The Dispatch Podcast - Mitt Romney Has a Plan

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Hot off of his latest policy proposal, Sen. Mitt Romney joins the podcast to discuss his and Sen. Tom Cotton’s plan to raise the minimum wage, a proposal that also mandates that businesses use E-verify to prevent the hiring of undocumented workers. Sarah asks him about partisanship in the Senate, what he thinks of the current state of the Republican Party, and whether he’ll start a third party. He said, “There’s no question I’m in the minority of the Republican party these days. … A lot of people talk about ‘Why don’t you start a third party?’ That’s just not realistic.” Then, the gang breaks down the interview. Everyone agrees that it’s nice to finally be talking about policy again. They also explore why Romney (and some others) is committed to staying in the Republican Party. Show Notes: -Romney’s Office Press Release - Minimum Wage Plan -Is It Time for the Republican Party to Split Apart? - The Dispatch’s Declan Garvey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday dispatch podcast that is actually taped on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. We have an interview with Senator Mitt Romney about his new bill on the minimum wage, tying it to E-Verify. And then we'll bring in all of the guys after to discuss the interview, what they think about the bill and what they think about Mitt Romney's take on the Republican Party. Senator Romney, we so appreciate your time. I do want to let listeners know, and let you know, for that matter, that I worked for both your 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, but I did not work on your Senate campaign. So for those keeping score,

there's a high correlation of campaigns you win that I didn't work on. Given that. let's jump into your announcement today. You've unveiled your new minimum wage bill with Senator Cotton that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $10, tie it to inflation moving forward, and mandate e-verify from employers to ensure these companies are hiring legally authorized workers. I want to hear more about the specifics, but first, why now? Democrats control both houses of Congress and the presidency. Was it the time for a bill? like this in 2019 or 2020?

Well, I think there's recognition on both sides of the aisle that the minimum wage is probably going to go up. Right now, the Democrats are talking about a $15 minimum wage, which the CBO has estimated will cost, well, about 1.3 million jobs. And I think they underestimate what the impact will be on small businesses that frankly can't accommodate that kind of a leap from 725 an hour to $15 an hour. So our minimum wage bill provides an increase, recognizing the minimum wage hasn't changed in 10 years, but it brings it up to $10 an hour over four years. And then after that, it links it with inflation. And that, I think, is a change that can be accommodated by our small businesses. The CBO estimates that it will not cost jobs. And it instead helps families

that are facing some tough times, getting a better job and better wage. But let me note this as well. We link this with permanent e-verify and mandatory e-verify, which means that employers will not be able to hire people that come here illegally. That's one of the things that's hurting our workforce. So everything you're describing, mandating e-verify, dictating wages. Talk to me about how this fits into traditional concepts of consumers. conservatism or your brand of conservatism?

Well, I mean, I happen to believe that conservative principles are best for working people, whether those that are just entering the workforce or those that have been there a long time, whether at the low end or the very high end, we've been characterized as a party that only cares about the rich. I think that's pretty silly and wrong. In fact, our policies are best for working people and lower income people. And there's nothing wrong with recognizing that if we're doing a good job creating new jobs and seeing real growth that we can have the minimum wage in our country rise with inflation.

We don't want to have it rise well above inflation or we're going to find job losses, which is not what we want. But we believe that the best course to get people rising wages and good jobs is to have a wage which is consistent with the growth and vitality of the economy. By the way, we don't make any changes in the minimum wage until the pandemic crisis is over. Bernie Sanders announced that he would get a ruling from the parliamentarian in the Senate on raising the minimum wage with a simple majority vote for his $15 an hour plan, meaning that the Democrats would not need any Republicans to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour,

and it would be without your E-Verify requirements. How do you plan to get Democrats to want to work with you on this bill? Would you consider compromising on what you're raising it to? would you drop the E-Verify requirements and just to phrase it a different way, is this a bill that can become a law? Or is this like a think tank proposing ideas so that Republicans are on the record with a minimum wage policy? Well, first, I don't think the parliamentarian is going to go along with Bernie Sanders. The rule, the bird rule, so to speak, says that something cannot be part of reconciliation, if you will, the 50 vote vote, unless it is focused.

