Why is Mitt Romney Still A Republican?
What has the 2012 Presidential candidate learned in the intervening years since his loss to Obama?
awkward, via Vanity Fair
Why is Mitt Romney still a member of the aggrieved, ethno-nationalist party? He is clearly not a stupid man. Quite the contrary — the 70th (former) Governor of Massachusetts is a high achiever, a serious man, hyper-competitive man with an understanding of public policy. He gave Ted Kennedy his first real challenge in his 1994 Senate campaign. He is Utah royalty. He is the first person in modern American history to serve as both a governor and a Senator from two different states. He is second Romney to have captured the Republican Presidential nomination. But all of that having been said, Republicanism has forced Senator Mitt Romney into all sorts of — how does one say this politely? — unseemly ideological contortions.
Let’s look at guns, for instance. Romney’s stance on gun control has changed as his ambitions enlarged from statewide in Massachusetts to national politics. After complaining on Twitter recently that President Biden was not practicing enough “bipartisanship” on gun control, Romney was promptly challenged by Fred Guttenberg, who lost his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, in the Parkland, Florida shooting. Mr Guttenberg responded to Romney’s cavil:
“Ok @MittRomney, let’s try this. Background checks are supported by 90% of Americans & a bipartisan House vote. Every Republican, including you, will likely vote against [it] in the Senate.”
What followed politically was the sound of crickets. Romney, as of this posting, has not yet taken up the challenge. Further, a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll shows that 65% of Utah voters favor universal background checks and that only 11% of registered voters in the state don’t support any gun control measures. Still, Romney remains (and will remain) silent on the issue.
Romney has, at least in theory, the electoral luxury of being (somewhat) independent of the excesses of the Trumpist wing of the Republican party. In 2016, Trump came in third in the Utah Presidential primary. When it came to the actual Presidential primary, Trump won 45 percent of the vote in the Beehive state; Romney, in that same election, won about 63% of the vote. So, there’s that. Romney has utilized this political leeway wisely, voting twice for impeachment, but not quite definitively, which is vexing.
The Republican Autopsy of the 2012 election was supposed to be a game-changer, a permission structure for the grand old party to break from its prior bigotries. After losing the Presidential election of Obama electorally 332-206, a breathtakingly frank and ruthlessly data-driven document was produced. “It has reached the point where in the past six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee, at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 211 for the Republican,” The Atlantic summed up the situation. “During the preceding two decades, from 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six elections, averaging 417 electoral votes to Democrats' 113.” This time what followed was not the political sound of crickets, but the deafening roar of Trump in 2016, a pitchfork candidate who repudiated the very findings of the autopsy in its entirety.
That was then, this is now.
Has Senator Romney, unlike his party, learned anything from his 2012 defeat? Romney, in fine, appears to have evolved from his writing off of 47 percent of the electorate gaffe. Remember the unmitigated arrogance of the “We Built It” refrain at the RNC Convention in 2012?
Romney is different. The Romney-Cotton Minimum Wage Plan, a part and parcel of the Utah Senator’s new thinking, links wage increases and immigration enforcement — the emotional center of the Trumpist wing of the party. It is a sort of hybrid of compassionate conservatism and America First. The Higher Wages for American Workers Act would raise the minimum wage to $10 — less than Biden, progressives, activists and union leaders want — over four years, but with a slower phase-in for small businesses and a strengthening of the e-Verify system. Conservatives are wild about this idea because it is a restrained take on an idea popular with the working class. Even Big Restaurant chains are on board. “The last time we hiked the minimum wage, we gradually phased it up to $7.25 in 2009, from $5.15; if that had been pegged to inflation, it likely would have ended up somewhere around $9.50 to $10 after 16 years,” Jay Verbruggen at National Review noted.
What else has Romney learned since his years in the political wilderness? He is far more generous towards the lower class that he essentially wrote off in 2012. Another piece of proposed Senate legislation that highlights Romney’s new outlook is the Family Security Act, which has a more generous child allowance than even the Democrats. Again, in this piece of legislation you see the fusion of an “America First” orientation — attention to immigration and low birth rates — with compassionate, or “soft” conservatism. “That was the concern, people not having kids,” Romney said in a virtual discussion with The Sutherland Institute, a conservative public policy think tank in Salt Lake City. “I believe that family foundation and having children is at the foundation of our nation … Any society, any civilization wants to maintain itself, and we’re not.”
How is Romney 2.0 different, more enlightened than Romney 2012? He seems to now acknowledge what has become conventional knowledge, that traditional free market capitalism has hollowed out the American middle class, precipitating the rise of Trump. Janan Ganesh in FT gets it just about right:
This is what gives drama and even poignancy to (the former missionary will have to excuse the phrase) his conversion. He is moving beyond his party’s impoverished concept of “freedom” as something inversely proportional to one’s annual tax liability. Lots of anti-Trump conservatives stop short of that. Their dream is a better-behaved frontman or woman for roughly the same ideas that left the party so ripe for populist capture in 2016.
Will Romney remain within the Republican Party? Will he — along Mary Cheney in the House — start a new party, if, say, the Republicans double down on Trumpism in the upcoming mid-terms and are duly trounced? Either is possible; my crystal ball remains opaque. But for the time being, Romney, through his legislation in the Senate, is adding to the blueprint that began with the 2012 autopsy on how conservatism goes forward under the continuing and daunting specter of Trumpism.