After a two-year love affair with any nominal Republican willing to buck the party line dictated by Donald Trump, the media are ready to be shocked that Sen. Mitt Romney, the devout Mormon and fiscal conservative, actually doesn’t plan on rubber-stamping the most liberal presidential administration in history.

No, the maverick Utah senator does not exactly condone signing on to a $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package full of left-wing party favors just after Trump passed a $900 billion relief bill on top of a nearly $27 trillion national debt. Unless you locked yourself into a multiyear echo chamber where the unemployed political consultants staffing the Lincoln Project are your idea of conservative, Romney’s recalcitrance should jar no one.