The WaPo [1] has a story on why Mitt Romney hasn’t endorsed Harris. Here’s the key sentence: “But he also worries that backing a Democratic candidate would hurt his ability to be a credible conservative voice going forward and has expressed an unwillingness to publicly betray his policy convictions by endorsing someone he fundamentally disagrees with on an ideological level, according to a person familiar with his thinking.”
I admire Romney tremendously and I’m still proud to have voted for him, but if this is what he’s thinking, he’s lying to himself.
Yes, Kamala Harris has a much deeper distrust of markets and a greater impulse for regulating them than either Romney or I do (the American majority is largely with her on that, but that’s for another post). Yes, there is a fundamental disagreement between the two on the usefulness of … let’s call them uterus easements (I’ve moved from Mitt’s position to Kamala’s on that issue).
But on foreign policy, Kamala Harris is anything but “someone he fundamentally disagrees with on an ideological level.” She is much closer to Mitt Romney and me than Trump or anyone else on the ballot. She shares the same concerns we do about autocracy abroad. She recognizes the need to defend our allies (including Ukraine) as much as we do. She is arguably the first presidential candidate to denounce Putin so openly and consistently since Romney himself twelve years ago.
Mitt and I are old enough to remember that Ronald Reagan did not rely on the Republican Party alone to win the First Cold War. It was a bipartisan effort (in fact, much of what Reagan did was a continuation of policies that began with Carter, but that’s for another post).
So, if he ever gets to read this, he’ll know what I mean when I say: the 1980s called; they want their bipartisanship back.
The arguments about Trump within the GOP have been so character-focused (and understandably so) that they are losing sight of how Trump’s policies – particularly his foreign policy – is such a radical departure from what the Republicans used to be (and Mitt still is). I hope that Mitt can see that within the next five weeks.
The fundamental disagreement on foreign policy isn’t between Romney and Harris. It’s between Romney and Trump. Romney and Harris actually agree with each other (and me). I still hold out hope that Romney will recognize that and endorse Harris before this is all over.
Photo by Lynn R. Mitchell