PrairiePundit

  Daily Mail: 'Boo all you like!': Romney hits back at 2,000-strong crowd at Utah's GOP convention as they shout 'traitor' and jeer at him for voting to impeach Trump: Narrowly avoids censure from delegates Senator Mitt Romney was booed on Saturday as he made a speech at the Utah Republican Party's organizing convention The 2,000-strong crowd jeered after Romney, a frequent critic of former President Trump suggested that he wasn't a fan of Trump's 'character issues' The motion for Romney to be censured narrowly failed, 798 to 711, in a vote by delegates to the state GOP convention  Romney has faced negative backlash and a censure threat by the GOP delegation for his votes to impeach Donald Trump earlier this year Romney was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump for inciting the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 The Senate ultimately voted 57-43 to acquit the former president, failing to meet the 67-vote threshold to con...

 Washington Examiner: Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz says he is open to running against Sen. Mitt Romney in Utah. With a smile on his face, the retired politician told Fox News host Sean Hannity, "Yea, I would," when asked Monday evening about a primary challenge against Romney just days after the GOP senator voted a second time to convict former President Donald Trump on an article of impeachment. Chaffetz represented Utah's 3rd Congressional District from 2009 to 2017 and served as chairman of the House Oversight Committee for the final couple of years. After retiring, Chaffetz joined Fox News as a contributor. During the panel, in which he appeared with Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Chaffetz insisted he is "dedicated" to Fox News. But he also stressed that he's "thought about" running for office. The topic came up as the panel was discussing House Republican leaders  sending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter  demanding that she turn over the securit...

 Washington Examiner: Conservative radio show Mark Levin called Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney a “dumb ass” for dismissing controversy over Hunter Biden’s business dealings yet voted to impeach President Trump over a “perfectly legitimate phone.” “Remember when Romney voted to remove President Trump for a perfectly legitimate phone call but dismissed the evidence of Hunter Biden’s serial sleazy business deals as nonsense? With all due respect, what a dumb ass,” Levin tweeted Saturday. The failed 2012 presidential contender dismissed a Republican-led probe into Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine in September as “not the legitimate role of government.” “Obviously, it is the province of campaigns and political parties’ opposition research, the media, to carry out political endeavors, to learn about or dust-up one’s opponent. But it’s not the legitimate role of government or Congress, or for taxpayer expense to be used in an effort to damage political opponents,”  Romney said ...

NY Times: Vote for Trump? These Republican Leaders Aren’t on the Bandwagon Former President George W. Bush and Senator Mitt Romney won’t support Mr. Trump’s re-election, and other G.O.P. officials are mulling a vote for Joe Biden. These two guys failed to fight back against the despicable attacks of  Democrats and wound up losing support.   What voters like about Trump is he fights back against the evils of liberalism and those who spew it.  He is not the stoic Republican punching bag of the past.  The same media that hated both of these guys and sought to destroy them now pretends to approve of them because they don't support the guy who fights back against media abuse and mistreatment. The truly patriotic stand is to vote against those seeking to destroy this country, i.e. Democrats.  If they cannot see just how bad Biden would be for this country, I feel sorry for them.  Biden would put millions of people out of work with his absurd energy ...

William Jacobson: I held my nose and voted for Mitt Romney, and all I got was this lousy impeachment vote I’m sick of him, but not really angry. We’ve been fooled twice, maybe more times than that, shame on us. Professor Jacobson makes several good points about Romney as a failed candidate and as a Senator.  The only reason to vote for a bad candidate like Romey was that Obama was worse.

Conrad Black: ... As an authentically scriptural man, Mitt Romney would know that it is the “God of Vengeance, God to whom vengeance belongs.” In cobbling together the righteous fairy tale previously utterable only by chronically dishonest people such as Representatives Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Speaker Pelosi (doubtless resuming her famous prayers for the president after ripping up the text of his speech in front of 40 million viewers), Romney descended from the prophet’s chair in the Mormon Tabernacle to the gutter of American public life. Though we are all unlicensed psychiatrists, I will not try to read Romney’s mind on this one. He may have managed the complicated procedure of convincing himself that an innocuous conversation with the president of Ukraine was a breach of President Trump’s constitutional duties on a scale that justified his removal from office. If so, he is a mentally disturbed person doubtfully qualified even to sit alone as a pari...

It looks like he would have looked the other way and not asked for help investigating the facts surrounding the questionable deals.

Washington Post: Inside the Senate trial: How McConnell and enough Republicans blocked witnesses Sen. Mitt Romney, a near-lone GOP voice in seeking witnesses for the trial, was an outlier in a party bound to President Trump and unwilling to challenge him. That political reality helped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hold his conference together. The Democrat impeachment effort denied the President due process in the Hosue and refused to call witnesses it later decided it needed.  That is not the fault of McConnell or the GOP in the Senate.  It was a deliberate strategy by Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler and it backfired on them.  They were too focused on the calendar and not on the hard work of trial preparation needed to make their case.  Then they tried to glum that duty off on the Senate. Romney's decision to back the call for witnesses will be one that he will pay a political price for.  Democrats never made a case they could sell to the public at...

