The Republican opposition to President Donald Trump is poised to get a new champion: Mitt Romney https://t.co/neVJizjorn pic.twitter.com/LyxkEczbl5
— CNN (@CNN) January 3, 2018
The Republican opposition to Trump doesn’t exist https://t.co/dhgXu977h3
— JeremyConstantinople (@smartflexin) January 3, 2018
Yay! In @MittRomney, we’d get a GOP Senate nominee who is:
1. Not a sexual predator
2. Not Ignorant
3. Not Homophobic
4. Not Racist
5. Not Misogynist
6. Not Inexperienced
7. Not divisive
8. Not embarrassing
9. Not a Bannon puppet
10. Has good teeth
11. Has great hair
Run, Mitt! https://t.co/DYbjQafSwX— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) January 2, 2018
He *looks* the part of a TV-drama senator, and is not sufficiently interested in human interaction to have committed sexual battery! Yay for our side! Since Navarro is not an idiot, I have to assume this is sarcasm on her part.
The metric through which progressives can best judge the bona fides of their new NeverTrump pals from the right is how seriously those new allies take the laughable concept of Mitt Romney, Man of Principle.
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) January 3, 2018
It's a bit silly to claim LOL Corker/Romney will vote with Trump 99% of the time, as if this is the end of the discussion.
Yes, that's true.
But it has value when GOP Senators state clearly that Trump is unfit for office. https://t.co/BivUWJoOYb
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 3, 2018
… It is useful, because a Romney run — and victory — could set an example for other congressional Republicans to follow when it comes to acting as a check on Trump’s many excesses, from his dangerous international bluster, to his self-dealing and corruption, to his contempt for norms and the rule of law. If they don’t follow that example, their enabling of these Trump excesses will be thrown into sharper relief.
That is, this might be the case, if Romney is true to his own past statements about Trump. Let’s not let this get memory-holed: In his big March 2016 speech against Trump, Romney flatly and unequivocally declared Trump unfit to serve as president. Will Romney reiterate this sentiment, when he’s running for Senate?…
Spoiler alert from a Masshole, Mr. Sargent: Nope! Willard will fold like a cheap lawn chair, because that’s his signature legislative tactic. Although he will look very stateman-like as he makes his excuses for letting Trump and the Oval Office Trumplodytes do whatever they damned well choose.
People forget. I will never forget the smile on Romney's face after he interrupted the 2012 presidential campaign to politicize Benghazi less than 24 hours after it happened. https://t.co/7vysoxDrXK
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) January 3, 2018
Adam L Silverman
I think it all depends on what they do with the MittBot’s operating system and software upgrades.
Baud
Obama’s 2012 victory is still one of my happiest moments. I was hoping to outdo that in 2016.
lamh36
Ann Navarro is not an idiot, but she def a partisan Repub and just was waiting for someone she can get behind other than Trump.
Romney is just such a person for her. So I fully expect her to be trumpetting him ALL THE TIME…
She may give good soundbite, but I don’t trust Ann Navarro one bit.
lamh36
https://twitter.com/maddow/status/948697699464949763
Baud
BTW, many others have already pointed this out better than I have, but notice how no one in the media has asked Mitt to take up knitting instead.
Baud
@lamh36: Just arrest Nunes now and get it over with.
Adam L Silverman
Well this seems perfectly normal:
Mary G
Mitt was a shameless liar who pretended to be a true conservative during the primaries and pivoted to playing a reasonable centrist the second he clinched the nomination. When everyone said he won the first debate I thought Obama was so shocked by all the lying he didn’t know what to do.
But Jennifer Rubin still loves him and wants him to fix the Republican party or start a new party without all the assholes. That wouldn’t fill the seats in a junior high school classroom.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: yes.noted in this camp as well. growl.
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: Pretty much what I speculated on in the previous thread. This is the polite “you need to get your guy under control and to back off” meeting. If that doesn’t work things will get ugly.
batguano
@Baud: That’s a shame, I bet he could knit a hell of a scarf.
ETA: Provided someone knitted it for him and he just had to finish the final few stitches
eponymous
I had a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, Ana Navarro would go all the way and reject the GOP. Crap. Looks like she is swooning girlishly over Mitten’s manly jaw and broad, broad shoulders.
different-church-lady
GOP SHOPPER: Do you have any bone-in noodles today?
