On Mitt Romney and GOP politics; the new ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard; Mike Pence at Heritage; scenes from space; state dinosaurs; and more
A lot of Republicans, in politics and the media, are demanding that Mitt Romney endorse Mike Lee, his fellow Utah senator. This is interesting. And some of the journalists — or some of the media figures, I should say — are more partisan than the politicians. Certainly more partisan than Mitt Romney. That, too, is interesting.
Here is an item from the Deseret News:
Sen. Mike Lee pleaded with fellow Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney to endorse him and get his family to send money to his reelection campaign on Fox News Tuesday night.
“It’s not too late, Mitt. You can join the party,” Lee said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
(Full article here.)
“You can join the party,” says Lee. How sweet. I’m pretty sure that Romney has been a Republican since before Lee was born. But Romney has proven that party affiliation is not the be-all, end-all for him. And maybe he doesn’t like the way Lee behaved after the 2020 presidential election?
A different article, in the New York Times, notes, “Mr. Lee refused to endorse Mr. Romney’s 2018 Senate campaign. He declined in 2012 to endorse the senior senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, even as his own chief of staff openly predicted Mr. Hatch’s defeat.” Huh.
I think people should vote their conscience, endorse their conscience, whatever. That even goes for politicians, such as Lee and Romney. “Politics is a team sport!” people say. Okay. Other people say, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”
Here is an oddity: Some of the same people who for years have derided Romney as a “globalist,” a “plutocrat,” and worse are now demanding that Romney endorse as they dictate. Well, nuts to that.
And why should such people want Romney’s support? I think of an old line from politics, which I have also used in personal life: “I’ll endorse you or your opponent, whichever will help you more.”
Romney has spent many years running for office (as well as running businesses, running a Winter Olympics, etc.). He has run for governor, president, Senate. So he is a political being, yes. But he’s also a human being. He is not a party robot. In February 2020, he became the first person in American history to vote against a president of his own party in an impeachment trial. That took guts. And it took independence of mind.
We could use more such independence in politics, not less. (We could use more of it in the media, too.)
• Mike Lee’s opponent in the Senate race is Evan McMullin. Republicans routinely call him “McMuffin.” Donald Trump has been doing so (of course). Playground taunts are de rigueur today. In all days? I don’t know, but I have a memory for you.
Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D., Texas) used to host high-dollar breakfasts for lobbyists. So some Republicans called him “Eggs McBentsen.” (Bentsen, you will recall, became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1988, running with Michael Dukakis.)
On Twitter, I saw some people retweeting something from an “America First” strategist. He described McMullin as “CIA asset McMuffin.” Evan McMullin served in the CIA in the 2000s. To see this experience scorned by people on the right, rather than the left — that is something new (like a lot of things).
• Did you see this? “A ‘swift-footed lizard’ that lived millions of years ago in what is now Massachusetts has been named the state’s official dinosaur under legislation signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Charlie Baker.” For generations, schoolkids have memorized state birds, state flowers, state songs. Are we now to have state dinosaurs?
Maybe I can be one, for my home state of Michigan. (“Reagansaurus,” extinct circa 2017?)
• “Religious polarization in India seeping into US diaspora.” (Article here.) Swell. Also interesting. My plea is, “When you come to the New World, please leave the ways of the Old World — meaning the worst of them (while retaining the best) — behind.”
• Another headline: “Gates Foundation donates $1B to prioritize math education.” (Article here.) Alas, too late for me. (Maybe I should reserve an hour a day for the Khan Academy.)
• Tulsi Gabbard has left the Democratic Party, to hosannas from the Republican Party, generally. She is a darling of Fox News, and of CPAC. She is very warm toward Putin and Assad. (Trump interviewed her for a foreign-policy position, after the 2016 election. They met in Trump Tower.) CPAC’s chairman said he was delighted to trade Liz Cheney for Tulsi Gabbard. In my view, a party that rejects Cheney and embraces Gabbard is a party that is telling you a lot about itself.
The newly ex-Democratic Gabbard flew to New Hampshire to campaign for the Republicans’ QAnon-y Senate nominee, Don Bolduc. She flew to Arizona to campaign for the Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee, Kari Lake. Speaking of whom: “Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake won’t commit to honoring election results.” (Article here.)
No surprise there. The apple hasn’t fallen very far from the tree — the tree being Trump.
Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, has also been campaigning for Lake. “Kari,” he said: “You. Are. Awesome.” Does party loyalty sometimes ask too much? For some, never. Tribe, tribe, and more tribe. It’s baked in the cake (some scientists and theorists say).
• Walter Dean Burnham, the political scientist, has died. His obit in the New York Times quotes him as saying,
“I guess I would like to go back, not to the smoke-filled room, but to the smoke-free room. After all, the first president of the United States was chosen by a search process. I don’t believe the open primary system is a democratic process. A few thousand activists push the Republican Party to the right and the Democratic Party to the left.”
You know he said that in 1988? When the presidential nominees were the first George Bush and the aforementioned Dukakis?
• Here is an article by Alana Goodman in the Washington Free Beacon:
Mandela Barnes, the Democratic Senate candidate in Wisconsin, praised Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei for supporting Black Lives Matter, said he wanted to be the “Dennis Rodman” of the Assad regime, and used his Twitter account to defend some of the world’s most notorious dictators and repressive regimes.
Great, just great. Can’t anyone semi-normal run for office? (I suppose such a person would have no chance.)
• The two Wisconsin senatorial candidates — Barnes and the Republican incumbent, Ron Johnson — had a debate. At the end, one of the moderators asked them to do something typical: say something nice about the other guy. You can watch the exchange here.
Barnes went first, saying, “The senator has proven to be a family man, and I think that’s admirable.” For his part, Johnson noted that Barnes had admirable parents, who worked hard and gave their son “a good upbringing.” Johnson then said, “I guess what puzzles me about that is that, with that upbringing, why has he turned against America?”
Not what the moderator had had in mind . . .
• Mike Pence spoke to the Heritage Foundation. Referring to the conservative movement, he said,
“Our movement cannot forsake the foundational commitment that we have to security, to limited government, to liberty, and to life. Nor can we allow our movement to be led astray by the siren song of unprincipled populism that’s unmoored from our oldest traditions and most cherished values.”
Some more:
“Let me say: This movement and the party that it animates must remain the movement of a strong national defense, limited government, and traditional moral values and life.”
On the subject of foreign policy, Pence said,
“Now, I know there is a rising chorus in our party, including some new voices to our movement, who would have us disengaged with the wider world. But appeasement has never worked, ever, in history. And now more than ever, we need a conservative movement committed to America’s role as leader of the Free World and as a vanguard of American values.”
Pence continued,
“As Russia continues its unconscionable war of aggression on Ukraine, I believe that conservatives must make it clear that Putin must stop and Putin will pay. There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists for Putin. There is only room in this movement for champions of freedom.”
I am surprised. I am impressed. Also: To speak of the American heritage at the revamped Heritage Foundation — took some nerve.
• A tweet from Justin Amash:
There was a time when I thought the rise of social media would help expose the liars, hypocrites, and grifters in politics. “The con won’t work when everyone has access to info!” It sadly had the opposite effect — creating an era of performative politics driven by audience capture.
That is a thesis for a thousand books. Or maybe, a tweet is enough? Amash has said a lot in that small space.
• An article from the Associated Press is headed, “How one small town is teaching English to kids of immigrants.” That town is Russellville, Ala. When I read the article, I thought, “If old-fashioned, commonsensical Americans could be let alone by our toxic political culture — with its unrelenting partisanship and red–blue nastiness — they could solve our problems.” Is that naïve? Too Norman Rockwell? Possibly. Maybe even probably. But I don’t know . . .
• Often, I quote the Oscar Hammerstein lyric: “You’ve got to be carefully taught.” No one comes out of the womb with racist or bigoted beliefs (I think). People have got to be carefully taught — and they are.
I’ve been listening to some of Kanye West’s philosophizing — e.g., “It’s Jewish Zionists that’s about that life.” Someone educated him in this direction. “You are the media you consume,” I’ve been saying. I see it all around me. I know good people — splendid people — who have been led to believe that the coronavirus vaccines are a sinister plot and that the United States forced Russia to invade Ukraine.
But back to Kanye West. As I think I mentioned in a previous column, the House Judiciary Republicans, on Twitter, posited a kind of holy trinity. This was on October 6. Their tweet read, in its entirety, “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” I would rethink that.
• Igor Levit, the Russian-German pianist, played Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues — all 24 of them (24 pairs) — in Carnegie Hall. For a post of mine on this event, go here.
• Have you seen images from the James Webb Space Telescope? Treat yourself to them! I’m not sure that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, on their most imaginative days, could have imagined sights so fantastical.
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