Thomas Lifson: Mitt in 2019: protecting Kurds ‘one of our most sacred duties’; Mitt in 2007: ‘Kurdish nationalism could destabilize the border with Turkey’ Politician Mitt Romney has joined journalists like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin in contradicting his previously-espoused positions when President Trump acts on them. Back in 2007 when he was running for president, Romney took to the pages of Foreign Affairs, the journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations, aka Globalism Central, to warn against the danger presented by unthinking American adherence to Kurdish nationalism. Joel Pollak of Breitbart remembered.... ... His more recent policies seemed to be based on opposition to whatever Trump does.

Thomas Lifson: Well, this is certainly an odd coincidence! In fact, when you dig in, you find an amazing series of coincidences. If you believe in coincidences when the CIA is involved, that is. Mitt Romney’s national security advisor in his 2012 campaign -- a career CIA spook who rose to its top levels -- sits on the board of directors of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that formerly paid Hunter Biden $50k a month despite his complete lack of credentials or qualifications. And it also an odd coincidence that Mitt has as CNN puts it “been a lone Republican voice expressing concern about President Donald Trump's July phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Ukraine's President to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.” Still more oddly coincidental is the background of Mitt’s adviser deep in the CIA, part of the intelligence community that has “six ways from Sunday” in foiling a mere president who might oppose them, according to Chu...

Daily Beast: How Paul Krugman Made Donald Trump Possible Liberal pundits write viciously about Trump. But they wrote viciously about Romney, McCain, Bush... and they wonder why people outside their circle stopped listening. ... Mitt Romney was, of course, far from the first Republican presidential candidate to get this treatment. George W. Bush, John McCain, and any Republican who has the audacity to challenge a Democrat for the presidency are treated to ever more alarmist rhetoric. Every gaffe, every uncorroborated story is blown up by a media seemingly unaware of its extreme bias. Lest you imagine all presidential candidates get this kind of media treatment, well, not quite. Barack Obama wasn’t stupid when he said there were 57 states. He wasn’t racist when he listened to Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s sermons for 20 years. He wasn’t insane when he said he would lower the oceans. He wasn’t unfit when he said he would end the Iraq war on the very day he took office. He continually ...

Washington Post: Inside the GOP effort to draft a third-party candidate to derail Trump Desperate anti-Trump Republicans are seeking an independent challenger but keep hearing “no.” Mitt Romney, the 2012 party nominee, is joining the effort to coax reluctant spoilers with only a few weeks left to launch a viable bid. The calculation of such an effort has to be one that denies a majority of electoral votes  to Clinton and Trump and throws the election into the Congress they would have to win enough majorities of each state delegations to win.  It is an understatement to say that is a heavy lift.  While some recent polls show a close contest between Clinton and Trump where both still have less than 50 percent of the vote, those are in swing states, and they did not include any potential third party ticket.  The third party ticket has to win at least some electoral votes to deny a majority.

Breitbart: Mitt Romney: Won’t Support Trump or Clinton, ‘Hoping That We Find Someone Who I Have Confidence In’ as Nominee Romney is not interested in another, but I suspect that he would be a key to finding financing for a third party candidate and has met with some proponents of such a move.

NY Times: Rank and File Republicans Tell Party Elites: We’re Sticking With Donald Trump Richard Perry/The New York Times A crowd cheered for Donald J. Trump to take the stage Friday during a campaign rally at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich. The appeal from Mitt Romney and the furious reaction to it captured the essence of the party’s schism. What Mitt Romney said about Trump was defensible and true for the most part, but he and the establishment are imperfect messengers of those arguments.  It is the party establishment that said it was going to repeal Obamacare, defund Obama's amnesty program, and cut spending, only to do the opposite after getting elected, that has so angered many voters.   They feel like they have been defrauded by the establishment who thought they were elected to get things done even if was things they said they would not do. The real fight now is over whether the GOP will choose a deal maker like Trump or someone who will do wh...

CNN: ... "the only serious policy proposals that deal with the broad range of national challenges we confront have come from Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich." ... "His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president," Romney is expected to say. Romney will also touch on a "twisted example of evil trumping good: "Trump's claims that he admires Russian President Vladimir Putin while calling "George W. Bush a liar." It is clear that Romney thinks a Trump nomination is troublesome for both the Republican Party and the country. ... I think his criticism is serious and on point.  I also think that the Demcorats swithching parties to vote for Trump will probably not be moved by it, at least they have not been moved by similar criticism to date.  

NY Times: Mitt Romney Says Donald Trump Should Release His Tax Data Mitt Romney emerged from political hibernation on Wednesday and issued a challenge Donald J. Trump: Show us your taxes. I suspect Reid and the Democrats wanted to wait until Trump was the nominee to spring this demand on him since they view him as easily the most beatable of the candidates in the GOP field.  Reid famously made up stories about Romney's tax returns.  His bogus claims were eventually discredited, but I am sure he is not above doing that again, and Romney's moves preempts the attack and also forces Trump's hand.

Washington Examiner: NY Times calls Russia a threat, mocked Romney for saying that The Times made the change after the Defense Department acknowledged that Russia was the main threat to the US.

Hugh Hewitt: The Romney Statement: Not Running. “I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee.” He is going to give others in the party a chance to lead this go round.

Phillip Klein: I can't believe I have to write this post on Mitt Romney I think the polls showing voter remorse for their votes for Obama are what is driving this latest candidacy.  Those polls don't really reflect all the alternatives out there in 2016 at this point.  While I clearly think Romney would be a much better President than Obama, I am not sure he is the best Republican available.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Republican Paul Ryan won't run for president in 2016 Ryan has said he would not run if Mitt Romney was running.