I guess Mitt Romney isn't saving our democracy after all
The media lionized Romney for his impeachment vote. But he voted to confirm the very Supreme Court justice who will likely do everything in her power to keep Trump in office.
Mitt Romney began the year voting to remove Donald Trump from office, and he closes it voting for the Supreme Court justice who will likely do everything in her power to keep Trump in office.
Does this mean he’s no longer a Resistance hero?
Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court eight days before the election Monday night by a vote of 52-48. The only Republican who opposed her nomination was embattled Maine senator Susan Collins, whose vote was meaningless, since the rest of her caucus supported Barrett. That includes Romney, who’s spent the last four years being hailed as one of the last beacons of independence in the GOP — despite interviewing to be Trump’s Secretary of State.
Make no mistake: Romney is a conservative zealot like the rest of them. The media has willingly aided and abetted his chameleon act.
During Trump’s impeachment hearings, New York Times journalist Mark Leibovich conducted an interview with Romney in his senate office. In it, Romney boldly denounced Trump. “Attempting to corrupt an election to maintain power is about as egregious an assault on the Constitution as can be made,” said the junior senator from Utah.
Leibovich was obviously impressed. “(Romney’s) vote cast into relief the rapid evolution of the Republican Party into an entity that has wholly succumbed to the vise grip of Mr. Trump,” Leibovich wrote. “It deprives the president of the monolithic Republican support he had craved at the end of an impeachment case that he has been eager to dismiss as a partisan ‘hoax’ perpetrated by Democrats.”
While Romney felt a bumbling scheme to withhold military aid from Ukraine was “as egregious an assault on the Constitution as can be made,” he apparently doesn't feel the same way about Trump’s plan for the Supreme Court to steal him the election. As Barrett was being confirmed Monday, the Supreme Court simultaneously ruled mail-in ballots in Wisconsin could only be counted if they are received by Election Day — even if they are postmarked by Nov. 3.
For context: there were 80,000 ballots in the Democratic primary that were postmarked by the primary date and counted afterwards in Wisconsin. Trump won Wisconsin by just 22,748 votes in 2016.
The side-by-side events served as an ominous harbinger of things to come. Even more frighteningly, Brett Kavanaugh signaled he is suspicious of any ballots that are received after Election Day — regardless of when they are postmarked. “Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election,” he wrote in his opinion. “And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter.”
Barrett refused to answer questions at her nomination hearing about how she might respond if Trump refuses to peacefully transfer the presidency if he loses the election. Trump has said he wants a conservative super majority on the Supreme Court in case there is an election dispute.
That brings me back to Romney, who was lauded in the op-ed pages of the New York Times and lionized on MSNBC for his “brave” impeachment vote. In the opening monologue of her show Feb. 5, Rachel Maddow commended Romney’s courage.
“Just take a minute and watch this,” she told her audience before showing Romney’s speech. “This was history. You were here for it. You should see it.”
The Washington Post was equally enamored with Romney’s impeachment stance. “Who might deliver us from this national train wreck? Who could restore a sense of balance to the Senate trial so that, whatever its outcome, it doesn’t feed Trump’s false narrative of victimization and populist rage?,” wrote columnist David Ignatius. “There’s one obvious answer: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and custodian of what remains of his party’s moral and political balance.”
Ignatius’ colleague on the WaPo op-ed pages, Jennifer Rubin, also idolized Romney for his vote. “In our bleak, angry and cynical time, we should all find inspiration in a singular act of integrity,” she wrote. “Romney deserves the highest compliment I can pay a politician: He was McCain-esque.”
The list of Romney’s admirers goes on and on. WaPo’s Dana Milbank suggested Romney’s “single act of conscience” could “repair the nation’s soul;” New Yorker writer Michael Luo characterized Romney’s vote as his “act of political courage;” the Atlantic’s Peter Wehner simple called it Romney’s “profile in courage.”
And now, Romney has voted to confirm the justice on whom Trump is counting to swing a disputed election in his favor. Apparently, overturning abortion rights is more important than preserving our democracy.
Romney is not the only so-called moderate Republican who’s been championed in the beltway press throughout the Trump era. There’s been Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, who was the subject of a fawning New York Times Magazine profile about how she’s “mastered the art of Trump’s Washington.” The lede glowingly recounts how Murkowski was one of three Republican senators who voted to preserve the Affordable Care Act.
Murkowski also voted for Barrett, who will likely vote to strike down the ACA when it appears in front of the Court later this fall.
Trump is often called a manipulator, but Romney and his ilk are the true puppet masters of Washington. Or maybe, they just have willing subjects.
Photo credit: "Mitt Romney" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.