Mitt Romney’s longtime stenographer McKay Coppins has a new book out called Romney: A Reckoning. The book is an airing of silly and surprisingly petty grievances from Utah’s unpopular junior senator, who lost a winnable presidential campaign against Barack Obama in 2012 and is now being driven out of the Senate by his inability to win reelection.
Much of the book details Romney’s growing appreciation of his Democrat colleagues and their policies and political goals, even as he spews invective about many of his Republican colleagues, particularly those with a reputation for advancing conservative ideals.
One of the Democrat goals Romney aligned himself with was the impeachment of former President Donald Trump. As he tells the story through Coppins, he is full of invective for every Republican but himself. He calls Attorney General William Barr “nervous” and “like all the other toadies in the Trump administration.” The entire GOP conference is smarmy, craven, and cowardly, he asserts, since they didn’t agree with his anti-Trump obsessions.
Romney spent the fall of 2019 giving public interviews to left-wing media, in which he complained about Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and telegraphing his eventual vote in favor of impeachment. Yet Romney claims to have been shocked that conservatives weren’t elated with his grandstanding.
