Thank the lord for Liz Cheney.
Challenge yourself to pick a street, any street, and locate a couple strangers walking there who would utter the same or similar words. Judging by past “man on the street” type interviews conducted by Fox News’s Jesse Waters and others equally creative -- and brave -- chances are folks you encounter won’t even know who Cheney was, or, if they actually recognized the name, why anyone would ever be thankful for her. Enter Mitt Romney. The Utah Republican junior senator and failed 2012 party presidential candidate has all but disappeared from the news of late, largely because Cheney has emerged as a much shinier object for the always distracted establishment media to worship. Two years ago at this point on the calendar, during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment farce show trial, Romney drew quite a lot of such attention due to his lofty but unofficial designation as the preeminent RINO in Washington. As perhaps the most recognizable #NeverTrumper in the land, Romney sought out ways to not only distance himself from his party’s president -- but from his colleagues as well -- all eyes focused on Mitt to see where he would lend his vote. The Adam Schiff-led House managers presented their case to the semi-snoozing senate jury, then the yeas and nays were counted. Romney announced he was making a speech on the floor and immediately the media vultures gathered like carrion birds circling a carcass. The rest is history. Romney voted yes to convict Trump on one of the House’s two articles of impeachment, the president singled him out for additional public scorn and people moved on to talking about the Democrat presidential primary race (was Joe Biden really going to lose to Bernie Sanders?) and soon after, the developing kerfuffle over the mysterious “novel” coronavirus that had burst on the global scene from a place few Americans had ever heard of, Wuhan, China. The world and national panic obscured Romney some more, and the 2020 presidential race became particularly nasty when Biden blamed every single reported death on Donald Trump while hiding from view in his Delaware basement, purportedly to shield himself from a plague that was proving particularly dangerous to those with comorbidities, including old age. Does stupidity count as a comorbidity too? Perhaps a topic for another time. At any rate, Romney shrank from view even further. The only noteworthy thing he did during that controversial and fateful summer was to march with other “white guilt” possessed idiots in favor of the Marxist group Black Lives Matter. “We need a voice against racism. We need many voices against racism and against brutality. We need to stand up and say that black lives matter,” said the former GOP presidential standard bearer in the age of Obama. Now that Cheney and perhaps a few others have stolen Romney’s anti-Trump mantle from him, Mitt has come back out in the open by commenting on and making excuses for the foibles and troubles of our senile and hapless current president. One thing’s for sure, the flip-flopper has been much kinder in his assessment of Biden than he ever was with Trump. Tom Howell, Jr. reported at The Washington Times:
“Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah on Sunday said President Biden ‘had a bad year’ and needs to stop, reset his priorities and direct his energy toward fighting inflation and COVID-19 while building on the type of bipartisanship that produced his win on infrastructure. Mr. Romney, a Republican, said the White House never reached out to him on voting rights even though he is the type of GOP member who might be open to an overhaul...
“’He‘s got to recognize that when he was elected, people were not looking for him to transform America. They were looking to get back to normal. To stop the crazy,’ Mr. Romney told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ ‘And it seems like we’re continuing to see the kinds of policy and promotions that are not accepted by the American people.’...
“’And if it’s to try and transform America, he is not going to unite us,’ the senator said. ‘Bringing us together means finding a way to work on a bipartisan basis. He had one success, the infrastructure bill, and that was done by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate working together. Build on that kind of success.’”
It almost sounds like criticism, doesn’t it? I don’t believe that’s what Mitt really meant.
There’s a lot of juicy stuff in Mitt’s quotes, not the least of which was Romney saying Biden was elected to get “back to normal. To stop the crazy.”. Normal? What’s that? “Normal” is a construct of the establishment, which is a simpler way of saying, “we like the comfortable status quo.” “Normal” is what led to “moderates” in both parties agreeing to compromise legislation that carried with it trillion-dollar annual budget deficits and citizens groups organizing tea parties.
