Patrick Semansky/AP Photo
Senator Mitt Romney arrives before President Trump’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, February 4, 2020.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney surely deserves the praise that Americans not subject to Trumpian epistemic closure are awarding him for his vote to convict the president for abuse of power. As the only sitting Republican senator who’s been the party’s presidential standard-bearer, he also personifies more than any of his peers the GOP of yore—more country club than Rust Belt dive, dismissive of the 47 percent but still open to occasional violations of baseline constitutional standards.
By casting himself into the Republican wilderness, Romney enters a peculiar political space. His partner on this otherwise uninhabited desert island, it seems to me, is Michael Bloomberg—like Romney, appalled by Trump’s violation of nearly every civilized norm and the dangers Trump poses to the nation’s democratic essence; like Romney, a staunch defender of financialized capitalism and a foe of social democratic reforms; and like Romney, willing to put a lot (in Bloomberg’s case, money; in Romney’s, a political career as a Republican) on the line to rein Trump in.
In fact, Romney has more in common with Bloomberg than he does with his fellow Republicans. And in fact, Bloomberg has more in common with Romney than he does with his fellow Democrats (of course, in Bloomberg’s case they’re only recently “fellow”). Democrats thinking of voting for Bloomberg might want to mull this over.
