Romney-santos reflects broader clash within GOP
WASHINGTON — Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, was not expecting to see Representative George Santos, the embattled firstterm Republican from New York, perched near the aisle of the House chamber at the State of the Union on Tuesday night, close enough to reach out for a presidential handshake.
To Romney, it was shameless. It was brazen. For a lawmaker under scrutiny for what appears to have been a yearslong pattern of deception to thrust himself into the center of the action degraded the annual tradition of the president’s address to a joint session of Congress, he thought — and he said so.
“You don’t belong here,”
Romney told Santos as he walked by, in a hostile exchange that was captured on video and quickly went viral. The unpleasantness was apparent in their body language, even without knowing what words had been said.
“Go tell that to the 142,000 that voted for me,” Santos replied, according to an account he gave later.
After the speech, Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, told reporters Santos is “a sick puppy, he shouldn’t have been there,” in what could be construed as the Mormon equivalent of an eviscerating, curse-filled diatribe. “Given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and being quiet instead of parading in front of the president.”
The confrontation between
Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee for president and former governor of Massachusetts, and Santos, a freshman lawmaker who has admitted to fabricating his résumé and is under investigation in the United States and Brazil, where he faces criminal charges, was a striking juxtaposition of two Republicans who represent polar opposites in their party.
Romney is the ultimate institutionalist, who has described his decadeslong political career as part of a larger moral mission informed by his faith. Wealthy, well-educated, and so decorous he has sometimes been ridiculed for it, Romney has long been out of step with a party that has increasingly shaped itself in the brash mold of former President Donald Trump.
Santos, by contrast, invented what now appears to have been a largely fictional persona to propel himself to Congress, and has spent his first weeks on Capitol Hill thumbing his nose at convention and refusing to address the cascade of allegations against him. He encapsulates the ethos that has come to drive the Republican Party since the rise of Trump, in which shamelessness in the face of attacks is rewarded and the notion of keeping one’s head down, even in the midst of scandals of one’s own making, is seen as a sign of weakness.
“It’s not the first time in history I’ve been told to shut up and go to the back of the room, especially by people who come from a privileged background,” Santos said Wednesday afternoon. “I’m never going to shut up and go to the back.”
The run-in between the two men symbolized the broader clash between Republicans like Romney, a rapidly dwindling group, and the ascendant right wing that is dominating the new House Republican majority.
Surrounded by Republicans who defended Trump through two impeachment trials and lambasted Romney for voting twice to convict and remove him as president, the Utah senator has long found himself an island within the GOP.
On Tuesday night, the hall was similarly filled with Republican leaders and members who have mostly refused to punish Santos or call on him to resign. Romney, by contrast, said that not only should Santos have been keeping a low profile in the chamber on a meaningful night, he “shouldn’t be in Congress” at all.
Some observers said that criticism was actually a broader critique of the GOP.
“George Santos certainly deserves the stern Mitt Romney lecture,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-trump Republican strategist. “But so does the whole Republican Party right now.”
Santos clearly does not feel chastened, and it is plain to see why. Rising stars of the House Republican conference like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have employed some of the same tactics and been rewarded handsomely. Greene punctuated President Biden’s address Tuesday night with outbursts and jeers, behavior that is anathema to Romney, but that has helped vault her to prominence and popularity within the Republican Party.