Mitt Romney Condemns Trump's Handling of the Pandemic as He Tries to Salvage the Republican Party

Mitt Romney brutally condemned Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis yesterday as he again tried to convince the nation that not all Republicans are quite as clueless or careless as our President when it comes to governing.

And, you have to love Romney's penchant for wry understatement.

Washington Post: “Short term, I think it’s fair to say we really have not distinguished ourselves in a positive way by how we responded to the crisis when it was upon us,” Romney said in a video interview with the Sutherland Institute. “And the proof of the pudding of that is simply that we have 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s deaths due to covid-19.”

“And there’s no way to spin that in a positive light,” Romney said."

Unlike Mitch McConnell and most of his Republican colleagues, Romney has been on a crusade since being elected to put some space between Trump's bigotry, incompetence and corruption and the Republican Party as an institution. He understands that the cult of personality surrounding the President has defiled the GOP and won't have much of a shelf-life once Trump is gone. Romney believes that the party of Lincoln is worth saving and can thrive if it returns to its core values and excises its Trumpian elements.

So, while Romney hasn't become a full fledged "never-Trumper" yet, he was the only Republican in the Senate to support Trump's impeachment and removal, and joined former Secretary of State Colin Powell in refusing to endorse Trump's reelection. He is also the only Republican in Congress to take part in an anti-racism demonstration and has criticized some of Trump's more outlandish statements about Black Lives Matter protesters.

Romney has largely embraced the thinking of the growing list of never-Trump conservatives like George Will, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, and Bill Kristol. They still believe that the GOP can be salvaged; that they can expel the white nationalists, the QAnon conspiracy theorists, the Know-Nothings, the anti-globalists and the anti-LGBT bigots and return to their roots. Perhaps, but it's more likely that those groups are the Republican Party today, and that the GOP of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt is gone forever.

Mitt Romney may be the rear-guard fighting to save a party that doesn't want to be saved from its more unsavory elements.

#news #opinion #Trump

By: Don Lam & Curated Content