upon the budget. And this is clearly a provision that Bernie Sanders and others are promoting, which is incidental to the budget and not its main purpose. And as a result of that, I think the parliamentarian will not proceed with the $15 rule. If she allows it, why, then that's what they're going to do. And that's unless one or two people and Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema are probably two that kind of mine might say, no way, $15 is just nuts for our respective states, whether that's West Virginia, Arizona, and they insist on something less. I hope they also, both Joe and Kirsten, as well as other Democrats, look and say, hey, Republicans are willing to work with us on a minimum wage bill. We don't need to pass something without any

Republican support. We don't need to go with Bernie's $15. We can go with something that's far more reasonable and less damaging to employment. this latest policy legislative announcement comes on the heels of your splashy child care policy rollout widely touted as smart it was important i mean it sparked a great conversation in the country or at least you know in twitter uh but at the same time congress seems entirely broken the vast majority of governing is happening in the executive in the administrative agencies at this point So if we want more legislative solutions coming from Congress, like the ones you've proposed, do we need to lower the threshold for legislation in the Senate by getting rid of the filibuster

or in the House by encouraging rank choice voting, multi-member districts? Or I guess my question is, why isn't the more urgent legislative proposal one that would make it more likely to get these other laws you've drafted or any laws passed by Congress? Well, my own view is that if you got rid of the legislative filibuster, the so-called 60-vote rule, if you eliminated that, why none of the things I'm proposing would ever become law, because the Democrats in that circumstance would have an opportunity to pass everything they want solely based upon their one-vote majority, and they'd have no need to sit down with Republicans and work out a better piece of legislation. Look, I'm absolutely convinced that the best legislation

that comes out of Washington, is a legislation that's gone to the regular process where committees evaluate alternatives, where there's a vote in committee, then it goes to the floor, where there are debates, where when there is a compromise between the two parties, where one party is able to make an improvement in a piece of legislation. If instead, you don't need both parties to work on something, then the most extreme point of view will be adopted by the respective parties. A left-wing idea will be adopted by Democrats when they're in charge and we'll have the same on the right when we're in charge. And the nation will go from guardrail to guardrail in tax policy, health policy, education, and the like. We really need to decide that we're going to work together

collaboratively as Congress was intended to do. I entirely agree with that. For anyone who's listened to this podcast, you're singing my song, but how do we do it? Ah, well, that requires some statesmanship on the part of leaders in both parties. and it requires the parliamentarian sticking to her guns. I believe she will, and Democrats will be able to do some things unilaterally. They will be able to spend money unilaterally. Just, by the way, as Republicans cut taxes unilaterally when we used the same tool several years ago. It's kind of a bad approach, but both parties are taking advantage of it.

But other matters that are not directly related to the budget currently require a 60-vote majority to pass. And as long as, you know, we have people like Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin that stand up and say they will not vote to eliminate the legislative filibuster, in other words, not vote to eliminate the 60-vote rule, why then we're going to be able to work on a bipartisan basis. And switching gears, what is one thing that all Republicans agree on right now? Well, we all agree that the, that President Biden's $1.9 trillion bill is a clunker. And it's not primarily because of all the money it spends, bad as that is, it's that a lot of the money is just simply wasteful. And we could do so much better by focusing

on things we really need to deal with, like our infrastructure. But there's $350 billion going to states. The check going to California is $27 billion under that plan. By the way, California has a massive budget surplus. They don't need any money. more money from the federal government, but we're going to go out and borrow $27 billion from the Chinese to pay California. And this just makes no sense at all. And there's so many measures in the president's bill that are just lousy policy-wise and wasteful Republicans, I believe, to a person, oppose it. In December, Chuck Todd asked you whether you were comfortable with the current direction of the Republican Party. You said, no, but that over time, you thought that your party would

gravitate back to the principles that formed it. But you said it's, quote, going to be a while. Since then, January 6 has happened. Your floor statement last week spoke about how vital a culture of truth would be to the survival of the Republic. But the majority of people who now identify as Republicans don't seem to be with you. How long are you willing to wait? How far down this current path will you follow this Republican Party before you feel like you'll be forced to leave? Well, there's no question, but I'm in the minority of the Republican Party these days. We've become more populist, and it's hard to root out populism as Italy and Peru and Argentina and others have found. You know, populist is a powerful movement, in part, as the name suggests, it's popular.

