Republican Senator Mitt Romney wants to retire from politics next year. In his party, he is one of the harshest critics of former President Trump – and was often alone in doing so.
The surprising news of Mitt Romney’s withdrawal had barely made the rounds when hordes of reporters besieged the senator’s office in the Capitol. “What made you do this?” is the obvious question.
It was a decision “mainly for reasons of age,” said the tall man with the distinctive gray temples: “At the end of my second term in office, I would be in my mid-80s.” His generation should now step down and make way for younger people.
The allusion was unmistakable: US President Joe Biden and his predecessor in office, Donald Trump, are currently the most promising candidates for a presidential candidacy – and they are 80 and 77 years old, respectively. Romney emphasized:
It would be great if both Biden and Trump withdrew.
The “last standing conservative”
Willard Mitt Romney, himself born in 1947, can look back on a long, multifaceted career: The lawyer and practicing Mormon was an investment manager, organizer of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, governor of Massachusetts and now, until the end of his term in office, a senator .
Romney has been struggling with his political home since it was shaped by Trump. “There’s no question that today’s Republican Party is being overshadowed by Donald Trump and his populist, demagogic wing,” says the man who liberals consider to be the “good conscience” of his party, the “last upright conservative.”
“Donald Trump wants us to believe that he is very, very smart. When it comes to foreign policy, for example, he is absolutely not,” criticizes Romney. Romney had made the former president his archenemy at the latest when he voted to convict the former head of state in both impeachment proceedings against Trump – to the chagrin of many of his party colleagues. Which Trump countered with caustic malice at every opportunity. “Mitt is a terribly failed candidate,” Trump says, referring to 2012, when Romney lost to Barack Obama in the presidential election.
When Romney ran for the Senate in 2018, he said he begged Trump for a voter recommendation and even threw himself on his knees to do so. “I made so much more money than Mitt. One of my stores is worth more than Mitt,” Trump ranted – and so on, and so on.
A lone fighter against Trump
Romney always let the attacks roll off his back. But the fact that old political companions had not stood up to him more protectively had already annoyed the lone fighter. Romney’s former 2012 campaign manager, Stuart Stevens, chatted on CNN: Romney was surprised that more party colleagues didn’t take his side.
Other prominent Trump critics within the party, such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, have long since fallen by the wayside. Romney, who will retain his Senate seat until next year’s election, is likely to remain true to himself. “Will you support Trump if he becomes the Republican nominee?” asks a reporter. Romney’s answer: “Absolutely not.”