By Dennis Prager
The first public thing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) did in the year 2019
-- on Jan. 1 -- was publish an attack on President Trump in the Washington
Post, which, as we know, has not lacked for attacks on Trump.
He did not even wait until being sworn in,
two days later.
I campaigned for Sen. Mitt Romney when he ran for
president, including a closed-door meeting with him to raise funds among
wealthy Los Angeles Republicans.
As it turns out, I worked to elect a somewhat
foolish man with few identifiable convictions. (For the record, I would
do so again, since just about any Republican president will do less damage to
the country than any leftist -- and Democratic politicians are now all leftists.)
Life is filled with disappointments, and I will survive this one. But I should
explain why this Romney column is so disappointing.
First the foolish part.
What did Romney seek to achieve by publishing an attack on his own party's
president? Did he think he would persuade one supporter of the president to
stop supporting him? If he did, he failed, not because none of us can be
persuaded to change our minds but because the piece was so intellectually
and morally shallow.
So, why did he write it? And why did he publish it in
the Washington Post, a Trump-hating newspaper? Does he share the Washington
Post's political, social and moral values? Did he think he would enlighten
Washington Post readers, the vast majority of whom already loathe the
president, the Republican Party and the half of the country that voted for
Donald Trump?
Of course not.
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
addressing whether the United States has borders secure enough to prevent
millions of people from coming into America illegally?
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
the left's suppression of free speech at virtually every American university
and the left's suppression of free speech on the internet?
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
the left's ongoing attempt to abolish male and female identities among
children?
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
attacking the left's goal of weakening the American military?
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
attacking the gargantuan size of the federal government, which undermines the
unique American ideal of limited government?
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
attacking the left for essentially destroying the Boy Scouts, from which his
own LDS church has now withdrawn support?
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
the dramatic decline of religion in American life? He is, after all, a
religious man.
Does he believe attacking Trump is more important than
preventing the left from dominating the country's federal courts, including the
U.S. Supreme Court?
If he does, he may be more than a fool.
Something more may involve character defects.
I try to avoid directing comments
at the character of those I differ with, but since Mitt Romney deems it of
national significance to publicly attack the character of the president of the
United States, and given that he considers character more important than
policies that affect the nation and the world, he has invited consideration of
his character.
Given his attack on the president, rather than on the
nation- and civilization-destroying policies of the left and the Democratic
Party, character issues may explain his Washington Post column.
While we
have every reason to assume Mitt Romney is personally honest and faithful in
marriage, a public figure's character is far more than his or her personal
honesty and marital fidelity.
Plenty of honest men and women and plenty of
faithful husbands and wives have helped ruin societies. And in those more
important areas of character, Mitt Romney is apparently quite lacking.
One character issue is lack of courage.
In today's
environment, it takes no courage to attack Donald Trump, especially in the
Washington Post.
Sen. Romney is now the darling of the elites of this
country. He will be showered with praise by the elite newspapers and all the
news networks (except Fox). He will be invited to give talks at universities
throughout the country. He will be feted in Europe. And no one will scream
obscenities at him when he dines in Washington, D.C., restaurants.
Another character issue is pettiness.
It
now seems very hard to deny that Romney resents Trump for doing what he failed
to do: win the presidency.
A third character problem is a lack of
conviction.
Does anyone reading this column know what
Mitt Romney stands for aside from winning elections?
Can one reader name one
strong conviction Mitt Romney holds? I can't.
He appears to be essentially
conviction- and ideology-free.
The New Republic wrote in 2012, the year Romney
ran for president, "In his various incarnations as a candidate, he has
campaigned as a progressive, a conservative, a technocrat, and a populist,
suggesting his deepest attachment is to winning."
When Donald Trump sought the Republican presidential
nomination, I was convinced he had no ideology. And I could not identify any
convictions. I therefore opposed his nomination. But I vigorously supported his
campaign for president and hoped my original assessment was wrong.
Lo and behold,
Trump turns out to have the most solid conservative convictions of almost
any Republican politician since Ronald Reagan -- and an almost preternatural
amount of courage to put them into practice.
In 2012, the Wall Street Journal wrote of Romney's campaign
director, Matt Rhoades, "People who know him say he isn't inspired by
ideology ..." And Fox News host Chris Wallace described Romney's chief
campaign strategist, Stuart Stevens, as "not big on ideology."
Just like their boss.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated
radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in
April 2018, is "The Rational Bible," a commentary on the book of
Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at
dennisprager.com.
______________________
RELATED
STORY
[EDITOR’S
NOTE: Does the below article show that Mia Love is Mitt Romney Light? Is there something in the Utah water?]
Former reps Mia Love, Luis Gutiérrez join CNN
as commentators
By Michael
Burke | The Hill
Former Reps. Mia Love (R-Utah) and
Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) have joined CNN as political commentators
after leaving Congress this year.
The two former members of the House made their debuts
Monday morning on CNN's "New Day" program.
Love lost her reelection bid on Nov. 6 to Democrat Ben
McAdams. Gutiérrez announced in 2017 that he planned to retire from
Congress and did not seek reelection in 2018.
Both Love and Gutiérrez left office last week after
the new Congress took office.
Love made headlines late last year after she
exchanged criticisms with President
Trump following the midterm elections.
Trump singled her out for not embracing him enough on the
campaign trail.
"Mia Love gave me no love, and she lost," Trump
said during a news conference. "Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia."
Love responded later that month, saying that
Trump's brand of politics were "insufficient."
"No real relationships, just convenient
transactions," she said. "That is an insufficient way to implement
sincere service and policy."
In her first day as a commentator for CNN, Love opined on
the ongoing partial government shutdown that is now in its third week.
The shutdown was prompted because Trump said he would not
sign a spending bill that didn't include $5 billion in funding for a wall along
the southern border.
In a televised Oval Office meeting with Democratic
leaders Charles
Schumer (N.Y.) and Nancy
Pelosi (Calif.) before the shutdown began, Trump said he was "proud to
shut down the government for border security."
Referencing that meeting, Love said Monday that
"this thing was set to fail right when it started."
"You have a president that says, ‘If you don’t give
me a wall, I will own a shutdown.’ … There was no leverage," she said.
"There was nothing that would even set the precedent for a really good
deal or a compromise."
