The Senate Is Losing One Of Its Few Remaining Moderate Republicans
In his announcement that he would not seek a second term, the senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, underlined the need for a new generation of leadership in the United States
Win McNamee / Getty images
On Wednesday, Utah senator Mitt Romney announced that he would not present himself to re -election in 2024. On the surface, the electoral impact of Romney’s decision is minimal – his seat should remain safely in republican hands. But it is always notable because it represents the departure of one of the few remaining republican senators who had a moderate voting file and / or the former president vocally, Donald Trump.
The Senate, of course, was a second (or, really, third) career for Romney. After a successful career in business during which he co -founded Bain Capital, Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002 – which is part of the long love history of the state of Bay with moderate republican governors. He presented himself twice to the presidency and won the republican appointment in 2012, losing against Barack Obama, president of the time, in the general elections.
It was the last time that the GOP has chosen a presidential candidate who was not Trump. Since 2016, republican voters have turned against the republicanism brand aligned with the establishment and have adopted Trump’s cheeky populism. In 2018, a year that saw a large number of moderate or anti-Trump republicans to leave Congress, Romney has buckled the global trend by being elected to the Utah Senate (where a large number of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Holy Days-including Romney itself-made the local Gop more to the asset of Trump than most). Since then, he vocally pronounced against the new party leadership. In particular, he voted to condemn Trump in both trials.
Romney also developed a moderate voting record, beating with the right wing of his party in votes ranging from the confirmation of judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to cancel Trump’s emergency declaration to finance the border wall. The Romney nomine DW score – a measure of ideology based on call votes, where 1 represents the most conservative and -1 represents the most liberal – is 0.288, which makes it more moderate than all current republican senators except three.
The two groups of republicans – Trump’s opponents and moderate ideological – are now endangered species, and Romney’s departure will further reduce the herd. Of the 17 Republicans who voted to dismiss or condemn Trump in one or the other of the dismissal, only six are still in the Congress, including Romney. And the number of Senate Republicans with DW nominees of nominees less than 0.300 is at least 40 years old.
Romney’s anti-Trump and moderate file may have indirectly contributed to its decision to retire, as it made it relatively unpopular to the republican voters of UTAH. According to a survey from August 7 to 14 of Dan Jones & Associates, only 56% of the registered republican voters of UTAH approved the professional performance of Romney. It may not seem too bad, but among the members of your own party, 56% is a fairly mediocre approval rating. (On the other hand, 81% of republican registered voters at national level have a favorable opinion on Trump, according to the latest survey of Quinnipiac University.)
Like Trump’s eminent criticism, former senator Jeff Flake did in 2018, Romney may have refused to present himself to re-election because he was afraid of losing in republican primary. The same survey asked questions about a hypothetical main correspondence, and Romney received 45% support from the Republicans. It is quite anemic for a holder, who is accustomed to the waltz at renomination.
On the other hand, no other survey candidate has obtained more than 7%, and only 27% said they would vote for another nameless candidate. In addition, the survey revealed that Romney’s approval rating among the Republicans was increasing; In May, only 40% had approved its performance. The Romney path towards renomination is therefore probably clearer today than it has been for a while, which makes the timing of the announcement curious. So maybe we should take Romney to the word when he quoted his age as a factor in his retirement video. (Romney is 76 years old and would have been 83 at the end of a second potential term.)
So what is the next step for the headquarters of the class I Senate of Utah? It is unlikely that Romney’s retirement is leading to a competitive general election next fall: even if UTAH turned to Democrats in the Trump era, it is still red enough for it to vote for more than 20 percentage points in 2020, and the Democrats have not won an election point on the state of the state in the state of Beehve since 1996. McMullin lost in the Sen.
The competition to watch will therefore be the republican primary of June 25 of the State – in particular, that the party candidate is more conservative and / or pro -Trump than Romney. So far, it seems that the answer is yes; The field of potential candidates does not have someone as iconoclastic as Romney. The president of the State House, Brad Wilson, who has already formed an exploratory committee, presents himself as a “conservative champion” and, in 2020, he presented a legislative resolution paying tribute to Trump after his first indictment. However, it can be the most pleasant option for old -fashioned Republicans; A second candidate, the mayor of Riverton, Trent Staggs, assaulted Romney for his support for “sensitivity” and the dismissal of Trump. And the Attorney General of Utah, Sean Reyes, who was co -president of the Trump re -election campaign in the state and tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 elections, is also a candidate.
But there is still a lot of time for a candidate of Romney to intervene. Utah still has a good number of Trump -Sceptical Republicans – for example, the former state representative, Becky Edwards, a republican who voted for President Biden and just lost a special primary election for the 2nd district of Utah. It is possible that one can emerge from the primary of the Senate if the Conservative / Pro-Trump vote is divided between several candidates. But of course, none of the alternatives has recognition of the name of Romney or the financial advantage. There is therefore no doubt that his retirement is a punch for the Republicans who do not like what happens to their party.
