There are more than a few former supporters of Mitt Romney that are seeing red this week. It seems the former presidential candidate who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory facing Barack Obama in 2012 is playing hard to get in 2018.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told CNN on Saturday that he would withhold making a decision on his support of Donald Trump in 2020 until later. The man who many said could not lose to a weakened President Obama six years ago is now playing coy with the party faithful once again.
There is little doubt that the epitome of the perfect political candidate ‘feels strongly both ways.’ Once again he is toying with the idea of running for president if his party’s leader falters down the stretch.
While he waits on the sidelines, he campaigns in his new state of Utah for Orrin Hatch’s Senate seat.
This is the strong suit of Mitt Romney. Act out the role as the strong candidate with your colorful rhetoric, but fold tent in a time of cooperation and trust.
Mitt performed that role with relish in 2016 when he virtually disappeared from the presidential campaign trail in the last ten days of the election. At the time he was ahead in virtually every major poll. To this day many wonder where he went when the chips were down.
Romney is a fence-sitter who does not relish the big decisions. He has the handsome smile and the pretense of a leader, but he is nowhere to be found when you need him most. Who can forget his second and third debates with Barack Obama?
Romney is best playing the pragmatic candidate, the man of impeccable integrity. "I will make that decision down the road," he told the Utah Republican Convention in West Valley, referring to Trump’s 2020 presidential run.
He might have added, “If he falls by the wayside, I will be more than happy to take his place.”
But Romney is good with a script. He told the convention, "As a person of political experience, if I endorse someone, I'll want to know what's in it for Utah and what help would he provide for us on key priorities in Utah.”
That sentence could be transposed from Utah to Massachusetts or even Michigan. The location doesn’t matter and neither do the empty words.
Nevertheless, Romney, 71, the premier opportunist, is among 12 candidates at the Republican convention seeking to replace the retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch. It is a certainty he wouldn’t be there if the opportunity for easy pickings wasn’t a big part of the scheme.
Trump’s words to him that he "choked like a dog" during his 2012 White House run had to hurt. They were true, but they had to hurt.
But now Trump himself has fallen for the Romney charm. He is willing to bury the hatchet and endorse the William Jennings Bryan of our generation for Utah’s next senator.
Trump, as a businessman like Romney, has to know that should the political car salesman from Utah reach the Senate, he could replace John McCain as his new party nemesis.
Dwight L. Schwab, Jr. is an award-winning national political and foreign affairs columnist and published author. He has spent over 35 years in the publishing industry. His long-running articles include many years at Examiner.com and currently Newsblaze.com. Dwight is an author of two highly acclaimed books, "Redistribution of Common Sense - Selected Commentaries on the Obama Administration 2009-2014" and "The Game Changer - America's Most Stunning Election in History." He is a native of Portland, Oregon, a journalism graduate from the University of Oregon, and a resident of the SF Bay Area. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.