Say it isn’t so. Mitt Romney as a 2022 kingmaker?
It’s safe to say there’ve been many, many scenarios waxed over by commentators from both sides of the ideological spectrum regarding what will happen on Election Day in a few weeks and next year when the new Congress convenes (hopefully) with a host of new faces.
One example would be, “If all the polls are wrong and American voters rise up to return Democrats to majorities in both the House and Senate in November, senile president Joe Biden will have virtually unlimited power to pass what’s left of his agenda and join with a horrified public as the drunken-husband pardoning Nancy Pelosi and ‘Chucky’ Schumer whistle while the country burns”. Or, “Republicans took advantage of their generic ballot strength to earn near RINO-proof majorities in the House and Senate. After surviving two years of Democrat abject failure and corruption, vengeful conservatives vowed to slice government to the bone while pressing investigations on Hunter Biden, the porous southern border and the Afghanistan debacle -- all in their first week”, would be another.
One prospect I haven’t seen presented in any newspaper or online establishment news media site is the odd possibility that RINO extraordinaire Mitt Romney could play 2023 senate majority determiner this cycle. Say what? Romney’s not even on the ballot! The 2012 Republican presidential nominee and proven flip-flopping wishy-washy loser isn’t deeply involved in the campaign either, to my knowledge.
But conservative hero senator Mike Lee is up for reelection in a couple weeks in Utah, and Romney could unwittingly play a pivotal role in determining whether the upper chamber will retain one of its outspoken and principled limited government and pro-liberty leaders or if self-labeled “independent” Never Trump egg-head Evan McMullin will take Lee’s spot in Washington next January instead.
The difference between Lee and McMullin in an evenly divided senate could very well mean the difference between sidetracking senile Joe Biden’s evil schemes and months full of lots and lots of deal-making, secret side conferences and a ton of media appearances for the new “independent” senator from the Beehive State. How is this even possible?
In a piece titled “Utah emerges as wild card in battle for the Senate”, Alexander Bolton wrote at The Hill:
“If McMullin manages to pull off an upset, his pledge to not caucus with either Democrats or Republicans could throw the battle for control of the Senate into turmoil. If Republicans [and Democrats end up tied at 50-50 again], McMullin could still keep the Senate under Democratic control by voting for Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) as majority leader.
“Conversely, he could swing it to Republicans by affiliating with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) or simply not affiliating with either party, which would give Republicans a 50-to-49 seat majority with one unaffiliated senator in the chamber. ‘He’s in the catbird seat because as an Independent both sides are going to want to give him something’ to get his vote for determining the Senate majority in an evenly split chamber [said Richard Davis, an emeritus professor of political science at Brigham Young University].
“’I can’t imagine that he’s going to caucus with the Republicans, but he had to say that he wasn’t going to caucus with the Democrats to win over the very people he’s trying to win over right now,’ Davis said of the moderate Republicans who aren’t thrilled about voting for Lee but wouldn’t consider voting for a Democrat, either. ‘He could be in an extremely powerful situation if he gets to determine which way the Senate is organized, which party gets the majority,’ he added. ‘I think what he’s going to do is negotiate on Utah’s behalf, get things for Utah out of this.’”
Wow, this development, should it actually come to fruition, would be a nightmare. If McMullin were to pull off what would feel like a very unlikely upset – and the senate were divvied up into 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats, and McMullin – the relatively unknown Mormon candidate out of nowhere (McMullin) could practically write his own ticket in the next Congress. Whereas Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema both enjoyed outsized power in the current senate because of their opposition to ditching the filibuster tradition, McMullin would then be thought of as sort of a Democrat and sort of a Republican.
Which means Evan would not only have a seat at the table, he might just demand – and be granted – a free lunch paid for by both parties’ leaders at different times. McMullin could set the menu, determine the guest list, offer himself seconds and top it off with a big bowl of Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream if he played his power to the ultimate extreme.
And the key to everything might just be Mitt Romney. Yuck. Hurts just to say the words.