The problem is it doesn't tend to work over time, and I think with time, people will recognize that the policies of more traditional conservatism, perhaps updated, but more traditional conservative policies are better for the American people. How long it's going to take us to figure that out? I don't know. But I don't think it's going to be anytime soon. I think the populist movement within my party is well and strong and not disappearing. And I'm afraid that you're going to see more of it before we see less.

And you're willing to see it through however long that takes? well i you know a lot of people talk about well why does it you know why don't you start a third party or you know this is not realistic being our system is geared to two parties uh and in my view that the way i can have the most impact on encouraging the principles that i think work for all americans to actually be part of our governing again is if i work within the republican party and encourage others to join me if you will to be a a a small wing at the republican party but hopefully a wing that gets larger over time and is able to succeed by virtue of the correctness of policy. All right. Last question. Your Christmas cards are pretty famous, but, and you know,

you've got, I think what is technically referred to as a zillion grandchildren at this point, but many of them are entering high school. And I'm wondering, what is the book, fiction or nonfiction, that they are most likely to get from Grandpa Mitt these days? Well, if I were buying them a book, particularly for those that are of high school age, I'd want them to read the book, John Adams, by David McCullough. I think it's important to understand the sacrifices that were made to establish our country, to understand the personal sacrifice that was made by the Adams family, Abigail and John and their children, and to understand the foundation and the roots of this. this extraordinary experiment we call America. David French is going to be deeply disappointed that you did not say Lord of the Rings, but I think that was a pretty excellent answer.

Thank you, Senator, so much for joining us today. I know you've got votes to get back to. We appreciate it. We hope to have you back very soon. Thanks, Sarah. All the best. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change

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Time to bring in the guys. First of all, I just want each of your reactions to the bill itself. So the idea of gradually raising the minimum wage over the next 10 years, tying it to inflation every two years after that, and mandating E-Verify for most businesses moving forward. Is this realistic? Is it conservative? Is it interesting? Steve? So I think it's interesting. And it's encouraging to me to see Mitt Romney first with his child welfare policy proposals now with this proposal being somebody who's doing real policy innovation. After four plus years of very little policy talk, it's great to be back to policy talk. I think this is exactly the kind of things that a healthy and strong conservative movement should be discussing and debating. Having said that, I bring some skepticism to what he's proposing. I do think that these are things that are far better left to the states. And while I understand that he's created space for states to move and have some and make their

decisions kind of on their own terms, I don't really want the federal government involved in this at all. I think it's an innovative, from a political perspective, I think it's an innovative way to tie immigration to wages in a way that Tom Cotton, who's also on this proposal, has been pushing for quite a long time. It's the kind of thing that you can see as there's all of this theoretical talk about how to marry sort of traditional conservatism with this rising center-right populism. These are the kinds of policy proposals I would expect to see more of. David, on the heels of this, Josh Hawley has announced that he would introduce a minimum way. bill that largely is made up by the federal government rather than the employers where they get a tax credit for the difference between their wage and his minimum wage. Are Republicans

coming to the minimum wage fight now? Well, yeah, I mean, they're definitely coming to the minimum wage fight now. And the reason why they're coming to the minimum wage fight now is pretty compelling from a political standpoint, and that is, increases in the minimum wage seem to be pretty darn popular. And so I think one of the ways to deal with it is how do you increase a minimum wage while mitigating its negative effects as mitigating the negative effects of the increase as much as possible. And, you know, one thing that I think that goes to Steve's point, And the question you asked to Steve about the conservatism of the proposal, I would say if you look at the Cotton Romney proposal, what you're looking at is what legislative compromise looks like. And what legislative compromise looks like is you don't necessarily evaluate a bill and say, is this a conservative bill?

Does this bill achieve some conservative objectives in a way that's feasible? potentially passable? I mean, in other words, is it a real bill versus just a press release? And that's, you know, that's one with the subject of part of your discussion with Mitt was, look, how real is all of this stuff? And, you know, it remains to be seen, but when you're actually proposing concrete compromise, it starts to feel more real. because we've talked a lot about press release bills

and that all they're good for is establishing your credibility with this or that constituency dominating some part of an online news cycle for a few hours and then it recedes into oblivion. This seems like something where they're trying to do something real.

