Cohen: Mitt Romney — a trickle of courage among U.S. Republicans

In Trump’s kingdom of the coward, a little conscience makes you ruler. So it was with Romney: he brought a bit of integrity and decency.

Published Sep 20, 2023 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 3 minute read

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13: U.S. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney announces he will not seek re-election. Photo by Win McNamee /Getty Images

PORTLAND, Maine — In another world, in another time, Mitt Romney would have been Mr. Republican, emblem of the Grand Old Party. He has the pedigree, the look, the wealth, the family, the faith.

Son of an influential governor of Michigan. Graduate of Harvard Law. Head of Bain Capital. Governor of Massachusetts, a liberal state, and senator from Utah, a conservative state. Saviour of the 2002 Olympics.

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He has a face of granite, ready for Mount Rushmore. He has a lovely wife and five children. He speaks with the air of noblesse oblige, the tone of a patrician, the manners of the country club. Call him a moderate conservative, a dying species.

In his father’s time, he would have had the right stuff. He would have been a “Rockefeller Republican,” championing the virtues of public service, fiscal restraint, less government, low taxes and anti-communism. Among “liberal Republicans” he would have had company: Jacob Javits and John Lindsay (New York); Edward Brooke (Massachusetts); Charles Percy (Illinois).

He was the jolly good fellow the party used to want as standard-bearer. We now know that his presidential campaign in 2012 was the last gasp of the old Republican Party. While Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan and Phil Scott survived as governors in blue states, Romney and his ilk are gone.

Romney didn’t leave the party. The party left him — and anyone else appalled by Donald Trump.

So when Romney announced he’s retiring, it brought a chorus of lapidary praise, unabashedly nostalgic, memorializing the last surviving member of the old school. Columnist David Brooks suggests his honesty and principle makes him “a gift to us all.”

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He praises Romney for calling out Senate Republicans, describing them as weak and self-interested, the kind of hypocrites who praise Trump in his presence while laughing at him after he leaves the room. Brooks applauds Romney, 76, for retiring — unlike so many other men and women who won’t, persuaded they’re indispensable to the Republic.

It isn’t hard to see Romney as the face of rectitude in Washington. Remember, he was the only Republican who joined the Democrats to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate. He did so amid threats and taunts. When Paul Ryan, Romney’s former running mate, tried to convince him to back down, warning he would become a pariah and put his family in danger, he refused.

In some circles, it turned Romney into Captain Courageous. No doubt it took a spine, but really, did it? Romney was at the end of his career when he entered the Senate in 2019, he had no further political ambitions, he didn’t need a job. Breaking with the party didn’t risk his political and personal fortunes.

Then again, in the kingdom of the coward, a little conscience makes you king. So it was with Romney. Among the sycophants, opportunists, liars and dissemblers of his party, he brought a little integrity and decency.

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Give him credit. But he’s a small profile in courage, if at all. He was honouring his religion (he was a Mormon missionary) and principle when he opposed Trump. But it was because he was alone — shockingly, sadly alone — that he stood out.

Romney shows us how courage has left American politics. In a forthcoming biography, he points out the craven cynicism of his colleagues in the Senate. He has particular disdain for Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance and Ted Cruz, apologists for the Jan. 6 insurrection who idolize Trump. Courage?

You want courage? It’s the five women legislators in South Carolina, representing all parties, who united to protect abortion rights. They faced a barrage of hostility. It’s Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon. It’s Liz Cheney opposing Donald Trump. Ford lost the presidency, Cheney lost her seat.

It’s Angela Merkel admitting a million refugees to Germany, amid sneers, fears and jeers.

In Washington, courage has fled the Capitol. So when a lone, upright senator with nothing to lose does the right thing, we cheer. It says more about our time than it does him.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, a professor at Carleton University and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

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