Mitt Romney has entered the 2016 presidential contest. Not as a candidate — though that may have been the subtext of his aggressively anti-Trump announcement yesterday.
Romney held a press conference yesterday at which he denounced the Donald in sometimes direct — and accurate — language.
Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press.
This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.
Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.
NBC described the speech as a turning point, but that gives the former presidential candidate too much credit. While his speech indicates growing disenchantment among the party establishment, the rebellion remains small.
On the surface, Romney’s comments seem an antidote to the crassness of the Trump campaign. Trump is a bully, a demagogue and a con man, and it is good that someone of Romney’s stature called him out.
But as The New York Times reminds us, Romney waited to denounce Trump until "after Mr. Trump’s commanding electoral victories in seven states on Tuesday" — which have made a Trump nomination the most likely outcome this year — and "may make it (I.e., a functional challenge to Trump) futile."
The Times also offered this reminder of Romney’s own complicity in this moment of Trump: "Mr. Romney eagerly sought and publicized his endorsement by Mr. Trump in 2012, even as Mr. Trump heckled and harassed Mr. Obama with accusations that he was not born in the United States."
Romney’s attack was disingenuous in numerous other ways. Accusing Trump of being a con artist, Romney conveniently ignores his own chameleon-like ways as a malleable political shapeshifter who blows with the political winds. And Romney holds up Reagan as his paragon of conservatism, virtue and honor, citing a 1964 Reagan speech in which the future president called the impending election a stark choice between liberty and government control.
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Reagan’s "statement of principles," however, was based on an invented dichotomy, a massive straw man that relied on a mischaracterization of Lyndon Johnson’s plans — a positing of a false choice between freedom and communism that was never in play. Reagan was, in many ways, a huckster like Trump, with a mean streak rivaling Ted Cruz. His grandfatherly image notwithstanding, he knew how to stick in the knife and turn. Reagan’s appeal was built on the fear white voters felt toward the changes in demographics and the new-found freedoms of African-Americans. He relied on coded race language designed to fan the flames if anger and to make it clear that he knew who the bad guys were. (See the language he used in his attacks on public housing and welfare, or his decision to launch his 1980 presidential bid in Philadelphia, Miss.)
The history of the modern conservative movement, more broadly, is a history of reaction to race, of the manipulation of white (and mostly Christian) fear and anger, and of selfishness dressed up in the language of property rights. There are many principled conservatives out there, to be sure, and debating their ideas about the size and roll of government is necessary. But much of the dialogue has centered on fear of the other — a fear far too many politicians are willing to stoke and exploit.
Romney was guilty of this in 2012 with his self-deportation nonsense and his argument that people only voted for Obama for the free stuff. Romney spoke in code — just as everyone on the 2016 GOP candidates (save one) has been doing. The lone exception, Trump, has shed the code and has opted for full-on demagoguery.
So, while there are policy differences among the remaining three front-runners — Trump is a protectionist on trade, for instance — the differences are actually not that big. And while Trump has been the most direct in his racism and xenophobia, all three have made suspicion of the other a central plank in their arguments.
Romney’s speech ultimately does little to address any of this and is likely to be nothing more than a footnote down the road. The reality is that Trump’s money and willingness to offer blunt attacks are welcome by the GOP establishment — but only if the Donald is acting as a surrogate, giving the party a measure of plausible deniability and distance. His campaign — and its success with a large segment of GOP voters has unmasked the modern, national Republican Party for what is — and that’s what makes him unwanted.