Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney announced Wednesday that he will not run for reelection to the Senate and called for a “new generation of leaders” as he criticized both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
In a video message, Romney outlined a range of what he described as critical issues, including rising national debt and the climate crisis, and said “neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront those issues.”
The Utah Republican’s decision will mark the departure of a distinctive voice from the Senate of a lawmaker willing to take on his own party. Romney, who was the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, has long been a rare member of the Republican party who has been an outspoken critic of Trump.
Given Romney's unabashed criticism of Trump, it earned him "strange new respect" from those who assassinated his character (or echoed the invective) when he was the GOP nominee for President in 2012. In a way, that particular campaign laid the groundwork for a Trump candidacy in 2016. Think about it. The prevailing sentiment among the majority of Republicans in '16 was that they grew weary of the borderline slanderous attacks levied on the party's past presidential candidates (amplified by willing accomplices in the media) with the subject of those attacks not punching pack nearly as hard. I often think about how dramatically different America would look were Romney elected POTUS in 2012 then reelected in '16. I'm under no delusion that there'd be zero divisiveness, but the political environment would almost assuredly be more dignified.
In the end, I appreciate Romney's sentiment of a call for a "new generation of leaders." It's very clear that the Baby Boomer wing of Congress is woefully out of touch in how to govern a country which is changing at a breakneck pace. And while there was a decent chance Romney would've been upended in the GOP primary next year anyways, it shouldn't undermine his sentiment that D.C. needs to get younger.
Godspeed, Sen. Romney.
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