GROCER: I’ll check the back…
debbie
Ana, he’s also got better skin. Anyone would.
Baud
@batguano: 47% of the people want free scarves.
different-church-lady
@lamh36: Well, someone’s gotta take over Jennifer Rubin’s old schtick…
debbie
@Mary G:
I still don’t see conservatives at large (ie, evangelicals) voting for a Mormon.
batguano
@Baud: He could turn around and secure a $100 million loan using the promised nearly complete scarf as collateral.
Caroln
Was it only just a year ago that Mitt was invited to dine and grovel at Trump’s table for a cabinet position?
eponymous
I love eclecticbrotha. I will never forget that smirk Mitt wore when he was striding off the stage, all but rubbing his hands together on how he would exploit the deaths of Americans.
debbie
On the other hand, all Dems need to do is paper the country with copies of that photo of his frogs’ legs dinner with Trump. Biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen.
Miss Bianca
@debbie: Well, I’m not so sure about that. They voted for the Anti-Christ in overwhelming droves. Oh, wait. You’re right – a *Mormon* just *might* be a step too far.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: They have no issues, however, voting for a moron.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: my guess is that it’s more of a “your guy is corrupt and going down, and you don’t want to be anywhere near him when he does”. Nunes’ corruption is so obvious, it’s almost certainly beyond ‘get your guy to chill’.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Good point!
cain
Please proceed, Governor.
debbie
@Jeffro:
Nunes needs to realize he’s totally out of Mueller’s league and should retreat while he still can.
eponymous
I was just reading that today was some imposed deadline by Nunes to require DOJ/FBI to turn over all records relating to the dossier. Is there a chance Nunes was called in so he could be told to go fuck himself? That would be nice.
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
NIce president you got there, evangelicals. Just the kind of person you want representing Christians everywhere, right? How’s that ten commandments working out for ya?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Willard Mittens Romney
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
Why the hell would you fuck Trump if you had a choice? If your husband is an asshole, would you just fuck Trump? I’m sure there are plenty of other eligible people worth copulating with, jeezus. Not a clear opportunist..
TS
@lamh36: I so hope Rachel doesn’t spend her whole show building up to no more than is in this tweet.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Willard Mittens Romney
TS
@cain: I doubt that any woman, outside of the wives, has. Had to marry 3 of them to get any at all.
Jeffro
@debbie: Nunes needs to flee to Russia, now, if he doesn’t want to do some serious jail time
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Can you imagine the hysteria if Al Gore or any Dem had done that
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Jeffro
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: not really all that different from Trumpov, except for the tweeting, eh?
Adam L Silverman
@cain: There’s actually 613, though only about 111 or so are actually capable of being kept in 2017.
All commandments matter!
Adam L Silverman
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: They still haven’t quite gotten all the software, including the operating system, debugged.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: I have no idea.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
How could Mitt start a Republican Party without the assholes? He couldn’t be a member.
Mary G
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: You forgot “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.”
Adam L Silverman
@TS: She’ll do 45 minutes on the history of meetings with the Speaker of the House.
Yarrow
Reminder that there is already a Democrat running for the Senate seat in Utah: Jenny Wilson, a fifth generation Utahn.
SiubhanDuinne
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
You forgot “Binders full of women!”
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Joooooos are good with money.
I swear, any of these remarks would have finished the career of any Dem, but because republicans have a bottomless free pass in the media, IOKIYAR.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lamh36: Ana Navarro’s list:
Willard went birther on at least one occasion (“nobody ever asked to see my birth certificate– ha ha ha*”) and had all kinds of rhetoric about Obama not really being one of “us”, and brought trump into his campaign to make robocalls to WWC voters in MI and OH. So I guess we’re back to the old GOP distinction between being racist, and being willing to use racism to score votes. I didn’t by it in 1988 with Poppy, I didn’t buy it with Willard. I don’t buy it now.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@SiubhanDuinne: Best Halloween costume – evah (photo)
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Chyron HR
@cain:
Would you believe… nine and a half?
aimai
@Adam L Silverman: Christ the accusation that Clinton did it too–by not doing it–is a miracle of bothsidersness.