Couldn't this just be seen as a press release bill but the constituency is, look, I'm a compromising Republican, especially for someone like Tom Cotton, who's eyeing 20, 24? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if, you know, I think is this something that in a reasonable legislature should consider, kind of like, for example, Romney's child allowances bill? These are bills that a reasonable legislature should consider. And if they don't, then they're a pretty

darn good case in an election that I'm, look, I'm a reasonable politician proposing reasonable. And by the way, popular legislative reforms. And so I think there's a difference between that and sort of the classic press release bill that we've seen for, you know, the last five, six, seven years. Jonah, Bernie Sanders wants $15 an hour. Josh Hawley says he'll do $15 an hour for a billion annual revenue. And then you have this compromise. Who's more likely to get to 60 votes? And if the parliamentarian says that reconciliation is possible, who's more likely to get to 50? I think you always just have to bet Democrats are going to get closer to 50 than Republicans are in this climate. I do want to touch on a couple other quick points on this. One,

it is worth pointing out that in the four years of the Trump administration, all the tough about immigration, all the stuff about the wall, all the stuff about making Mexico pay for it, if you talk to any serious conservative or immigration restrictionist policy intellectuals, the Mark McCorians of the world, and you ask them, which would you rather a wall or E-Verify? Every single one of them hands down would have gone for E-Verify. E-Verify is a serious policy that would have serious consequences, that is what sort of the editorial board of places like National Review have wanted for a very long time. And there was some hope in the early years of the Trump administration that trading that the wall was like

a bargaining chip and you give up on the wall and you agree to E-Verify, which sounds so much less scary. Of course, it turned out not to be so and that the wall was, the symbolism of the wall was more important than any actual policy. And I think, so therefore it's a little ironic that Mitt Romney, who's considered the wolf spain of all Trumpism, is the guy who's pushing the best and perhaps most effectively, along with Tom Cotton, to be sure, for E-Verify. But The other thing that interests me, I did not realize about this about the Holly proposal that you mentioned, Sarah. And I think it illustrates one of the things that has gotten the least amount of discussion. I mean, I'm with Steve.

I don't like federally mandated minimum wages. I think it's a bad idea. It's one of the few things. It's one of the many things, but it's near the top of the list of those things that you should not have a one-size-fits-all policy about. But there's also this red state, blue state thing going on that people don't talk about very much. A lot of the blue states, California and the lead, probably New York, and even Florida, which is not technically obviously a blue state, a lot of the prosperous states are already moving towards a $15 minimum wage, either organically through market forces or through

legislation. California is on schedule to get a $15 minimum wage anyway. And so what's interesting to me about the Holly proposal is that the way Bernie Sanders wants to do it, is it is essentially a tax on small businesses in red states to have a national $15 an hour minimum wage. But if you do it the way Holly wants to do it, you are basically amplifying and accelerating the trend of the federal government sending more money to red states than they pay in taxes. Because you are subsidizing, if you're already at $15 or close to it in blue states, then you are basically subsidizing wages from the federal government for red states. And that kind of flips the point of it and to some extent

from what I think that some of the sort of the, I mean, Bernie just wants $15 and it's sort of a magic number for a lot of these people. But that dynamic, I think Cotton and Holly are among the leading senators who think about these things in red state versus blue state politics the most because they are both more interested in cobbling together a 48% coalition to win through a base strategy. And so how they interpret these granular policy issues through that prism is pretty interesting to me. It seems to me that the E-Verify part, talking about creating a compromise. If you're going to compromise, you have to sort of come up with a bill that sounds reasonable, but then also have things that you're willing to compromise on within the

bill. E-Verify seems like one of those things that would never make it into any final proposal. I also think it's interesting just to mention this, Jonah, that you're referring to National Review being in favor of E-Verify, but Cato, for instance, quite against it for a few reasons, but one of the most fascinating reasons is because it's useless. So, 54% according to Cato, of undocumented immigrant workers are approved to work by E-Verify because it checks the papers, of course, not the actual worker. So all you need to do is have fraudulent or someone else's papers

and you're fine. I just, you know. There are responses to that. I mean, like the point being that you want strong the phrase is strong E-Verify or real E-Verify because you're right. There was this very corrupt, swampy

compromise between big employers and the immigrant and Congress to put E-Verify in as window dressing, but without any real enforcement mechanisms and all that kind of thing. And look, I'm not like that super E-Verify guy. I'm just telling you that, like, that in the world of people who take the immigration policy stuff super seriously and want to reduce numbers of illegal immigrants, all of the serious people cared