We can only assume when Romney said “To stop the crazy”, he was referring to Donald Trump. To Romney, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff impeaching Trump twice wasn’t crazy. Democrats throwing a hissy fit over postal service mailboxes and outlandish claims of killer coronaviruses wasn’t “crazy” in Mitt’s world, but if Trump sent out dozens of tweets a day -- so as to bypass the media and communicate directly to the people -- that’s “crazy” and not “normal.”
Someone should explain to Mitt that “normal” is what we have now, with neither party talking to each other and an impasse on most issues that will never be broken. “Bipartisan” is a nice, soothing word, but once you get past the kumbaya concept it doesn’t make much sense. Like King Solomon deciding to test which of two women was the actual mother of a baby by suggesting to split it -- there aren’t ways to meet both sides’ demands and still have a satisfying conclusion.
That’s how we got federal funding for stupid pet projects that last in perpetuity and Congress can’t ever move forward to address huge problems like privatizing social security or finding a way to make Medicare solvent. Politics and common sense don’t go arm in arm. Democrats aren’t interested in “bipartisan” anything unless it involves dumping hundreds of billions into welfare programs and “climate change” fixes.
Establishment Republicans don’t mind splitting the difference with Democrats, but it always equates to increasing the size of government. One “compromise” solution Senator Rand Paul proposed long ago was his “penny plan”, which would have reduced year-over-year program growth by one percent until the budget was balanced. Neither party’s leadership would go for it. So the dysfunction continued.
When Romney extolls the virtues of “bipartisan”, he means granting the “moderates” in each party a type of tyranny to determine what gets passed and what doesn’t. “Chucky” Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (at current) have practically the sole power to set the calendar and dictate what receives consideration, but in reality, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema hold the entire Congress in their hands.
It was the same way when Trump was president and Republicans held majorities. Senators Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Romney, John McCain, Susan Collins and to a somewhat lesser extent, Lindsey Graham (among a few others), exercised their outsized influence to steer what got through and what didn’t. Republicans couldn’t even come to terms with something as simple as a border wall. Is this the “crazy” Mitt was blabbering about? Should we all long for “normal”?
If a bill was truly “bipartisan”, it would be supported by a majority or a large percentage of the senators from both parties, wouldn’t it? Otherwise, when Democrats hold the majority, it’s all or almost all Democrats and a handful of Republican RINOs capitulating on spending. Again, this is Romney’s vision of “normal,” which may look good to the average non-political person, but doesn’t make much sense in reality.
One wonders why Romney would even be asked to appear on a left-leaning establishment media show like “Meet the Press” anyway. Host Chuck Todd is a proven liberal hack who isn’t interested in the truth as much as making conservatives and conservative Republicans look bad. Why wasn’t Sen Rand Paul asked to appear to talk about Dr. Anthony Fauci? Or Senator Tom Cotton to speak on the filibuster? (Here’s Cotton on the senate floor reading one of Chucky Schumer’s speeches -- verbatim -- on nuking the filibuster. Great comedy!)
Romney was right about one thing. Instead of having leftist activists besieging Joe Manchin’s house and haranguing Kyrsten Sinema in a public restroom, they should’ve been traipsing over to Mitt’s place to see what his terms would’ve been to betray his own people -- again. Chances are the price wouldn’t be very high, since Romney likes to look “moderate” and pass things for the sake of passing them. And he even defended Liz Cheney when she was kicked out of the House GOP leadership.
Maybe they’ll learn next time.
A spineless turncoat like Mitt Romney should be grateful that someone like Liz Cheney took most of the media focus off himself, so he could lay low for a while and plot how he could make Donald Trump and Republicans look like chumps all over again. Mitt’s advice for Joe Biden will no doubt fall on deaf ears; they’re both cut from the same establishment cloth.
Joe Biden economy
Democrat welfare bill
Build Back Better
13 House Republicans Infrastructure bill
Kyrsten Sinema
Joe Manchin
RINOs
Marjorie Taylor Green
Kevin McCarthy
Mitch McConnell
2022 elections
Donald Trump
2024 presidential election