Say it again, Mitt Romney: Trump is unfit to serve
It is a useful confluence of events that President Donald Trump issued a tweet about nuclear weapons that many experts regard as perhaps his most dangerous and crazy tweet yet — at exactly the moment that Mitt Romney is considering a run for the U.S. Senate from Utah.
It is useful, because a Romney run — and victory — could set an example for other congressional Republicans to follow when it comes to acting as a check on Trump’s many excesses, from his dangerous international bluster, to his self-dealing and corruption, to his contempt for norms and the rule of law. If they don’t follow that example, their enabling of these Trump excesses will be thrown into sharper relief.
That is, this might be the case, if Romney is true to his own past statements about Trump. Let’s not let this get memory-holed: In his big March 2016 speech against Trump, Romney flatly and unequivocally declared Trump unfit to serve as president. Will Romney reiterate this sentiment, when he’s running for Senate?
Last Tuesday, Trump tweeted that his “Nuclear Button” is “much bigger & more powerful” than the one that Kim Jong-un boasted about. Many experts have denounced this as needlessly belligerent and deeply reckless amid an escalating situation that carries the possibility of unspeakable horror. Some cast it as the latest sign of Trump’s unfitness: Former Bush official Peter Wehner noted that we are “watching an American president psychologically, emotionally and cognitively decompose.”
Meanwhile, we are told that if Romney is elected to the Senate seat of the retiring Orrin Hatch, he will act as a “foil” to Trump. Politico reports that Romney has told big GOP donors that he will speak out against the president. CNN reports that Romney will have “no qualms” about “directly challenging” Trump’s “temperament” and “moral leadership.”
Liberals will scoff at this, and point out that Romney will vote for Trump’s policy agenda 99.9999 percent of the time. This is likely true. But, if you view it as a central fact of this moment that our president’s temperament renders him catastrophically unfit to serve, and that he is degrading our norms and politics and institutions in all kinds of deeply dangerous ways — and that congressional Republicans are enabling all of this, when they could be acting to mitigate the damage — then we should hope that Romney does become at least a serious voice of opposition to Trump.
And hoping for this means holding Romney to what he said in his March 2016 speech. In it, Romney flatly declared that Trump “has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.” Trump’s performance in office has resoundingly vindicated Romney’s judgment. When he becomes a politician again, will Romney acknowledge that Trump has vindicated his judgment?
We don’t know. But it would have real value if he did. When Sen. Bob Corker, R-tenn., denounced Trump as a global danger who must be constrained by his inner circle, it forced a public debate on Trump’s unfitness and, in the process, revealed just how dangerous the continued Republican enabling of him has become. Romney could do the same.
If we are holding Romney to his own 2016 speech, then there are other things he must be asked. In the speech, Romney also denounced Trump for not releasing his tax returns. OK, does Romney think the congressional GOP should take steps to bring that about? It’s one thing to denounce Trump’s ugly, hateful rhetoric. But does Romney think Trump’s unfitness is also on display in his contempt for the rule of law? Does Romney think Republicans should more forcefully signal that any effort to remove special counsel Robert Mueller will be unacceptable? Does Romney think Republicans should stop helping Trump’s media allies spin a fictional alternate narrative in which ongoing law enforcement efforts to establish the truth about Russia and 2016, and hold Trump and his top officials accountable for their own actions, are relentlessly painted as corrupt and illegitimate?
It will be argued that politicians always say things in the heat of primaries for which they perhaps should not be held accountable later. But Romney’s 2016 speech came when he was not a candidate, and it has been widely treated as something different from conventional rhetoric — as a genuine last stand of sorts, a grand statement of principle, a desperate effort to keep the light of true conservatism shining amid the GOP’S surrender to encroaching darkness and possible tyranny. As Ross Douthat of The New York Times puts it, Romney’s stand was “an exemplary act that threw the cowardice of his party’s establishment into sharp relief.”
If we are going to treat that moment in such grandiose terms, Romney should now be judged against it. I don’t think Romney will pass this test. If he does not, this will have a perverse value of its own, illustrating once again that Republicans must jettison their own principles to accommodate themselves to Trump, in ways that they themselves know are dangerous to their country’s future, to get along with GOP voters and make their way within the party. But we should all hope he does pass it.
Greg Sargent writes The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog. Follow him on Twitter: @theplumlinegs