more about having a real verifiable form of E-Verify over something like the wall. And, you know, Cato, a lot of friends of Cato, but Cato is also very much an open borders. And I don't mean that pejoratively. I mean that descriptively, sort of an open borders mindset about a lot of these kinds of things. Well, to your point about Wall versus E-Verify, I don't think there's any real intellectual discussion

about which would be more effective even with the problems with E-Verify today. It's just a question of how effective can E-Verify be? So I take your point. All right. The next thing in the Romney conversation was on sort of the brokenness of Congress. I find it interesting because so many senators and congressmen, for that matter,

sound incredibly frustrated with being members of that most deliberative body in the world because there's a lot of cable news and not a lot of floor debate. And here you have Mitt Romney kind of running a think tank out of his office. He's now monthly at this point putting out big interesting policy proposals on topical areas that we have real problems in. And as we've seen, you know, Josh Hawley coming out the next day with his. I mean, this is now part of a big debate over which direction the country goes on minimum wage. But yet, I think everyone on this podcast thinks that the most likely outcome is that nothing happens on minimum wage. I found it fascinating that Senator Romney didn't show a lot of frustration, at least,

with that nearly inevitable feeling outcome. Steve? Yeah, you know, I mean, it was interesting listening to him talk and respond to your questions. He seems to me, and this is impressionistic, and obviously there's no way to really gauge this in any kind of a serious way. He seems to me so much more comfortable answering questions and pushing his proposals today than he did as a presidential candidate in 2012. And I say this as somebody who traveled around the country and spent a lot of time listening carefully to what he was saying then. He has a sort of, you know, politics be damned.

I'm going to do what the heck I want, air about him, which I think is refreshing. There is a growing divide in Congress, I think, between people who are using Congress to be on Fox or MSNBC on the left and people who want to actually do the jobs. You know, what Romney is doing on a policy level, and I suspect that this will not be the last policy proposal that we see, sort of innovative policy proposal that we see from Mitt Romney, I suspect will see a cadence. Maybe it's monthly, maybe it's more frequent. But, you know, Mike Lee had something similar that was run by Scott Winchip, now a colleague of Jonas at AEI who's written for the dispatch. And you have people in Congress who want to actually do serious policy work and want to address the questions, the most pressing questions facing the country. I think that one of the real things about sort of future of the republic questions is, do those people prevail? Do these debates ultimately end up mattering?

Or is it the case that it's a different kind of? of performative legislating or performative discussion. So it's not a kind of made for TV outrage bait play like, you know, like the Matt Gates of the world. But it's with, you know, with good intentions, it becomes a policy discussion that's, that kind of takes place on the side because policy doesn't matter as much as it once did. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, concerned about that. I'm not ready to say that's where this is going, but good to have more people doing what Mitt Romney is doing and Mike Lee has done it. Look, Marco Rubio is doing some of the same stuff. I think a lot of what Rubio's talking about and proposing now is in conflict or at least

in tension with most of the things that Marco Rubio argued and proposed just five, six years ago, but good to have these kinds of debates, and I hope that we see more of it. I hope that Romney splash into this world convinces more people that it's worth doing. David, you and I agree that Congress is broken. We have talked about various ideas. I raise some of the ideas from the Yuval Levin piece to Senator Romney, and he, you know, non-starter, actually sort of similar to what I told you about the Yuval-Lavan ideas. But I was curious what you thought, you know, getting rid of the filibuster, Mitt Romney was not hedging on that. That was both a no and a, and here's, it will be terrible for getting more legislation done that is of the compromising, reasonable nature.

Yeah, and Yuval is not for getting rid of the legislature. It's not for getting rid of the filibuster. So there's unity with Yuval on that point. Yeah, you know, some of the reforms that Yuval suggests would happen at the state level, such as ranked choice voting, for example, and it's already happening. It's already in two states, I believe Maine and Alaska, about as geographically removed as you can get, except for Hawaii. But I do think that there is some momentum and energy across the country for innovative policy solutions, sort of at the elite level, and you're going to see some state experimentation, you're going to see some state experimentation where you're seeing state experimentation with congressional redistricting. You're seeing some state experimentation with ranked choice voting, for example. and I expect that you'll see more of that, enough to make a real difference.