Bolton’s report suggested that whoever wins or loses in Utah could be helped or hurt by an endorsement from Magic Mitt and his own lukewarm brand of “let’s all get along” politics. Mike Lee was one of a handful of forthright conservatives who sided with former president Donald Trump in questioning the validity of the 2020 election, a position that Romney very much opposed. As one of the top Republican capitulators – and the only one who had voted to impeach Trump in the first Democrat-led witch hunt -- Mitt let it be known that he felt the Electoral College votes should be counted as normal and GOPers should just sit quietly by as the keys to the republic were turned over to a man like Joe Biden and his cackling veep sidekick, Kamala Harris.
Lee was right to speak up. Romney voted to impeach Trump a second time, too. The rest is history.
For their part, Lee’s campaign brains indicate that polls showing the race between the incumbent and McMullin being within the margin of error are way off and their man won’t suffer a scare come Election Night. Such confidence is natural from those overseeing a popular (in conservative circles) senator who shocked the world in 2010 by defeating an establishment senator (the late Bob Bennett) at the state GOP convention and then cruised to victory – twice.
But this year, rather than nominating one of their own to challenge Lee in a fair fight, Utah Democrats instead opted to throw the liberal party’s force behind “independent” McMullin, a move they figured could succeed if Utah’s wishy-washy Romney-types banded together with all Democrats to simply vote against Mike Lee. Liberals may have surmised it was the only way to get rid of Lee, even if they didn’t know anything about McMullin and the 2016 presidential candidate announced his plans to be the loneliest senator in Washington by not caucusing with either side.
This is bull crap, of course. Once in the capital, “Chucky” Schumer will grant no-name, no-resume McMullin anything he asks for in exchange for keeping the evil party at the controls of the place. It’s what Democrats do. I’d bet my house on it happening.
Why won’t Utah Republicans simply use their voter numbers advantage and return Lee to his post? Supposedly because Mike is viewed as being too conservative – and too close to Trump. Here’s thinking that, as president, Trump became more like Mike Lee than the other way around, but the Trump-haters in Utah and elsewhere don’t take it that way.
People forget Mike Lee was no huge Donald Trump fan in 2016, even calling for the Republican nominee to step aside when the infamous “locker room talk” tape surfaced a month before the election. Does this sound like the action of a non-principled, win-at-all-costs hyper-partisan?
Yet Democrats and Romney-ites make Lee out to be a Trumper beast who doesn’t care about anything other than returning the orange-man-bad to the White House. This is far from true. Lee is most decidedly conservative but has been known to forge his own path opposite Mitch McConnell’s leadership, which is one reason why conservatives admire him so much. Trading Lee for “independent” McMullin would actually decrease the legitimate amount of intra-party cooperation, not enhance it.
From what I can tell, McMullin is nothing but a political opportunist who wants power, not to change Washington. What’s his platform other than being anti-Trump?
Which is all the more reason why spineless Mitt Romney needs to get off his haunches and endorse his workplace colleague, Mike Lee. By vowing not to prefer anyone in this year’s senate race, Romney is silently siding with McMullin, since Mitt’s few fans will see it as a sign that he doesn’t respect Lee enough to say so publicly.
For a man seemingly possessed with his own legacy, Romney doesn’t appear to care whether the Republican party stands for anything other than cooperating with Democrats on “compromise” legislation that increases the size of the national debt and always leans center-left in its provisions, such as the bogus bipartisan “infrastructure” package that passed Congress last year, giving senile Joe a “win” at a time when his administration was just beginning its poll nosedive.
Only a small percentage of the infrastructure bill actually went towards roads, bridges and airports, the rest being devoted to Democrat pet issues. Romney affixed his name to it just so he could tell the media he works across the aisle. Mitt would do better for himself and the country by being more like Mike, wouldn’t he?
We’ll know in a few weeks if Senator Mike Lee is able to overcome a challenge from an idiot like Evan McMullin, or whether he’ll fall victim to Washington politics gone even more wrong. Mitt Romney can’t do much to help Republicans these days, but one thing he could do is take a lesson from other team members and pick the right guy in Utah, regardless of past disagreements with Donald Trump.
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