Though he’s exiting public office with the end of his current term, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) continues making a stand from inside the GOP. That’s largely against former President Donald Trump and his enablers, who have clearly yet to find anything in the ex-president’s behavior concerning enough to spur some kind of actual distance!
“I don’t think I’ve heard a single member of my caucus, the Republicans in the Senate, say, ‘You know, Donald Trump is great. Aren’t we lucky to have him as our leader?'” Romney said in a CBS interview. “Donald Trump represents a failure of character, which is changing, I think, in many respects, the psyche of our nation and the heart of our nation. And that’s something which takes a long time – if ever – to repair.”
It’s notable, of course, just how persistent that Republican support for Trump has really proven itself despite behavior like his recent suggestion for the execution of retired Gen. Mark Milley and his continued support for participants in the brutal assault on the Capitol that was meant to stop the basic transfer of presidential power from one commander-in-chief to the next. And Trump has mostly not made meaningful distinctions among the various groups who joined that riot, often seemingly lumping all of them into his expressions of allegiance with their cause, no matter the charges of assaulting police or seditious conspiracy, with both categories having produced serious convictions and prison sentences.
Imagine if a Democratic candidate for office was expressing support at Trump’s level for individuals charged with assaulting police officers and trying to subvert the basic transference of presidential power. Considering the ongoing failures of the other campaigns in the GOP presidential primary, it seems most likely at this stage that — unless Trump is seriously incapacitated by one of his criminal cases — he’ll win the Republican nomination and face Joe Biden a second time in 2024.