I'm skeptical, but, you know, could be wrong. But I do think that there is, and I have seen it on both sides of the political aisle, there are people who understand that the present situation cannot continue in perpetuity. And that this idea that one side or the other is just going to go ahead and totally vanquish the other one and end the logjam and end the impasse,

you know, I think that's one of the things at 2020, even though Democrats control each one of the elected branches of government, I think that 2020 dispelled in a way because here was in many ways an ideal opportunity for Democrats to gain control if you looked at the condition of the country at the time of the election. And they have it, but by the barest possible majority. So I don't know. I'm not as pessimistic as you, Sarah. I think there is energy. out there at the state level and because these elections to federal office are really matters of state law and these districts are matters of state law. I think there's some momentum for change enough to make a difference. Let's put a pin in this and come back in 10 years.

Jonah, he seems to, Senator Romney seems to think that there could be a pendulum swing, you know? Like, sure, we're over here, but maybe it'll swing back over here. He didn't say it that way, but it feels like he's just in a biting his time game on a few topics. We'll get to the next one. Do you think that's realistic? I mean, the pendulum does swing on a lot of political things over a decade. No, it does. And, you know, David's right, that which can't continue must stop or whatever.

And, you know, these trends can't go on forever. But left out of David's high-eyed, optimistic take on all of this is that they can get worse. No, of course. The living can envy the dead. And so I don't, at the beginning of the Trump era, a friend of mine who I really respect was saying how, look, this is a populist bubble. And you don't want to, it's like bubbles in the marketplace.

You don't want to chase bubbles because that's how you lose your shirt. you want to wait until after the bubble and bet on the flight back to quality. You know, and, you know, it's like after you have a big bubble stock market, all of a sudden all the money goes back to like staple, you know, old blue chip kind of companies because they're reliable. I think there are limits to the metaphor, and I no longer fully buy it. I believed it for a long time. Look, part of the reason we started the dispatch was a bet on the idea that there's

be a flight to quality. But if you look at what has happened to say Ron Johnson in those hearings this week, where he is like tripling down on conspiracy theory stuff and how Matt Gates is now doing workshops and how to talk about how Dominion stole the election. And in any contest between those forces, and Mitt Romney, I will choose Mitt Romney every single time.

You know, Mitt Romney is not, I don't think anybody would mistake Mitt Romney for a rock star-like firebrand who really gets people, gets their blood going. But that's not what I want from a politician to begin with. But I think he's got a long slog ahead of him. And, you know, I root for him and I root for the people like him. And I think he's doing this the right way. I think that some of the policy churn that Steve is talking about, while better than just naked, jingoist, nativist, jackassery, is not necessarily as high-minded as some of us would like to think it is because a lot of this stuff is premised on this idea of you can win over the populace by coming up with populist public policy.

proposals. And A, I think that's flawed and untrue politically. But B, it gives proof to the fact that once you get into that mode, you get into a bidding war with Democrats about who can use the government and spend the most money to appease constituencies in your coalition. And Republicans will never win that race fully. And even if they did, they're betting on a shrinking demographic to do it. But I totally agree with you. I think that's a fair point. And I think some of them are more political. Some of the policy proposals are more political at this point than they are driven by you know, sort of an abiding need for good policy. That, to me, doesn't negate their importance. It's better to be debating this kind of stuff and to have people like you making the argument

that you're making that, hey, we're never going to, conservatives are never going to outbid Democrats if it's just about giving stuff away or creating bigger government programs, it's far, far better, in my view, to be debating that than to be debating whether the horde of Q&N Trump supporter people assaulted the Capitol were actually the people who assaulted the Capitol

or whether it was some fantasy version of that that Ron Johnson is conjuring or, you know, debating basics of election outcomes, you know, stuff that's made up versus stuff that's real. Jonah, the big question for Mitt Romney, of course, is that after the election, you know, he saw the Republican Party was 100 yards away

from where he was, and he was like, well, you know, they're there now, but I think they'll swing back eventually. It may take a while. And then January 6th happens. And then a second impeachment happens. The Republican Party is further from Mitt Romney, probably at least 250 yards from Mitt Romney now,

compared to where they were on November 8th or December 1st. And yet, Mitt Romney sounds like he wants to stick it out with the Republican Party. And fascinatingly, thinks that there's no point in a third party. But he wouldn't really take the bait on the question, you know, let's say the Republican Party puts in the platform that they are for white supremacy. Like, then would you leave the party? Now, he's a clever politician. and he's not going to take my easily dodged bait. But I'm curious what you thought of his answer,

