Eighteen Senate Republicans are bucking a majority of their party and former President Donald J. Trump in joining Democrats to push military assistance for Ukraine toward approval in the Senate, highlighting a widening foreign policy divide in the contemporary Republican Party. The 18 senators, mainly national security hawks who include several military veterans, have provided […]
Read MoreTag: Romney, Mitt
Joe Biden Is Trying to Jolt Us Out of Learned Helplessness About Trump
That’s fundamentally what the 2024 election is about. But even though Romney appears to agree with Biden about the existential danger of another Trump presidency, he, like many others, seems worried that when it comes to the future of American self-government, a cynical and exhausted populace can’t be made to care. This fear could easily […]
Read MoreThe Resolute Liz Cheney
There’s a scene in Liz Cheney’s new memoir, “Oath and Honor,” when she was still in Congress, she walks through the Capitol and into the Republican cloakroom, enters a phone booth, closes the door and calls Mitch McConnell. There aren’t so many people who can just call up Mr. McConnell nor was this quite standard […]
Read MoreWhy a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First
In the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party used tanks and troops to crush a pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Most of the West, across traditional partisan lines, was aghast at the crackdown that killed at least hundreds of student activists. But one prominent American was impressed. “When the students poured into Tiananmen […]
Read MoreThe Bush-Obama Blueprint That Gives Biden Hope for ’24
Well before Election Day in 2004, President George W. Bush was warned by strategists that he would face a tough campaign battle because of voter distress over the war in Iraq and over the economy — two issues he had once hoped to ride to a second term. Mr. Bush’s aides moved quickly to retool […]
Read MoreIt Isn’t Easy to Be Mitt Romney
Coppins depicts Ann Romney as the pivotal influence in her husband’s life; he is always trying to win and preserve her approval. A close second is his father, George Romney, the governor of Michigan, Republican presidential candidate and Housing and Urban Development secretary in the Nixon administration. “He’s both inspired by and at times haunted […]
Read MoreIn New Book, Romney Unloads on Fellow Republicans
Even before Senator Mitt Romney of Utah announced he would not seek re-election next year, he made no secret of his disapproval of the direction of the Republican Party and former President Donald J. Trump’s grip on it. But in a new, deeply reported biography, “Romney: A Reckoning,” set to be released next week, Mr. […]
Read MoreOprah Floated a 2020 Presidential Run With Mitt Romney, Book Says
Concerned that the Democratic field wasn’t up to the task of stopping President Donald J. Trump in 2020, Oprah Winfrey pitched Mitt Romney on the idea of running for president as an independent, with her as his running mate, according to a forthcoming biography of the Republican senator from Utah. Ms. Winfrey floated the unusual […]
Read MoreThe Hidden Moral Injury of ‘OK Boomer’
Mourners gathered around San Francisco City Hall this week to remember Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the most formidable politicians of her generation. Her passing meant not just the end of her political career, but also the end of a furious argument over her age and condition. Why did she stay in the Senate for […]
Read MoreDonald Trump’s Campaign of Violence and Lawlessness
Though it was lost in the four-year cyclone that was the presidency of Donald Trump, one of his most immoral acts was to pardon soldiers who were accused of committing war crimes by killing unarmed civilians or prisoners. Military leaders, including his own defense secretary and the secretary of the Army objected, saying it would […]
Read MoreFetterman in a Tie: The Senate Revokes Casual Dress Code
After a brief departure from tradition that was tailored for Senator John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who pressed to vote and preside in shorts and a hoodie rather than a business suit, the Senate on Wednesday formalized a longstanding — but previously unofficial — requirement that members show up to the chamber in business attire. […]
Read MoreIn a Sartorial About-Face, Senate Reverts to Tradition on Its Dress Code
After a brief departure from tradition that was tailored for Senator John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who pressed to vote and preside in shorts and a hoodie rather than a business suit, the Senate on Wednesday formalized a longstanding — but previously unofficial — requirement that members show up to the chamber in business attire. […]
Read MoreRonna McDaniel Gets the Trump Treatment
Donald Trump claims to be the best, most or first in countless laughable ways, but there’s one endeavor at which he really is peerless: Nobody dishes out humiliation in such heaping, merciless measures. Just ask Ronna McDaniel. She’s the one feasting miserably on it now. The chair of the Republican National Committee, McDaniel is responsible […]
Read MoreThe Road From Mitt Romney to MAGA
So Mitt Romney is retiring from the Senate. This is bad news. As excerpts from a forthcoming biography reveal, Romney is cleareyed about what has happened to his party and, if what he says is true, is a profile in courage compared with colleagues who share his horror but are unwilling to say anything. Yet […]
Read MoreRepublicans Don’t Mind the Constitution. It’s Democracy They Don’t Like.
“A very large portion of my party,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah tells McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.” Romney doesn’t elaborate further in the article, and Coppins, who spoke to him in depth and at length, beginning in 2021, for a forthcoming biography, does not speculate on what exactly […]
Read MoreMitt Romney’s Tragic Ambivalence
When Romney gave a speech at the Utah Republican Party’s convention in 2021, he was prepared for boos, but emerged shaken by the sheer intensity of the red-faced fury that confronted him. He was, writes Coppins, afraid of his own constituents. “There are deranged people among us,” he said, and in Utah, “people carry guns.” […]
Read MoreMitt Romney Has Given Us a Gift
Sometimes you do things that make you feel ashamed. It was the first day of the Republican convention in 2012 and I had nothing to write about, so I wrote a humor column mocking the Romney family for being perfect in every way. It was a hit with readers, but the afternoon it was published […]
Read MoreTakeaways From the Romney Biography: Thoughts on Trump, McConnell and More
When Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election in 2024, it was the culmination of a long estrangement between Mr. Romney and his party. But Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential standard-bearer, made it clear he did not plan to quietly pack up his things and retreat […]
Read MoreRomney to Retire, Calling For a ‘New Generation’ Beyond Biden and Trump
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president who made a historic break with his party when he voted to remove former President Donald J. Trump from office, announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election in 2024, saying he wanted to make way for a “new generation of leaders.” He […]
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