Mitt Romney says he would vote for Democrats over Trump and Ramaswamy...

 

Mitt Romney. The Hill/AP.

Mitt Romney said in an interview that he would vote for Democrats over Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy. The Hill. Romney said he would vote for any of the other Republicans running besides Trump and Ramaswamy and said he would vote for some Democrats. He also said that the Democrats might be a better choice than Joe Biden as well. Romney has already announced that he is not going to run for his Senate seat in 2024 and said that both parties need younger leadership. Romney has been at odds with Donald Trump for years now and his biographer has said that he may go so far as to endorse Joe Biden. 

My Comment:

Fairly slow news day this Saturday but I thought I would write a quick post up about this. Man has Mitt Romney fallen down in my opinion of him. To be fair, there are candidates I wouldn't support in the 2024 election, most notably Nikki Haley for wanting to ban anonymous internet accounts and Chris Christie for being anti-gun, but even in those scenarios I would not be voting for a Democrat. I would either vote for the least crazy third party candidate or I would write in Donald Trump. No way in hell would I vote for Joe Biden. 

What is crazy is that I actually defended Romney back in the day and voted for him as well. I regret it now, almost as much as I regret voting for John McCain. Were they a lesser evil than Barack Obama? Probably, but that doesn't mean much. They absolutely would not have done the positive things that Donald Trump did during his tenure as President. 

I do think it's clear that Romney represents the old neocon wing of the Republican Party and that wing has lost most of its power and influence. Romney says he isn't running in 2024, but my guess is that he understands he would likely be primaried out in Utah if he had tried to run. People just don't like what he has to sell anymore. It's not so much because he betrayed Trump, it's the reason why he did so, and that's because he's a neocon warmonger. 

It's also why Romney doesn't like Vivek Ramaswamy either. Ramaswamy has many of the same political beliefs as Trump does and it does go to show that it's not Trump's personality that these folks hate, it's his beliefs. They don't want someone that won't start wars or allow illegal immigration and that's why they hate both Ramaswamy and Trump. 

Regardless, Romney is on his way out and won't be politically relevant for much longer. Once he is out of the senate the only way anyone will pay attention to him is on cable news, which nobody watches now anyways. He doesn't have the power to play kingmaker in the 2024 race. 

With that being said, I do think he is right that both parties need new blood and that leadership is far too old. Trump is mostly getting a pass because he's both extremely popular and pretty spry for his age, but the leadership of both parties is getting up there in years. Mitch McConnel, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden himself are getting too old to lead and it's time someone replaced them. Romney is 76 but he's right that he's getting up there in age too. If that was the real reason he's dropping out I would praise him for that at least.