Gin & Tonic
Bunch of interesting photos in this article.
Roger Moore
@cain:
Remember, these women are already married to Trump’s “friends”, so they already have proven their poor taste in men.
Turgidson
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
There was a brief bit of alarm among the Beltway twits that it appeared the GOP nominee for president had received his information only from the GOP’s reality-challenged fever swamps. And that this was probably not a good thing.
How quaint.
But then again, Obama didn’t use a private email server. So the media had a few minutes of air time to spend on things like this.
cokane
while it’s important to remember that Trump is a special kind of dangerous — for example the North Korea shit — Republicans are the real problem. A Romney presidency gives you Gorsuch, the tax bill and probably complete Obamacare repeal as well. That whole party needs to be driven as far from power as possible for a decent chunk of time.
FDRLincoln
My wife met Kris Kobach today. She says he is very handsome and charismatic in person, friendly, engaging. She said if she didn’t know he was an evil SOB, she would have liked him.
She thinks he will be president someday and it scares her because he could be a smart, handsome, charismatic Trump.
TS
@Adam L Silverman: Ugh – I fear this may happen. Sometimes I like her history lessons – do not want this one.
cokane
@eponymous: lol is this a play on High Noon?
SFAW
@debbie:
Hey Nunes, you corrupt moron:
Here’s how YOU should spell retreat. I made it into a cheer, so you can remember it better.
“Gimme an S! Gimme an E! Gimme a P-P-U!”
and so on
ETA: And see if you can get Rohrabacher to one-up you.
SenyorDave
OBAMA: Please proceed governor.
One of the great moments in the 2012 debates. I remember thinking how effing cool Obama was, especially given his lackluster first debate.
debbie
@Chyron HR:
“I know the Ten Commandments better than any God!”
cokane
@SenyorDave: y’know, it’s a small moment, but that first debate was a key moment in our politics. National media pretty much roundly gave the “victory” to Romney, despite it being some of the most blatant lying I had seen up to that point.
This is what I think threw Obama off so much, he was expecting to debate someone who would genuinely argue for cutting taxes and entitlements, while Romney basically promised all the same bullshit that Trump would come to campaign on.
chris
@FDRLincoln:
Nightmarish thought!
Cheryl Rofer
Speculation on Twitter is running to Devin Nunes’s behavior, but I am wondering about those Dallas Morning News articles about Russian funding for the RNC.
efgoldman
@debbie:
In Utah it won’t matter. Mormons win. The shock would be if Mittbot ran and lost.
Librarian
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Don’t forget the airplane windows thing and the horses and bayonets thing.
Manyakitty
@FDRLincoln: That is terrifying.
Turgidson
@cokane:
If the economic collapse in 08 and the Iraq war didn’t accomplish that (they were back in power all over the place TWO FUCKING YEARS later), I don’t even think the Trumpocalypse can. Even if we get our very best case scenario and Trump leaves office in disgrace relatively soon, the rest of the GOP will stagger on and probably be allowed by the idiot media to rebrand itself, yet again, as something quite different from Trumpism. Just as they did when Bush left the scene and they were allowed to pretend to give a shit about the deficit again within hours of Obama taking office, and teabaggers were considered a new, totally not astroturfed, group of concerned citizens. Rather than the racist knuckledragging loyal GOP dipshits they so very obviously were.
And pissed off white asshole (mostly) men will still vote for that embarrassment of a political party.
I’d love to be wrong.
Manyakitty
@Cheryl Rofer: I wonder if that recording with Ryan, McMullin, and several other republicans talking about how Trump and Rohrabacher got paid by Russia might be part of it, too. It’s been in the periphery of the news lately.
TriassicSands
@lamh36:
Hold on, there. If Ana Navarro is, in 2018, a partisan Republican, then she is by definition an idiot. Strip away Trump and we’re left with the Republican Party and Republican policies and you have to be an idiot to be loyal to that party and subscribe to those policies. If Romney runs and disavows the party, their disastrous tax cut, their racism, etc., then I may reconsider my opinion. And he probably won’t win a seat in the Senate.