whether you think there is a line or whether, you know, Mitt Romney's not 40 years old, whether he's just decided that he's a Republican lifer and he will try to stand out there 500 yards away if he has to, a mile away if he has to, saying, come back over here. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, first of all, you know, kudos to Mitt for keeping the nudity taste

and integral to the plot. And it was a very adult, sober, disciplined interview that he gave with you. And I think that, let's put it this way, even if he were thinking of some grand, you know, St. Valentine's Day massacre, Michael Corleone at his kids' baptism. where he takes out all of his enemies at once kind of thing. He wouldn't tell you at this stage trying to move a bill about the minimum wage. And he is nothing, if not discipline. And he's always going to remind you there was a great line about George H.W. Bush,

where they interviewed his coach, his baseball coach from Yale. And they said, what kind of player was he? And he said, and the coach said, Bush was the kind of player who, if you told him to bunt, he bunted. And I think that's sort of like Mitt Romney in a lot of. And I say this with love. I mean, I am a fan of Mitt Romney. But I think that he's got no choice at this stage.

If he wants to be relevant and do good things in the Senate, he's got to talk this way, whether he believes it or not. Now, I suspect he actually believes it, which makes it more interesting or less interesting depending on your perspective. but I think that he is right, to a certain extent that a third party thing right now really doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. And to be honest, third party things never really make a lot of sense unless you see them deliberately as poison pills to destroy a party.

And so he's not giving up on the Republican Party yet. My hunch is if they did put in the platform they believe in white supremacy, he'd get out because I think he's an honest. and decent man before he's a politician or a Republican. But I don't know that the GOP, I don't know that the GOP is going to put that in the platform until at least 2028. So, you know, he may be out of the Senate by that.

David, he said he thought he could do more good within the Republican Party than outside of it. And he's not going to become a Democrat. You buy it? For now. For now. I mean, you know, a lot of the conversation about the future, I've just got to say,

I was having a conversation with somebody, longtime GOP guy on Monday, and they said, what do you think the future is? And I said, I don't know. I don't know. I really don't know how much of a hold the Gates style

and Ron Johnson conspiracy theorizing. I don't know how much of an enduring hold that will have. I do, you know, I do know right now that's the biggest part of the party. I know that. I know that, you know, if you're going to have, I think there's 2.001 factions. There's the Trump, Trump, populist, Trump, Trump, election stolen Trump, and that's the largest. And then there's the, hey, I stood with Trump against all of the, you know, all of his enemies, but let's not do that again. And that's smaller.

And then there's the point zero one, which is. is, you know, the Mitt wing of the party. And I can totally see if you're met and you have been a governor, you have been a senator, you've been the GOP nominee for president in the United States, that you would have a position that says, hey, you leave. You know, I mean, I'm not the one who's departing from the historical norms of this party. Why don't you go somewhere? Why don't you form a third party, other folks. But look, I mean, the bottom line is I think we just have to wait and see how this plays out. I mean, it's, you know, in news cycle terms, it's an eternity between now in 2022. And what's the world going to look like when the vaccine is widely distributed?

When people are back in stadiums and arenas, the economy has bounced back from the pandemic effects? Is there going to be, is there going to be as much paranoia? Is there going to be as much anger? Is there going to be as much rage? Sort of underlying the American body politic? I don't know. I don't know. And I think a lot of people are sort of projecting out this moment for the next year to two years. That's just a guess. They're just guessing. Stephen, another interview that Senator Romney gave yesterday, he said that if Donald Trump ran for the Republican nomination, he believed that he would win the Republican nomination. So I wonder if he'll split that bet that I've made with you,

you know, take some of the heat off me here. But he also said that he wouldn't vote for him. How he can say he's still a Republican at some point, but if he's not voting for the Republican nominee, potentially, is he a Republican? Are people just going to be like that R means something? No, yeah. I mean, I think he is.

