Sometimes a column draws enough furious response that it requires a follow-up. Such was the case with my piece last week opining that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) should endorse his colleague Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) for reelection.
Most critics missed the specificity of the opinion. And many questioned why I, a confirmed Never Trumper who believes the Senate should have convicted Trump both times he was impeached, would countenance Lee remaining in office after the senator supposedly aided Trump’s plot to remain in office illegally.
EVAN MCMULLIN BOOED AFTER CALLING SEN. MIKE LEE A TRAITOR AT DEBATE
First things first. The column did not say, nor do I believe, that all Republicans should always endorse or even vote for all Republican nominees for all offices. Nor does it even say that all Republican senators should endorse all GOP Senate nominees, even incumbent ones. Instead, the specific standard I cited is one of those unwritten rules or conventions that help keep our system working well.
Norms and standards need not be formal or memorialized in ink for them to be important. For example, a freshman senator is expected to wait some time before making his first remarks on the Senate floor, and when he does so, they should be well prepared, substantive, and statesmanlike. Or, until the Democrats ruined things, it was a firm understanding and practice that federal judicial nominees enjoying majority support should not permanently be denied confirmation via the legislative tactic known as a filibuster.
In this case, I wrote that “a senator of one party should support his in-state Senate colleague if that colleague is of the same party.” The exception, I wrote, is “if the senator running for reelection has been enmeshed in unethical activity that makes him unfit for office.” This rule or expectation serves both as a minimum expectation for fealty that a senator owes a state party that nominated him and also serves the causes of comity and of better service for one’s constituents. To say that Romney should endorse Lee is not to say that a Republican activist in, say, Hawaii, should support Lee; it is to say only that Lee’s in-state Senate colleague should do so.
Other critics say that Lee was indeed engaged in unethical behavior that fits the exception mentioned above. They cite texts he wrote while actively considering efforts to help Trump’s challenge of the election results.
Well, I certainly don’t like the lengths to which Lee, a onetime Trump critic, joined Team Trump rather slavishly on numerous occasions. But the texts in question don’t show Lee actually doing anything wrong. Like many conservatives, myself included, Lee (a constitutional scholar in his own right) long had respected the work of constitutional lawyer John Eastman, who was advising Trump that he had a path to reelection. But when Eastman went off the deep end, Lee went far beyond what I think is reasonable in trying to see if Eastman’s bizarre legal theories were valid and practical.
But here’s the rub: Even before the Capitol riot, Lee decided Eastman and Trump were wrong, and he refused to do anything to implement their plans. Witness the Newsweek article the day before the incursion called “Why is Trump mad at Mike Lee? President scolds senator at Georgia rally.” Trump mentioned Lee by name and said he was “angry” with him, because, as Newsweek explained, “Lee has circulated a letter to his Republican colleagues explaining why he doesn’t support rejecting slates of electors that Biden won.”
Sure enough, Lee followed through by refusing to challenge the election results. He spoke on the Senate floor after the riot, but noted he was using the remarks he prepared beforehand. After spending what he called “an enormous time” researching the subject, he had determined that “our job is to convene, to open the ballots, and to count them. That’s it.” And he acted accordingly and honorably and correctly.
It is no big stain on one’s character to have gone a long way down a road to explore it, only to decide it’s the wrong direction and to turn back definitively.
The final specific item I laid out, but which critics didn’t credit, is the comparative weighing of the merits of Lee and his challenger Evan McMullin. I explained at length why I find McMullin’s own record and character to be seriously flawed. I believe McMullin to be a shapeshifter and a cheap-shot artist who unduly monetizes his CIA background.
If Lee is, as I believe, both a better man and a better fit for the Senate than McMullin, and if the other norms and considerations should lead Romney to aid Lee’s reelection, well, how is it party hackery to write that Romney is remiss by remaining neutral?
