Mitt Romney let his nation down when they needed him most, and little seems to have changed since then.
Like Rip Van Winkle, Romney has had to fall into a long sleep since he lost the 2012 election to Barack Obama. He doesn’t realize that the 2012 Republican Party no longer exists, as he remembers and hopes.
Bitter over his failures as a conservative and Republican, he now takes out his jealousy on his own party by attacking Donald Trump.
In 2012, Romney hired an incumbent who at the start of the election year had just 42% approval and 57% disapproval on the economy, numbers that create overwhelming electoral advantages over failed presidents.
In fact, there has been no sitting president since 1940 was re-elected with an unemployment rate above 7.5 percent… until Obama did it against Romney in 2012, when unemployment was 8.8 percent.
For Romney, this was a golden opportunity to restore GOP control of the executive branch, and he choked. Badly.
Created by political analysts lists on lists speculating on the reasons for Romney’s unnecessary defeat, but the outcome basically came down to his inability to connect with ordinary people. Farmers in Pennsylvania and manufacturers in Ohio simply couldn’t connect with a guy who was ashamed of his wealth and ashamed of living the American dream.
He failed to improve the GOP’s performance among minorities and performed dismally with blue-collar workers.
By losing what could have been an extremely simple election in 2012, Romney not only let his party down; he failed his country.
Because elections have consequences, Romney’s mistake had real consequences for our country, including the disastrous Iran deal, ongoing healthcare system dysfunction, the rise of ISIS, and threats from North Korea.
Romney is indirectly responsible for each of these defeats because he was unable to win. The entertaining thing is, he probably could have won easily if he had been as enthusiastically critical of Obama during the campaign as he is of President Trump now.
Instead of responsibly admitting his own failures, Romney, filled with jealousy, took inexpensive shots at the man whose victory in the 2016 election exposed Romney’s political ineptitude to the world.
Donald Trump showed the Republican Party how to defeat Democrats, and he did it by using the exact opposite strategy of the one Romney used just four years earlier.
President Trump won by appealing to the same voters who were unimpressed by Romney, by being proud of his business success and by being an uncompromising supporter of America. But first he had to nip Romney’s 2016 candidacy in the bud, lest the Republican Party repeat the mistake it made in 2012.
Romney was the first casualty of President Trump’s march to the White House and was forced to halt his search for another potential nominee as Donald Trump made sure GOP voters would not forget Romney’s previous dismal performance. He probably still feels a little resentful that he didn’t get the Secretary of State job he interviewed for, which was one of the best decisions President Trump made during the transition.
Romney embodies the cautious lethargy that kept Republicans from ending the national nightmare that was Obama’s presidency, and now he allows personal jealousy to drive him to repeat his failed policies. Let’s hope it will be as effective now as it was in 2012.
Martha Boneta is a Washington native, policy advisor and nationally recognized farmer who operates her family farm, Liberty Farm
