Stand by, there’s a good challenger to Romney
It is good to know we have a standby president in case President Trump somehow falters, or is impeached, convicted and thrown out of office.
No, the standby is not Vice President Mike Pence, who also might be thrown out with Trump at the 2020 GOP convention, if not sooner. It is fellow job-shopping Republican Mitt Romney, the new senator from Utah, who, in a mean-spirited attack on Trump last week, let the nation and the world know that he is standing by to become president once Trump is removed from office. Romney is now known in Washington and in capitals around the world as President Standby, the man in the bullpen warming up to save the country and the world from Trump.
Standby, in an op-ed piece in the Trump-hating Washington Post, which ran even before he was sworn into office, not only attacked Trump’s character but said that Trump had brought “dismay around the world.” Standby said that while he would not comment on every Trump tweet or remark, he would “speak out against (Trump’s) significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”
Other than that, Standby said, Trump is not a bad guy. Standby, you will recall, after attacking Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign as being unfit to be president, was also on standby when Presidentelect Trump beckoned him to dinner at Trump Tower to dangle the secretary of state’s job in front of him. After eating crow, Standby did not get the job. So, you can understand why President Standby is miffed after being humiliated by Trump. That’s nothing, though. Trump insults everybody.
He’s a New Yorker.
No, what really upset Standby is that he twice worked his heart out running for president, failing both times, especially in 2012, when he should have defeated incumbent President Obama. He had Obama on the ropes but failed to deliver the knockout punch. Then Trump, the outsider who never paid his dues, comes along and, with a wink and a nod in a circuslike campaign, makes it all look so easy. He upsets everybody, calls people names, and he wins. And he has a good time doing it.
Now Standby, a former governor of Massachusetts, realizes that his last shot at becoming president rests on pushing Trump aside and having the Republican Party come calling on him in 2020, which could happen. Things are different now. Back in 2012, the liberal establish- ment media mocked Standby as a ruthless capitalist who became filthy rich on the backs of the working poor. Just who did this rich old white guy think he was daring to run against their hero Barack Obama, the first black president?
Standby was cruel to animals, too, because, with all his kids in his crowded car, he once placed his dog in a cage on the roof during a vacation drive. The media made a big thing out of it but ignored the story about how Obama ate dogs growing up in Indonesia.
Now that Standby is attacking Trump, whom the Democrats and the media (same thing) all hate, he is a hero — their hero — with network news shows, The Washington Post, New York Times and Boston Globe columnists and news reporters all gushing over him. Nobody at this point knows what the Republicans will do about Trump in 2020. Hell, nobody knows what Trump will do tomorrow, let alone in 2020.
It will not be easy to dump Trump in 2020, if that is what the Republicans plan to do because Trump is the Republican Party. But if there is an attempt to replace Trump as its candidate, the GOP will have to come up with a candidate better positioned to win than President Standby.
That candidate could be Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who was just recently easily re-elected to his second term in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Baker has been a good governor. Unlike gridlocked Washington, Baker has been able to work with the Democratic-controlled Legislature in Massachusetts to get things done. His bipartisan approach has attracted national attention. He is the most popular governor in the country. He would be as good a president as he is a governor.
And while he is no friend, his criticism of Trump has largely been on issues rather than personal attacks. Only thing, though, is that unlike President Standby, Charlie Baker is not standing by.