Mitt Romney's Legacy in Politics

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)

Yesterday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) announced that after one-term, he will retire from the US Senate at the end of next year, foregoing a potentially difficult fight for a second term.  Romney has been more critical of former President Donald Trump than virtually any Republican currently in Congress, the only Republican to have voted to impeach the former president twice.  Given Trump's loyalty from his party base, even in Utah (which has been less enthused with Trump than much of the country), Romney would've faced a tough reelection.  As a junior senator, the 76-year-old multimillionaire seemed more interested in staying home with his wife Ann and their 24 grandchildren than pushing for a second term in a caucus he feels like an isolated figure within.

Romney's retirement opens up a seat, one that will surely be filled with someone more loyal to former President Trump than Romney has been.  Utah has a weirdly long history of not electing members of the House to the Senate (the last time they did it was 1940), so I'm curious whether people like Blake Moore or Burgess Owens will attempt to end that streak.  Former Congressman Jason Chaffetz will be tempted to run, as could State House Speaker Brad Wilson.  Given it's a presidential year and it's a very red state, winning the Republican Primary is tantamount to winning the general election, so Utah is guaranteed to have a rightward swing with its next senator, certainly not filled with someone who would, say, confirm one of President Biden's Supreme Court Justices (which Romney did).

But I think the better question is-what exactly is the legacy Mitt Romney will leave behind in public office?  Romney has been running for public office since the mid-1990's, and given his advanced age, he surely will never hold public office again.  Looking at Romney's career, it's hard not to be struck by a sliminess that was kind of his signature, someone who was willing to buck pretty much every trend if it meant a chance at his lifelong dream of running for president.

It was obvious when he ran for the Senate in 1994 that he was someone who would turn on a dime.  Two years after supporting Democratic Sen. Paul Tsongas in the presidential primaries, Romney ran against Tsongas former Democratic colleague Ted Kennedy, and at one point looked like he might beat him.  But Kennedy was able to go after two issues that would haunt Romney for the remainder of his career: his complicated history of mistreating workers with Bain Capital, and his inability to stick to a specific issue or show consistency in his public beliefs.

Romney in his first Senate campaign

This was true in the decades that came.  In 2002, he worked blue-collar jobs to show he was in touch with the common in his gubernatorial campaign against State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, a misguided move that nearly cost him the election (he was helped by O'Brien's mismanagement of the state finances during the stock market downturn of the early 2000's).  During his time as governor, he passed a relatively progressive public healthcare option, and did not pushback on the state's progressive views on abortion and gay marriage.

But that changed as Romney's term continued, and he turned his eyes to the Republican presidential nomination.  Suddenly, he espoused support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, and adopted anti-choice rhetoric.  This coupled with crumbling approval ratings meant that he was a surefire loser in the 2006 governor's race, and instead chose not to run (his lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, got clobbered for her association with him).  Romney, who had spent a decade being a moderate voice and a bridge-builder so that he could get a major office in Massachusetts, found himself taking hardline stances inline with the Reagan-Bush wing of the party (which he had once said he wanted to end), so that he could win over presidential voters.

It took two cycles, but he eventually did that.  The Mitt Romney of 2012 would've been unrecognizable to the man of 1994 who ran against Ted Kennedy, but with Romney-that's kind of the point.  He was never consistent in his public beliefs, and that made it easy for two successive presidents to paint him as disingenuous.  Barack Obama ran on him being a heartless corporate stooge, someone who would say anything to win reelection.  Indeed, Romney proved that in 2012 when he embraced the birther movement by accepting an endorsement from its most prominent proponent, Donald Trump.  In 2016, after denying efforts to get him to run for the presidency for a third time, Romney publicly courted Trump to become Secretary of State...only to find himself denied once again, humiliated by Trump.  His run for the Senate in 2018 was meant to be something of a change of pace in Washington, a different type of Republican, and while he was better than most Republicans, his votes were that of a hardline Republican.  He voted for the Constitution and the law of the land; he impeached Trump twice, he marched with Black Lives Matter, he never once denied that Joe Biden won in 2020 (and he admonished several of his colleagues, specifically JD Vance & Josh Hawley, in a Senate exit interview).  But he remained a tepid coward on many issues.  He supported the Respect for Marriage Act...while still making sure everyone knew he didn't support gay marriage.  He refused to back the Equality Act, and publicly pushed the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.  

Romney was better than most Republicans, but honestly on some levels worse.  This was a man who clearly knew better, knew what his party was up to, but had no standing principles.  Watching Romney for decades in public life, the thing that has always bothered me about him is that, other than his Mormon faith and a clear devotion to his wife Ann...I don't know what the real Mitt Romney thinks.  In 2012 it became a running joke that Romney wouldn't commit to a viewpoint (President Obama made this a successful campaign attack).  This continued while he was in office, fluctuating between criticisms of Trump the person and totally embracing his ideology.  Romney is better than the average Republican, but he's also an empty suit.  He's someone who knew better, and simply craved power, and was willing to say whatever it took to get it.  That sometimes meant he was fighting for justice because that was the best look, but he was not someone of principle that you could count on.  In many ways, his "do whatever it takes to win" attitude was best embodied by his enemy Donald Trump, someone who adopted it in his 2016 campaign trail, but unlike Romney, was able to genuinely connect with his base & therefore win.  If John McCain left behind a maverick's legacy whose roughest points were glossed over by biographers leaning into his war hero roots, the man who succeeded him as the Republican standard-bearer will likely be remembered as the last major Republican to stand up for Trump...a far too kind legacy for someone who spent almost all of his life in public life making each decision based on the latest poll.