Senators, watch out: Mitt Romney will judge your workout.
The 76-year-old Utah Republican is usually close to his peers, according to a forthcoming book — excerpts published minutes after Romney announced Wednesday that he would not seek re-election next year.
In “Romney: A Reckoning,” due out Oct. 24 and cited by The Atlantic, author McKay Coppins describes the 2012 Republican presidential candidate as someone “fascinated by the strange social ecosystem that governs the Senate,” to the point of hanging out. in the gym the room “studied his friends like he was an anthropologist, recording his observations in his journal.”
Among the observations: Then-Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), walks on a treadmill in loafers and suit pants. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) walked so slowly on exercise bikes that Romney couldn’t resist taking a peek at their setup.
Mitt Romney has been a political fixture for about three decades. SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
“Durbin was set to 1 and Brown to 8. 🙂 :). My setting is 15—not that I’m bragging,” he said in his journal, according to Coppins.
Romney also lashed out at some of his fellow Republicans, blasting some of the recent arrivals as outright political opportunists afraid to cross former President Donald Trump.
“I don’t know that I could ever disrespect someone more than JD Vance,” Romney told Coppins, recounting that he had crossed paths with the Ohio Republican a few years earlier and was impressed by his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” and thoughtful musings. about the future of the GOP without being swayed by the mantra of the future 45th president.
Donald Trump sporadically uses Mitt Romney as something of a political punchline. Getty Images
But when Vance ran for Senate in 2022 and repeated some of Trump’s wildest attacks on Democrats and President Biden, Romney began to resent him.
“I wonder, how did you make that decision? How could you cross such a clear line – and for what?” septuagenarian break free. “It’s not like you’re going to be famous and powerful because you’re a United States senator. It’s like, ‘Really? You’re selling yourself so cheap?’”
Another object of Romney’s ire is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), part of a group that Utahans say has “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution” by protesting the results of the 2020 election.
Romney expected Mitch McConnell to be a calculating strategist, but found him to be more of an ego manager.REUTERS
“Josh Hawley is one of the smartest people in the Senate, if not the smartest, and Ted Cruz [R-Texas] could give him a run for his money,” Romney told Coppins, adding: “They know better” than to believe Trump’s claims that massive fraud cost him a second term.
A spokesman for Hawley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Romney’s years of criticism of Trump, dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign, have made him a pariah among many Republican voters — though not, he insists, among his Republican colleagues.
Mitt Romney lamented that many of his colleagues based many of their votes on how it might affect their election chances. Reuters
“Almost without exception,” Romney told Coppins, “they share my view of the president.” One of Romney’s friends allegedly told him Trump “has none of the qualities you want in a president, and all the qualities you don’t want.”
One of those colleagues, Coppins wrote, was Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who largely indulged Trump in public while badmouthing him to Romney as an “idiot” behind closed doors.
“You’re lucky,” McConnell told Romney at one point. “You can say what we are all thinking. You are in a position to say things about him that we all agree but cannot say.”
Mitt Romney was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump a second time. Three of them are gone. AFP via Getty Images
During Trump’s first impeachment trial, in early 2020, McConnell appeared impressed by the case made by House Democrats that Trump had committed high crimes and misdemeanors by threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the Kyiv government investigated the Biden family’s dealings in the country.
“They nailed it,” the Kentuckian told Romney at one point, according to Coppins.
“Well, the defense will say that Trump was only investigating corruption by the Bidens,” Romney said he replied.
Mitt Romney has been highly critical of President Biden, arguing that he has shied away from the deep budget reforms the country needs.REUTERS
“If you believe that,” McConnell allegedly replied, “I have a bridge I can sell you.”
McConnell told Coppins that he did not remember the conversation with Romney and that the quote did not match his thoughts at the time.
Romney was the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump in the first impeachment trial — becoming the first senator from the impeached president’s party to do so and ignoring a plea from his running mate in 2012, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, for acquittal.
Ahead of 2024, Romney told Coppins that he had contacted Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who is also up for re-election next year, last April about forming a new political party. While Manchin has publicly considered an independent bid for the presidency, Romney said his idea was better and warned that any significant third-party nomination would hand the White House back to Trump.
“Today I would say 50-50,” Romney, who claims to have written in his wife Ann for president in 2016, told the Washington Post in a separate interview discussing his impending retirement. “If I had to bet, I’d say it could go either way. So much can happen between now and then.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
