Romney unloads on Trump, but did he wait too long?
Donald Trump’s strong show- ing on Super Tuesday put prominent Republicans in a tight spot. They have three choices: Jump on the Trump bandwagon. Stay silent, and try to save their skins if they end up on the November ballot beneath Trump. Or denounce Trump as unfit for the nomination and the presidency.
Only a few have had the courage to take that third path, and on Thursday they were joined by Mitt Romney, the GOP’s nominee in 2012. Yes, Romney was a little late to the anti-Trump party, but late is better than never. In an extraordinary and eloquent speech, he eviscerated Trump as “a phony” and “a fraud” who is unsuited by temperament, character and judgment to occupy the Oval Office and represent America on the world stage.
Shortly before Romney spoke, dozens of GOP national security experts, including former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, added their voices to the emerging if overdue antiTrump drive by the GOP establishment. Their message about Trump was both simple and serious: “He would use the authority of his office to act in ways that would make America less safe.”
Romney and the national security experts followed a growing number of Republican officeholders — including Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker — who have recognized that Trump represents a cancer on the party.
For the GOP, Trump’s rise has an element of reaping what you sow. The party of Lincoln, the party that provided the votes to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has long since accommodated loud voices who exploit social issues, stoke fears and provoke confrontation. But no one has gone where Trump has ventured.
The litany of his belligerence and bigotry is as familiar as it is appalling, and practically every day brings a new outrage. On Sunday, two days before several primaries in the Deep South, Trump waffled over denouncing David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. At least that hesitancy drew rebukes from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, but even they chose not to mention Trump by name.
Winners, of course, are easy to support, and several Republicans have lined up behind Trump, including his former rival, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, along with Maine Gov. Paul LePage and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions.
Taking on a bully is much more unpleasant, as Trump’s rivals have discovered. After Romney’s speech, Trump fired back with his usual fusillade of schoolyard insults, calling Romney a disaster as a candidate who ran a horrible 2012 campaign and begged for his endorsement.
Whether Romney’s skewering of Trump will make any difference at the polls is debatable. Heading into the next round of primaries, Trump remains the indisputable front-runner for the nomination, and his anti-establishment supporters have been impervious to previous assaults on his character and record.
Even so, Americans can hope Romney’s speech has the same effect as the confrontation that Army counsel Joseph Welch had in 1954 with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, another demagogue who took America down a dangerous and ugly road before a demand for decency stopped him.