Designed to rain on the president’s exoneration on all collusion charges by the Mueller report, freshman senator from Utah and former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney says he is “sickened” and “appalled” by the president’s “dishonesty.”
Mittens went on to rhetorically curl up in a fetal ball and softy whimper in the realization that Trump actually got elected president when he did not. More than that, Romney is channeling his inner Judge Smails, obsessively wondering how an uncouth smartass like Trump/Czervik got into the formally exclusive GOP country club.
You know how that happened? Because Romney choked in 2012.
If he, in that second debate with Obama when he had him on the ropes regarding Benghazi, hadn’t lost his nerve and folded like a cheap card table we would now be probably talking, fortunately or unfortunately, about the upcoming presidential campaign of Vice President Ryan.
In a Netflix documentary on that campaign called “Mitt,” Romney even admitted the disaster, coming in to see his family after the debate and acknowledging he blew it. So now he’s sniping at a guy who beat his own 2016 debate opponents like a rug, a guy who has the killer instinct so necessary in successful politics. That is a concept Romney, in the world of cozy old money he has inhabited, has not a clue of because nothing is ever so risky as to have to metaphorically gut shoot your opponent over it.
However, his bitterness may have a larger goal. A goal he knows he has little or no chance of achieving. But the ego stroking by the press and Vichy Republicans would be amazing. That goal is to run against Trump in the primaries and perhaps even as an independent candidate in the general. He would then be able to bask in the warm press glow denied him when he ran against media darling Obama in 2012.
I won’t go into detail on what the consequence would be of that run. I have already covered that in this column. But will say it can only help the president.
Helping Trump or not helping Trump, it doesn’t matter to Mittens as long as he can employ his sanctimony and overly earnest blatherings for personal fun and profit. We will hear more from him soon. He will continue to snipe to burnish his credentials with the right people. Then later this year he will make a decision one way or another.
I kinda hope he runs. If for nothing more than to watch the president eviscerate him on a debate stage. If Trump destroyed old money GOP Jeb, imagine what he’d do to Mittens!
The heart leaps with the anticipation of such entertainment.