Frankensteinbeck
@Turgidson:
Republican voters are not going to abandon the Republican Party in any significant numbers. The national press is always going to pretend that Republicans are reasonable, strong adults, Democrats are hysterical children, and racism does not exist. However, we outnumber them, and that difference is growing constantly. What we need is to motivate our side. How to do that is a good question, but damn, signs have been hopeful lately.
Turgidson
@Frankensteinbeck:
Agreed. But motivating our side once the battle with Trump is hopefully won will be the big challenge. You know the GOP base will immediately adopt the next Democratic Presidential nominee as the new antichrist and crawl over broken glass to vote for some GOP asshole. We need to figure out how to win those elections too.
TS
@TriassicSands: And he probably won’t win a seat in the Senate
If he is the GOP nominee in Utah – he will win a seat in the Senate.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Librarian: Oh gawd! The dancing horse “Rafalca” was hilarious.
And his hideous stoopid wife:
Manyakitty
@Frankensteinbeck: The easiest way to motivate our side is to look outside the white voters. Democrats in Alabama engaged the AA community and THOSE VOTERS made the difference. God damn…This is our chance to do better. Let’s build a strong and diverse base and grow from there.
Outreach followed by action will save the day.
TriassicSands
@TS:
That failure was coningent upon what I wrote before about his disavowing the GOP and its policies. Of course, he won’t do that, so, yes, he will win. I guess he might even win if he did disavow the party. Republican voters can be quite flexible.
Frankensteinbeck
Per the OP and Navarro’s list:
1. Not that we know of (I doubt he is, honestly.)
2. Romney is pretty damn ignorant, and starts sounding stupid fast when he opens his mouth.
3. Holy shit, is Romney homophobic. He’s a devout Mormon.
4. Holy shit, is Romney racist. He’s a devout Mormon.
5. Holy shit, is Romney misogynist. He’s a devout Mormon.
6. Romney does have a little experience. Mostly experience losing.
7. See Romney’s speech about the 47% for his divisiveness.
8. Romney was a nonstop fail parade of candidate gaffes that could only look good compared to Trump.
9. I’m guessing Bannon hates Mormons, so okay.
10. I guess his teeth are fine.
11. I guess his hair is fine.
To know Romney is to hate him. As his sheer robotic blandness fades into the mists of memory, it’s awfully easy for people to project onto him traits they’ll find out he doesn’t have as soon as he’s in the spotlight again.
Frankensteinbeck
@Manyakitty:
I 100% agree. I have heard the DNC was actually heavily involved in the Alabama AA GOTV system, and in Virginia. Let it be true, that we have learned these lessons.
Manyakitty
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s all or nothing this time. We learn or the country dies.
chris
Call to action.
Mike in NC
In 2012 Jennifer Rubin and Kathleen Parker repeatedly swooned over Willard Rmoney on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post, so no doubt they can do it again.
trollhattan
@SenyorDave:
That was a great moment, and perfectly bookmarked Sully’s on-screen ungluing after debate #1.
Willard’s Willard and the jerb is his if he wants. Utah.
Maybe Cliven Bundy will challenge him in the primary.
Adam L Silverman
@aimai: It’s Richard Wolff. But if even a 1/3, let alone a 1/2 of what he’s reported in this book is true…
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: What’s that four word phrase again?
Adam L Silverman
@TS: After the break we’ll discuss the changes in coffee service over the years during meetings with Speakers of the House.
And we’re back. Thank you so much for staying with us. Did you know that Sam Rayburn liked his coffee black? Neither my staff, nor I did until we started looking into this late this afternoon. This was the norm for decades until Tip O’Neill who, according to my good friend Chris Matthews, liked a shot of Irish whiskey in his coffee to fortify his spirits as Chris likes to say. Etc, etc, etc…
Ella in New Mexico
You guys can all mock Mitt Romney running in Utah all you want.
I, for one, look forward to an America where the difference between my candidate and his Republican counterpart can can best illuminated by a yard sign stating “PEE HERE: Dogs Against Romney”as opposed to the 11th dimensional chess game that has been the Trump/Russia/Koch/Mercer shitshow
The Lodger
@Ella in New Mexico: Now, there is a D.A.R. I can support!
J R in WV
Four word phrase… hmmm..?
Tick Tock Muther Fuckers!!? That the one?