The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins is out with the first excerpt of his highly anticipated biography of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), timed to the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s announcement today that he will not seek re-election.

Why it matters: Romney — the only GOP senator to vote to convict former President Trump in his first impeachment trial — was brutally honest about his Republican colleagues over the course of two years of interviews with Coppins, a fellow Utahn.

Highlights:

  • On Jan. 2, 2021, Romney texted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to warn about extremist threats law enforcement had been tracking in connection with pro-Trump protests on Jan. 6. McConnell never responded.
  • Romney kept a tally of the dozen-plus times that Republican senators privately expressed solidarity with his criticism of Trump. “You’re lucky,” McConnell once told him. “You can say the things that we all think.”
  • Romney shared a unique disgust for Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who he thought were too smart to believe Trump won the 2020 election but “put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”
  • He also was highly critical of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who reinvented his persona to become a Trump acolyte after publishing a best-selling memoir about the working class that Romney loved. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney said.

Zoom in: After House impeachment managers finished a presentation about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, McConnell told Romney: “They nailed him.”

  • Taken aback, Romney said Trump would argue he was just investigating alleged corruption by the Bidens — the subject of House Republicans’ present-day impeachment inquiry.
  • “If you believe that,” McConnell replied, “I’ve got a bridge I can sell you.”

The bottom line: Romney said he never felt comfortable at a Senate GOP conference lunch after voting to convict Trump in 2020. “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” he told Coppins a few months after Jan. 6.

  • atzanteol
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    1 year ago

    You don’t have to like politics. Most people don’t. It’s a nasty business of deals and compromise.

    But that’s how it works.

    You have two people trying to decide on where to have dinner. One wants a vegan restaurant because “beef is murder” and the other wants a burger place because, I dunno - “strongly held belief here”. If they can’t pick a place they both starve. What the hyper-partisans want is for all of us to starve rather than cave. “Better dead than red” as they said in the '50s.

    I’d rather end up with a mediocre salad with “turkey sausage” (the worst of sausages) than nothing at all. That’s politics.

    • asteroidnova@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      What you’re arguing for is, essentially, enlightened centrism. An enlightened centrist will view one side wanting to kill 1000 people and another side wanting to kill 0 people and say we need to meet somewhere in the middle. You can see how that’s actually not good, I trust.

      • atzanteol
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        1 year ago

        Oh - we get to just straw-man each other?

        In that case, what you’re arguing for is, essentially, fanatic partisan terrorism to get your own way justified by your self-righteous beliefs.

        • asteroidnova@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Whatever you need to think to be able to sleep at night dude. You were arguing for enlightened centrism which doesn’t work and isn’t good nor ethical.

          • atzanteol
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            1 year ago

            And you’re arguing for fanatic partisanship that will lead to the decay of our democracy. 'night!

            • asteroidnova@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              You’re arguing that Nazis are good people who should be heard. C’mon man. Even you can’t think that.

              • atzanteol
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                1 year ago

                I’m not - and if you think I’m arguing that then you’re not arguing in good faith. You’re just arguing against a straw-man.

    • Melllvar@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      It is perfectly reasonable and fair to judge someone’s character by the company they keep. Particularly if they know the company is disreputable.