If Mitt Romney is a loyal Republican and a patriotic American, he’ll do what’s best for party and country and not run for U.S. Senate in Utah.
Romney can serve neither so well as by staying on the sidelines.
He reminded us of that with his demagogic tweet Monday responding to the firestorm over President Donald Trump’s purported vulgar putdown last week of Haiti and countries in West Africa.
It’s fine to chide Trump for what Trump himself called his “tough language.” (Whatever it was; both Trump and two Republican senators who were at the closed-door meeting deny he used the term widely reported.) It isn’t helpful to refer to anybody’s country in degrading terms.
But Romney decided to hit Trump on substance, and in so doing created his own vulgarity: A statement that is self-serving and demonstrably not true in multiple ways.
Here it is:
The poverty of an aspiring immigrant’s nation of origin is as irrelevant as their race. The sentiment attributed to POTUS is inconsistent w/ America’s history and antithetical to American values. May our memory of Dr. King buoy our hope for unity, greatness, & “charity for all.”
In 46 words Romney takes a lot of the sting out of his loss in 2012, and reminds us why it happened.
1.
“… poverty … is … irrelevant …”
Poverty is obviously relevant to immigration policy. Around 150 million people around the world would like to leave their country and come to the United States. We can’t absorb all of them and still have a functioning economy and a cohesive society. So we must choose which ones can come and which ones can’t.
That choice ought to be based on what’s good for the United States. A person who comes from a desperately poor country is likely to be a desperately poor person. We can take some poor people – but it obviously makes sense to prioritize people who have skills and can contribute to our economy immediately and are unlikely to go on welfare.
2.
“… as irrelevant as their race.”
Apparently Romney is trying to imply that Trump said something racist last week with his profane description without saying it outright. Yech. Either say it or don’t.
It’s a bad point either way, though. It makes sense that Trump was referring to the economic conditions, political corruption, and social instability of the countries he mentioned, and not the racial composition of the people who live there.
3.
“… inconsistent with America’s history …”
Actually, we have restricted immigration from various countries since the late 19th century, including a period between the 1920s and the 1960s when we severely limited immigration while we absorbed the huge numbers that came from the 1880s to the 1910s.
4.
“… antithetical to American values.”
It’s not antithetical to American values to value America’s self-interest when it comes to deciding which foreigners can come here and which ones can’t. America’s interests are American values.
5.
“May our memory of Dr. King buoy our hope for unity, greatness, & ‘charity for all.’ “
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote and said many stirring and memorable things. But this last phrase isn’t among them. Instead, it’s a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
Perhaps Romney can recycle this one around Lincoln’s Birthday in a few weeks, maybe in connection with a tweet saying he isn’t running.
For Romney, 70, can do no good by running, but a lot of harm – starting with the stunting of a potential Republican star in Utah. We won’t presume to say for sure who would win the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Mitt’s absence. But here are a couple of examples of who could:
U.S. Representative Chris Stewart, 57, is a former Air Force pilot, a successful businessman, and a bestselling author, and would likely make a sharp senator.
U.S. Representative Mia Love, 42, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, is even more intriguing. She gave a powerful speech at the March for Life in Washington last year, relating how her parents were in tough straits when she was conceived in the mid-1970s and considered aborting her but decided against it. As a conservative black woman with a compelling personal story and a strong way of expressing it, Love could become a focal point for the Republican Party if she were elected a U.S. senator.
Is this the kind of leadership that could help the GOP and the country?
Or would we be better off with the granddaddy of Obamacare who never met a flip he couldn’t flop and who as the GOP nominee in 2012 lost a winnable race to a failed president?
Governor Romney, your country is calling you. It’s telling you to stay home – wherever, these days, that may be.
