While other Republicans’s might be upset with the guy for bucking Donald Trump?
The Republican US Senator from Utah is looked at with admiration in the place that counts for him keeping his job….
Within hours of Senator Mitt Romney’s vote to remove President Trump from office on Wednesday, Mr. Lyman, a freshman state representative from southern Utah who keeps an autographed “Make America Great Again” hat in a plexiglass case in his office, was at work drafting a resolution to censure the senator.
“I mean, I respect a guy that will stand up for his opinion, but it’s not without some repercussions,” Mr. Lyman said. “His action warrants an additional action on the part of the State Legislature.”
But just as swiftly came the pushback to Mr. Lyman from Utah’s Republican leadership.
“Censuring Senator Romney for voting his conscience is a tricky place to be,” the speaker of the state House, Brad Wilson, said in an interview.
The governor, Gary Herbert, told The Salt Lake Tribune, “I think that would be just a mistake to go down that road.”
The president of the State Senate, J. Stuart Adams, pleaded for reconciliation. “What I don’t want to do is move into the negative rhetoric I think is coming from Washington, D.C.,” he said at a news conference on Friday.
Barely eight years ago, Mr. Romney was the Republican nominee for president and putative leader of the party. Today, the way many Republicans accept and even encourage the attacks on him from Mr. Trump, who last week accused him of using “religion as a crutch” to justify the impeachment vote, vividly illustrates the turn the party has taken.
Utah Republicans never quite fell for Mr. Trump as hard as the rest of their party did. The state’s political sensibilities, heavily influenced by its Mormon culture, are more agree-to-disagree than salt-the-earth. The president’s coarse language, belittling nicknames and aversion to humility help explain why his approval ratings over all in Utah have been below 50 percent for most of the last three years.
And while they support Mr. Trump as their president — very few Republicans here say they would have voted to convict him as Mr. Romney did — they have refused to join the pile-on they see happening back east on Fox News sets and in social media feeds of the president’s followers, where their junior senator is being vilified as a “coward” and “Judas” who should be expelled from the Republican Party.
Not only does Mr. Lyman’s censure resolution appear to be dead on arrival, but the leader of the State Senate, Mr. Adams, also said last week that he would rather not vote on or debate any action related to Mr. Romney at all….
image…tehatlantic.com
Unlike most of the religious right in the US, the Mormon church does tend to practice what it preaches. My experience with Mormons is that they genuinely “live” their religion. So despite Utah being a deep red state, I don’t think that Romney is in trouble.
Nope…. according to the linked piece…
I did read all of the linked NYTimes article, and it sure doesn’t indicate that much trouble for Sen. Romney. His start was a bit rocky after he’d already served as moderate, conciliationist Governor of Massachusetts, but I doubt that this persists except with the Trump-is-always right fanatics (Mussolini ha sempre ragione).
¶ Although the Beehive State can usually be counted among the top half-dozen states in the GOP column, the Republican candidate failed to win a majority in not only 2016 (R 45% D 27% McMullin 21%) but also in 1991 (R 43% D 25% Perot 27%).
For the ancient history that doesn’t interest Zreebs, Utah went for LBJ in 1964, FDR & Truman in all 5 New Deal/Fair Deal elections (1932-48). The GOP fell just short of 50% in 1924 (D 30% R 49% La Follette, Prog., 21%) and below 38% in Woodrow Wilson’s two elections (1912 & 1916). That was enough to swing Utah Democratic in 1916, but not (with T Roosevelt as a Progressive winning 22%) in 1912 — when, with Vermont, Utah was the only state to vote for incumbent Pres. Wm Howard Taft (R).
Eliot Cohen has quite a way with words:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/mitt-romneys-remarkable-speech/606307/