I must say, coming from Mittens this is quite the shock. He’s been one of the few voices of reason with regards to Trump, actually voting to remove the man from office, when all the other Republicans lacked the courage or the conviction to do so. But a few days ago he penned an editorial for the Wall Street Journal wherein he spoke of the 2024 election — without saying a single word about the fact that the GOP frontrunner has been indicted in two cases and may be indicted in yet another two. Not to mention the fact that he’s a convicted rapist and the word “rapist” has been entered into the Congressional Record.
This blind eye ostrich posture is incredible. But I’ll tell you what it does. It ratifies forevermore the truth of the old adage, “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” Romney, of anybody in the Republican party, has demonstrated that he knows what a total embarrassment Donald Trump is. Yet, embarrassment or no, his words to the party are not get rid of this guy. Oh, no. Romney is totally on board for another Trump term and he’s telling the soon to be also-rans, what they should do. Not one syllable directed at Trump, “why don’t you suspend your campaign for the good of the country?”
No, Mittens is resigned. That, in fact, is the first thing out of his mouth, that he has dutifully accepted the GOP’s fate. Evidently it doesn’t occur to him, or to the rest of them, that maybe they should actually band together and do something about Trump.
Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers—large and small—are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb. 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu has observed, “It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.” […]
Candidates themselves used to consolidate the field to achieve what they saw as a greater purpose. In 1968, potential candidates William Scranton, Charles H. Percy, Mark Hatfield, John Chafee and Nelson Rockefeller rallied around my father, George W. Romney, instead of seeking nomination themselves, because they believed he had the best shot of stopping Richard Nixon. When my dad’s campaign faltered, he and they swung to Rockefeller to carry their cause forward. They were unsuccessful but not because of blind political ambition or vanity. They put a common cause above personal incentives.
Pause here. In the past, according to Mittens, the GOP “put a common cause above personal incentives.” May we know, please, what happened to that way of doing things? Because clearly, it is not in the interests of the GOP to have Trump at the top of its ticket again. Just take a look at the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections. Is the message from those elections not clear enough? Can you folks not find common cause in that message and act accordingly? Evidently not.
But Mittens then makes it clear who his audience is. Yes, you guessed it. The money people. When you’re talking about Republican politics, you’re talking about money. When you’re talking about Democratic politics, you’re talking about people. It really is as basic as that. Don’t let anybody tell you differently. It’s the I Got Mine crowd versus the Social Safety Net gang. That will never change.
Donors may think that party leaders can narrow the field. Not so. Candidates don’t listen to party officials, because voters don’t listen to them either. And the last people who would ever encourage a candidate to withdraw are the campaign staff and consultants who want to keep their jobs for as long as possible. They buck up candidates, promoting long-shot prospects and favorably biased internal polls. I can almost hear the words from “Dumb and Dumber”—“So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation.
“But we don’t have anyone remotely like that, so we’re going along with the trust fund baby game show host, and who cares what Einstein said about doing the same thing over and over again.” There, Mitt, I fixed it for you.
Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb. 26, they should start doing just that.
Umm….Mitt? Hate to break it to you man, but all of your candidates are lost cause candidates. And Trump is the worst. And he’s also the one with all the incredible legal baggage. But, as you have demonstrated here and God knows the rest of your party backs your play, you’re all going to put him back on the ticket. And that is because you are intellectually, morally, and spiritually bankrupt. And the worst degeneration of your party actually started with you, Mitt, and your spineless waffling over the years. You paved the way for Trump. And the best people in your party have since split away from you and they’re telling you the same thing, that the party is like a rotted log. You know their names as well as I do.
If anybody reading this editorial of Romney’s has ever doubted that the GOP is in such abject denial that it would make the heads of an entire psychiatric hospital spin, this should show you just where the party is at. Look at the state of politics in this country right now. Look at who is in office. Look at who’s likely going to be atop the GOP ticket. And the best advice on the 2024 election that elder statesman Romney can give, is “don’t stay in the race too long, we don’t want to waste donor money?” Jesus Christ on a bagel.
“don’t stay in the race too long, we don’t want to waste donor money?”
Oh, bull. The primary reason ANY pube politician is in the business is because it IS a “business”. They have perfected being able to milk it for ever damned dime possible. Just like the SCROTUM “justices” who make a couple of hundred thousand a year and have no generational wealth are suddenly (well, after some years on the bench) now worth tens of millions of dollars. How, in the elections of 2012 and 2008 more than half of the pube political donations went into the pockets of pube “consultants”. They ONLY enter politics because it’s the fastest, easiest way to do NOTHING and get rich doing it.
I totally agree. My point is that Mittens is saying that he wants to see all the usual primary squabbling stop and everybody get behind the front runner and you know that he’s not going to advocate that unless there’s some financial advantage. Otherwise, if it was the way you’re saying, I think Romney would be cheering them on to fight until the day before the convention. And at the convention.
Simply because Romney voted to convict Trump the second time around, he thinks he can redeem himself for all the lockstep obstructionist votes he has cast to prevent sensible and responsible legislation from passing during the Biden administration. Not gonna happen. He’s too connected to the worst of the worst in politics to ever be seen for anything other than what he is. a willing participant in dismantling the best of the USA.
Another fake ‘christian’ standing with clear evil because of his love for money…as if having garages with elevators and tens of millions in the bank wasn’t enough ‘security’. Of course, remember the South Park episode about the Mormon ‘religion’? The recurring chorus was dumb dumb dumb dumb. Not to mention, I personally have witnessed private equity in action, where mitt made his ultra wealth…it’s rich people playing monopoly with other people’s retirement funds and wherever they can find hoards of cash to play with. If they fail in their investments, its the little folks who pay. The folks I know left jobs paying 600K per year and started a private equity company. That should tell you exactly who this talking suit is. He’s a coward and voting against Trump was not an act of courage. True courage is the struggling single mother working two jobs, and, being black, living in this colony of slave holders, who keep them there. FACT.
Early in June, the LDS Church issued a letter from the first presidency, the most direct statement they have ever made, saying that voting straight party line is dangerous for democracy. I wonder if it was prompted by the conservative faithful still believing that democrats are devils and the GOP os “God’s own party,” not to mention theleaders’ alarm at the sh*t for brains politicians voters persist in sending to obstruct the country’s progress.