Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is ill-serving his party, his state, and his nation by staying neutral in the race for Utah’s other Senate seat.
The incumbent is the thoughtful and solidly conservative Republican Mike Lee, a Reaganite constitutional scholar who clerked for superstar Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The challenger is shape-shifting “independent” Evan McMullin, who has the official endorsement of the Utah Democratic Party.
MIKE LEE URGES ROMNEY TO OFFER ENDORSEMENT IN TIGHTER-THAN-EXPECTED UTAH SENATE RACE
Romney claims to be a “good friend” of both candidates, so he is endorsing neither. This is specious. On both philosophical grounds and because of the considerations he owes his party and his country, Romney should see a duty to help his fellow incumbent Republican.
He should do so both because Lee is a better senator for Utah than McMullin would ever be and because electing McMullin might serve to keep the left-wing New York Democrat Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader.
If Schumer’s Democrats retain an effective majority in the Senate, President Joe Biden can keep loading the courts with extremely liberal judges. If Schumer’s Democrats keep power, Congress as a whole will not be able to bring to heel Biden’s lawless executive agency appointees and their bureaucratic fellow travelers. And, of concern to Utah even if Romney himself doesn’t seem to care, a Democratic majority would keep the Republican Romney without a committee chairmanship that he could use both for national policy aims and for more powerful advocacy for Utah’s interests.
Plus, Romney should be expected to have more loyalty to the national Republican Party. He’s not just any old party member; he was once the party’s presidential nominee.
There also are unwritten expectations in politics. One is that a senator of one party should support his in-state Senate colleague if that colleague is of the same party. In Pennsylvania two decades ago, for example, the far-less-than-conservative Arlen Specter endorsed his strongly conservative colleague Rick Santorum, and Santorum in turn provided a significant boost to Specter’s own 2004 reelection. (Specter then played key roles in securing confirmations for Alito and other conservative judges, such as Alabama’s Bill Pryor.)
The rare exception to this unwritten rule, and a legitimate and acceptable one, is if the senator running for reelection has been enmeshed in unethical activity that makes him unfit for office. This exception, however, certainly does not apply to Lee, who is about as close as a senator gets to being an exemplar of “Scout’s honor.” He also is an effective legislator who has taken lead roles in passing a doubling of the child tax credit and in battling government bloat.
McMullin, on the other hand, shows the political constancy of a firefly’s light, flickering on and off while frenetically darting across the landscape. As detailed previously, he has abandoned or obfuscated his earlier, conservative positions on abortion, guns, the Supreme Court, a border wall, critical race theory, and healthcare. In tawdry fashion, he also has cashed in, big-time, on his former service in the CIA, which he may well have oversold.
Oh, and he’s a cheap-shot artist, too, having accused the personally decent and mainstream 2017 Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, Ed Gillespie, of “peddl[ing] fear and white nationalism.”
If Romney has any of the discernment or care for probity he claims, he will see that Lee is a much better man than McMullin. For that reason, and for all the other considerations above, Romney should get off the sidelines and provide an endorsement of Lee that really could make a difference for his colleague if the race remains tight.
Romney’s reticence isn’t honorable; it’s weaselly. And inexcusable.
