With a tone of statesmanship just caustic enough to burn, Mitt Romney blasted Donald Trump in a speech Thursday. John McCain endorsed Romney’s remarks later in the day. George W. Bush was quicker to criticize than both men, having stumped for his brother and saying on the campaign trail, “We do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration.”
All this means is that an odd representation of the Republican schism has taken form: Donald Trump is the GOP frontrunner for president, and the party’s three previous nominees can’t stand him.
“Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities: the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics,” Romney said at the University of Utah. “Imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does.”
The 2012 nominee’s conclusion: “He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president, and his personal qualities mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.”
The 2008 nominee concurred.
“I share the concerns about Donald Trump that my friend and former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, described in his speech today. I would also echo the many concerns about Mr. Trump’s uninformed and indeed dangerous statements on national security issues that have been raised by 65 Republican defense and foreign policy leaders,” McCain, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
The 2000 and 2004 nominee hasn’t been as specific in his disapproval, with Jeb Bush saying his brother and the former president didn’t “have to get in the slop with Donald Trump.” Still, the elder Bush took obvious shots at Trump while he campaigned for Jeb, even if they were indirect.
“Strength is not empty rhetoric. It is not bluster. It is not theatrics,” he said at a rally in North Charleston, S.C., before that state’s primary vote. “Real strength, strength of purpose, comes from integrity and character. In my experience the strongest person usually isn’t the loudest person in the room.”
Right now that person is the winningest one, though. And Trump is doing it without the support of every Republican standard-bearer since the turn of the 21st century.