He made very clear. I thought it was, his answer was very interesting to you. your question. And it was, you know, in line with, we had a long piece from Declan Garvey last week speaking to people like Pat Toomey and Ben Sass. Such a good piece. We need to put in the show notes. Find it in the show notes, folks. It was so good. Seventy five thousand words long. It was so good, though. Could have been published as a book. It really was a terrific, terrific piece, and Romney, you know, basically made the same points that these other prominent Republicans, Larry Hogan included, look, I'm not going anywhere. I mean, it's basically what David

is saying. I'm not going anywhere. I've been a Republican for longer than a lot of these people. I believe in the things that the Republican Party has long stood for. So, no, I'm not going to just bail now. I'd rather have this fight. Look, I think, I think, and I don't, I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm a little bit less fatalistic about this than it sounds like you might be, you know, there's a long time this stuff needs to play out. I think what we're actually seeing is a small number of Republicans, and I will concede. It's a very small number of Republicans who are doing more than that.

They're not sort of taking a passive approach. They are saying, no, like this is crazy. what we're seeing happening. Mitt Romney is chief among them. I think he, you know, he entered a statement for the record about impeachment that was incredibly strong and a, a real, I think, appropriate response to the people who have excused the president on January 6th and added to the lies about the election. You've seen Ben Sass come out very forcefully and take on the, Nebraska Republican Party when they sought to censure him. You saw Fred Upton Republican from Michigan respond to efforts from a local Republican county party there to censure him for, you know,

opposing Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, and his statement was in effect, are you serious? This is crazy. You're asking me to embrace crazy and I won't do it. And then you saw Liz Cheney. gave a speech Tuesday at the Reagan Institute in which she both laid out a path for sort of a hawkish Republican foreign policy future, but also made very clear, like, she's not stepping aside. She's not going to not fight this stuff. So you're finally seeing a point at which there is this willingness to fight. Now, it may just be that the numbers are overwhelming and Donald Trump is able to command his populist army to crush the spirits of these people. But we'll see.

I mean, Trump is, the two times Donald Trump has really engaged publicly since leaving office have been to comment on Tiger Woods car accident and Rush Limbaugh's passing, which has a very Sarah Palin-esque feel to it in that he's not, he's not jumping in on the policy stuff. He's jumping in on the personality stuff. And to, and to put. out a statement insulting Mitch McConnell and vowing revenge. So this is Trump reverting to form.

And at a certain point, if he's not really weighing in on anything other than getting back at the people he doesn't like and pop culture stuff, I'm skeptical about whether that has the kind of staying power that other people think about. Steve, I'm not saying be passive. I'm saying, or that anyone should be passive. I'm just not willing to make a prediction about who wins yet. That's probably why. for all of us.

No, I mean, I'm all in support of engaging directly, and I've also long said on this podcast that the more passive Trump is down in Mar-a-Lago and the less frequently he jumps in, the worse it is for his cause. He's not going to be able to coast off of the election contest and the presidency forever. And then a lot of the other people who are trying to assume the mantle, they're just not him. So that's one of the reasons why I'm not willing to make a prediction. A lot of people are saying, this is Trump's party now, Trump's party now, Trump's party now.

My position is Trump has to work to keep it his party, that it just won't happen by inertia. And I'm not convinced he's going to do that. It's one of the reasons why I'm not convinced that we can project out what the GOP is going to look like. One small point on that. It's also worth noting that while lots of smart, sophisticated Republicans have sold out or sold, played along or have stayed silent or been complicit, yada, yada, yada, you know, Scalese and McCarthy and all those people. The most vocal, serious, and committed Trumpists in Congress. I'm not talking about normal Americans or anything like that,

but the most committed Trumpists in Congress are, with a very few exceptions, what social scientists call morons. And we have Bobbert. gates and those people. And if they are the ones flying the flag for Trumpism for the next four years on national media, I have a very hard time believing that it attracts more people than it subtracts from the Republican coalition. And it will actually give a lot of other mainstream Republicans some space to distance themselves from pure Trumpism, which is exactly what Trump is going to demand from elected officials. And that could, that could, as Lenin, as I believe it was Lenin, but maybe it was Dick

Finn Patton said, that could heighten the contradictions. All right. We'll have to leave it there. Next time, we'll have a poll of the Romney grandchildren to see how many of them have picked up their copy of McCullough's John Adams or how many are instead watching Netflix. There are enough of them that you could actually have a margin of error, which is really impressive. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed this interview and our discussion after it. Subscribe to this podcast. You never miss an episode. And don't worry, we'll be back with the guys

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