Mitt Romney has spent the past 25 years repositioning himself politically, so it was no surprise that he took to the Washington Post ahead of his swearing in as Utah senator to signal that, at least for now, he wants to be known as an independent-minded Republican critic of President Trump.
As somebody with no ideological core, dating back to his 1994 Senate race in Massachusetts, Romney has described himself as everything from an “independent during Reagan-Bush” to “severely conservative.” He went from welcoming Trump’s endorsement during his 2012 presidential race, to calling Trump a “phony” in 2016, only to go on to cozy up to him in pursuit of the secretary of state job later that year, and eventually to once again welcome Trump’s endorsement in his Senate race. And now, he wants to be known again as a blistering critic.
As a longtime critic of Trump myself (ironically, one of my first public critiques of Trump came when Romney embraced him in 2012), I can certainly relate to many of the complaints Romney has in his op-ed. I, too, have criticized Trump’s rhetoric, his softness in speaking about totalitarian rulers, and the dangers to conservatism posed by his flouting of norms.
But there are a few parts of Romney’s op-ed where he really lost me.
One signal that it was going to go off the rails was when Romney described as “encouraging” the appointment of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Tillerson proved totally out of his depth in that position and is broadly viewed, across the ideological spectrum, as objectively one of the worst secretaries of state in American history. So that struck me as a bit odd, but I moved on.
Then came this garbage:
While there are plenty of angles from which to criticize Trump’s foreign policy, one of the laziest and obnoxious is to say that his conduct is bad because he is less popular than former President Barack Obama among the public in socialist countries that do not share American values. The public in those countries also supported the Iran deal among other disastrous Obama era policies, so of course reversing them is going to change opinion.
It’s incredible that Romney would cite the authority of Sweden of all places, where anti-Semitism is rampant and Jews are attacked by Molotov cocktails. Let’s check out what their protesters had to say about Trump’s foreign policy in December 2017 (per the New York Times):
I’m not surprised that such a public would be happier with the Obama administration, which had a hostile attitude toward Israel and allowed the world to gang up against the Jewish state, then they have been with the pro-Israel Trump administration. But it’s insulting for Romney to appeal to the moral authority of the Swedes in criticizing the American president.
Citing such international polls in an effort to position himself as “woke Romney” ahead of his swearing in is weak and pathetic. It’s right out of John Kerry’s infamous 2004 “global test” remark. And it should not be treated as serious criticism.
