt himself politically,” he said. “The people who are really unhappy with Mitt Romney have been unhappy. They were already out to get him. ”

But now perhaps less vocally, Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics, told the University of Utah. “The people who would normally stand up and say Mitt Romney is not right – none of the votes are present,” Perry said Thursday about political talk in the state. “No one is defending the actions of the people who stormed the Capitol yesterday.”

Throughout his career, Romney has been defined by his seriousness, a trait widely mocked by his GOP rivals and ‘Saturday Night Live’. The feature may even explain his shifting views, Monson said, such as meeting with Trump about a potential cabinet appointment after the 2016 election, despite criticizing him fiercely.

“I think he was seriously trying to be helpful while knowing he was dealing with the devil,” said Monson, whose firm Y2 Analytics did the ballot for Romney’s Senate campaign in 2018.

Romney was a keynote presentation after World War II, pre-counterculture that apparently did not fit into the 21st century. He liked to sing a stanza of ‘America the Beautiful’ at a gathering, and would light up when he met his “beloved” Ann when she was 15.

Packer Beeson remembers the mockery Romney received during his presidential campaigns as a man trapped in the 1950s and as a ‘Mr. Smith Go to Washington ”type.

“Sometimes I look at him and think, ‘You came from an era when we were better than this,'” Packer Beeson said. ‘I think a lot of people do not understand the character in’ Mr. Smith’s Goes to Washington ‘was not weak, for he was not this great brilliant strongman.

“Power comes in different packages and does not always look like some people think it does today,” she said. “What we saw of Mitt Romney yesterday was definitely strength.”

Some in Romney’s inner circle say that Wednesday’s speech merely reflects the man they have known for a long time, rather than a watershed moment. And, they added, the fact that it looked extraordinary said more about contemporary politics than about one elected official.

“What we saw with his speech … was not the result of deep soul-searching and integrity, but rather the result of establishing core principles in his life and living accordingly,” said Matt Waldrip, the senator’s outgoing. chief of staff who spent most of his adult life working with Romney. “If Romney did our benchmark for integrity last night, we need to raise the bar.”