Five-time political candidate Mitt Romney wanted delegates to this past weekend’s Utah Republican convention to know one thing: He isn’t running for the Senate because he’s interested in a political career.
Romney, who suffered an embarrassing loss over the weekend in a vote of grassroots activists serving as delegates, is nonetheless expected to coast to victory in the primary and general election in a highly-Republican state where he enjoys strong popularity among the broader electorate. What’s amusing is that he’s still trying to perpetuate the narrative that he’s really a nonpolitician.
“This is not the beginning of my career. My career was in business,” Romney told a group of delegates, the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker, who was on hand for the convention, reported. “I’m not in this race because I have some political career I’m trying to foster. My political career is over. I’m going to Washington because I can make a difference.”
In all of his political campaigns, Romney has tried to portray himself as an outsider to politics who was really just a businessman. This has always been a particularly odd stance for the son of a former governor and presidential candidate. But the longer his political career stretches on, the more absurd this narrative becomes.
Romney first sought a Senate seat in 1994 in Massachusetts against Ted Kennedy. He then debated whether to run for governor of Utah in 2002 before deciding on seeking that job in Massachusetts — a race he won. He then ran two unsuccessful presidential races in 2008 and 2012. Though he declined to run again in 2016, he was active — delivering a blistering speech against Donald Trump and being a leading Republican critic after the campaign. After the election, he swallowed his pride as he groveled before Trump in hopes of getting tapped as Secretary of State. Now he’s running for Senate. Somebody who has grown up in politics and spent a significant part of the last 25 years seeking public office is obviously interested in having a political career.
It’s riotous that Romney still won’t just own up to it.
