Flip-flop Mitt can’t have it both ways
Sometimes you’ve just got to make a stand.
There is no truth in the middle ground, no strength, no courage.
Nobody respects a person who flops around like a fish on the deck. There’s no honor in straddling the centerline. There’s no truth. You are either committed or you are not.
Mitt Romney, the junior senator from Utah, is not committed.
In fact, he’s spineless. Especially when it comes to the president, with whom he has a curious relationship.
Oh, he has taken his shots at the president — from his comments after the vulgar video of the president’s conversation with Billy Bush surfaced to his most recent criticism that the president’s coercion in the Ukraine scandal was “wrong and appalling.”
But Romney also caves to the president’s power and influence.
He pandered to the president for his support when he ran for the Senate.
He was a first-class bootlicker when he groveled for a cabinet appointment.
He sits for lunch with a guy who called him a “pompous ass,” who said “Mitt Romney never knew how to win,” who said “If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked.”
Romney’s words, however, ring hollow when he seeks approval from the guy he criticized when he breaks bread in a White House dining room with a guy who he has painted as crude, appalling, and coercive.
It destroys his credibility.
Either he dislikes and disapproves of the president or he doesn’t.
Period.
He can’t have it both ways.
Of course, we have seen others give in to the cult of celebrity who have been insulted personally and professionally yet turned around and sucked up to the president for position and power. Primary among them is Sen. Ted Cruz. The president called him a liar. He insulted his wife. He tried to tie his father to a ramshackle conspiracy theory in the JFK assassination.
Instead of calling him out to the parking lot for a little Texas street justice, Cruz was all smiles and handshakes when it came to pimping for votes.
Romney is not one of my favorite politicians.
His economic policies are of no benefit to anybody but the 1-percenters, his is resolve nonexistent, and his moral is judgment questionable, especially when he can trade his scruples for votes.
Oh, he wears the suit well and has that dull Stepford grin plastered on his face. But instead of making waves — huge, effective tides of influence — he settles for intermittent ripples that barely roil the surface.
And when pressed, he runs away.
Tommy Burr, a longtime Washington correspondent for The Salt Lake Tribune who I have known since his college days, recently filed an interesting report on Romney (https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/11/25/sen-mitt-romneys/).
Burr sought some truth from Romney during a recent interview. Instead, Romney was very measured in his responses when discussing the president.
He obviously didn’t understand that he had an advantage of sorts in talking to the hometown paper’s audience that gave him 62.6 percent of the vote. His politics are what would be considered, in a normal political realm, moderately Republican. He’s a devoted Mormon in a state where, even though the numbers are dwindling, a strong 62 percent still practice the faith. He’s scandal-free, he’s well-dressed, he has a youthful countenance, and he travels in wealthy circles. He was in one of those win-win settings.
He’s neither transparent nor savvy and tries desperately to keep all avenues open, which is perhaps one of the reasons why he tolerates the president’s mocking barbs.
While it might make for a successful politician, it does not support strong character or ethic.
When he made his unsuccessful run for president against Barack Obama, he held a number of private fundraisers hidden from the public’s eye — including one in St. George, where he would not admit members of the press.
His understanding of foreign policy and diplomacy has always been shaky at best.
His regard for the working class was called into question when he claimed, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…who are dependent upon government…These are people who pay no income tax.”
It was either poetic justice or karma biting back when he lost the election to Obama by gaining only 47 percent of the popular vote.
He has often been clumsy in his rhetoric from his “binders full of women” statement to his awkward self-description of being “severely conservative,” which was laughable to traditional conservatives and, when broken down, simply not true.
Each time, Romney was forced to walk back his statements, something that in normal conversation would be called flip-flopping.
During his interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, Burr asked Romney about his relationship with the president.
“You know, I’m going to indicate that we are cordial and cooperative,” Romney said, “and I believe that that’s the appropriate kind of relationship that exists between the different branches.”
How he could have a cordial and cooperative relationship with a man he once called a “phony and a fraud,” how he could sit across a luncheon table from a man whose coercion in the Ukraine scandal he called “wrong and appalling,” and how he could sacrifice principle for a presidential pat on the head escapes me.
You are either for something or against it, and there is no middle ground.
Compromise rarely results in anything worthwhile or effective. It undermines purpose, conviction, and credibility.
A moral compass does not rely on which way the wind blows. It always points to truth, regardless of how painful that may be.
It does not rely on which outcome is most beneficial. It’s based on taking a stand and having the courage to stand by it win or lose.
It is an affirmation of deeply held beliefs, not just momentary judgments contrived from nuance and inflection.
Otherwise, we can never be sure where somebody stands.
Especially when he is willing to compromise his standards.
You can’t have it both ways.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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