During the 2016 election, failed Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was one of Trump’s most vocal critics. Now that Trump is in the White House and Romney is a newly elected Senator, that hasn’t changed. Mitt Romney continues to attack Trump at every opportunity, in spite of the President’s extraordinary support among Republican voters and fellow Congressmen and women. While Romney’s latest op-ed in the Washington Post attacking President Trump may be keeping with past tendencies, there’s a likelihood that Sen. Romney has gone a step too far.
According to the op-ed that Romney wrote, Trump has “not risen to the mantle of the office”. He brought out all of the familiar attacks against the President, criticizing his character, his policies, and his supposed inability to unite the American people. At the same time that Romney was launching these attacks in the piece, he was also weaving in a subtle yet obvious message – that he could do better.
Of all the Republicans who may choose to challenge Trump in 2020 for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney is by far the most likely. Many postulated when he first decided to run for a Senate seat that Romney may have done so just to set up a springboard for a 2020 campaign. After reading his op-ed, that seems like an all the more realistic possibility.
However, if Romney really does still have Presidential aspirations and, more importantly, aspirations to challenge Trump in 2020, he’s starting out on the wrong foot. It seems that Mitt Romney failed to learn the same lesson that Democrats have yet to learn as well – attacking Trump does not win votes. It didn’t work for Hillary Clinton, and her base hates Donald Trump with an extraordinary furry. If Romney thinks that slinging mud at the President will win him support with the Republican base – a base that still remains very pro-Trump – he has a painful lesson coming.
Character attacks simply do not stick to President Trump, thanks largely to the Democratic party. Over the past eight years, Democrats have taught Republicans that character and moral superiority is not as important as winning. During the 2000 and 2008 elections, Republicans nominated choir boys in John McCain and Mitt Romney. Finally tired of taking the high ground and losing elections, they nominated a winner in 2016.
Donald Trump may not be the symbol of virtue and morality, but he gets things done. He wins elections, he pushes policies through, and he doesn’t back down to the bullying tactics of the left. Mitt Romney is not going to tell the American people anything they don’t already know about President Trump. Trump’s supporters are well aware of his past misdeeds and his brash tongue. They’re also well aware that the GOP has won more victories both in terms of policies and elections under President Trump than they have won in decades. Given the choice between taking the moral high ground with Mitt Romney and continuing to win with Donald Trump, the vast majority of Republicans are going to choose the latter without giving it a second thought.
If Mitt Romney thinks that he can gain support merely by attacking the President, he’s falling prey to the same delusions that cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election and the same delusions that caused Sen. Flake to vacate the Senate in disgrace after being trounced in the polls by his pro-Trump opponent. Should Romney continue these types of attacks against President Trump, he may not even make it to a second term in the Senate – much less make it to the White House.
As soon as Mitt Romney published his op-ed, conservative outlets ranging from Fox News to small websites turned against him. The op-ed may have been well-received in the mainstream media, but the base Romney needs to win sees mainstream media support as a negative rather than a positive. The media outlets that matter to them have not taken kindly to the op-ed, and Romney’s favorability among Republicans is now dropping by the day. It boggles the mind how Sen. Romney could see this as a winning strategy for a 2020 Presidential campaign.
In all likelihood, Romney has set himself up to be yet another vocal opponent that Trump steamrolls. It’s hard to see how his ill-fated op-ed could lead to anything else.
