Behind Mitt Romney’s Increasingly Lonely Challenge to Donald Trump

wsj.com ^ | Monica Langley

[RoosterRedux]

Mitt Romney’s advisers begged him not to go to war with...Trump. After he decided to go ahead, Mr. Trump dismissed him as “lightweight” and “failed candidate.” This week, Newt Gingrich called him “pathetic.”

Mr. Romney, sticking to his guns, has become a rare figure in American history—a former presidential nominee openly defying the man succeeding him as his party’s standard-bearer.

Sitting at his home on the Pacific Ocean last week, Mr. Romney reflected on the waves he created by attacking Mr. Trump, how his family helped persuade him it was the right thing to do, and how he increasingly finds himself a voice in the wilderness.

“Friends warned me, ‘Don’t speak out, stay out of the fray,’ because criticizing Mr. Trump will only help him by giving him someone else to attack,” Mr. Romney said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal—the first time the 2012 GOP nominee discussed in depth his reasons for going after Mr. Trump.

“They were right. I became his next target, and the incoming attacks have been constant and brutal.” He said he had no illusions he would alter Mr. Trump’s progress toward the nomination or spark a meaningful independent candidacy.

His motivation: “I wanted my grandkids to see that I simply couldn’t ignore what Mr. Trump was saying and doing, which revealed a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world.”

Today, the GOP anti-Trump chorus is dwindling, leaving Mr. Romney among the few making the case publicly.

Mr. Trump, in an interview on Wednesday, said of Mr. Romney: “Once a choker, always a choker. I’ve got a store worth more than he is.” He said Mr. Romney’s attack “has nothing to do with his country. It has to do with me. I’m the one who forced him out”...

[IWONDR]

“And worse, the reason given for the absence was to prepare to go on a fund-raising trip to California. How much more must the Current Occupant prove his unfitness for the job, than that response? And this is not even to shift the blame down to Herself, who had the authority already to call upon support from the US Department of Defense to extract the State Department officials. If it did not matter then, it does not matter now. Like it has for Jeb Bush, the ship has long since sailed.”

so much truth in what you say. while he tries to play by the gentleman rules in 2012, the Dems with their support from the MSM, play for keeps, no matter how dirty or how crooked. voter fraud, the SOP of the Dems, also was the icing on the cake of Romney’s defeat. you have to want to win with all your being, like being at war with your mortal enemy.

[husky ed]

And idiot could have pounded Candy. Mittens was a sellout.
Someone needs to put his TV on reruns of of 'My Three Sons' and turn the lights down.

Ed

[IWONDR]

“Of course Romney was hoping that that compromise candidate would be him.”

yes, and he was that stupid to think they would turn to him, when it was obvious that he was sent to clear the way for Jeb.

[Zathras]

Inability to take advice from trusted advisers is the sign you don’t know what you are doing.
Hang it up Mitt...
Join the growing ranks of other GOP-e who thought they were smarter than the American Voter.

Jeb
Rubio
Bush Family
Ted Cruz

[Doogle]

....often wondered. All I could come up with are lies,PC,and the coconspirators, MSM. THEIR recent
collective chorus of “ I don’t understand” only
confirmed, they truely don’t.

[BobL]

Good Summary!

Just what I was thinking. About the only case one can make for Romney creating Trump is that Romney should have been running for re-election this year. I still can’t believe how he collapsed at the end in 2012.

As to what created Trump - perhaps a decade of OPEN BORDERS by the GOPe, primarily Bush Jr., along with 3 attempts at getting Amnesty through...all stuff that Romney was not directly part of (of course he supported it all, but that’s not the same).

...and with Trump, the GOPe was forced out of the shadows (to borrow one of their talking points) and we got to see just how much they despise THEIR OWN VOTERS! That was an unsustainable model, and if not Trump, someone else would have eventually blown it open...but thankfully it was Trump, because the left has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to run against him (and neither would I, for that matter).

[onyx]

So, this is the Sore Loser’s latest excuse?
How utterly lame!
I’m staying NOT far from his Ocean Front residence.
I plan to make it a mission of mine to run into Willard to give him the nastiest piece of my mind.

[Chaguito]

Politics is never having to say “I was wrong.” Anti-Trump is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because obviously Trump can’t do everything right and successfully. Each mis-step will be an “I told you so.”