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Why is Mitt Romney still a member of the Republican Party? The question is easy to understand. Peril hangs over American democracy thanks to the GOP's relentless deviation to the extreme right. The trajectory of the party is now guided by a concerted effort to suppress votes and deny majority rule. Fueling the effort is an ethnic and cultural revanchism, joined eagerly by many of the ugliest elements in American society. The phenomenon leaves the United States effectively flirting with fascism. At such a dark hour, men of honor should be stepping up, raising their voices—and risking all.
Our question is therefore much less easy to answer, because for a very long time Mitt Romney could claim to be a man of honor. Sen. Romney's public image, once carved from the stuff of spines, has melted of late into a vague jelly. We know this from the stark reality he has shrunk from openly reviling, namely the moral collapse of his political home. Mr. Romney's votes in the impeachment trials kept his conscience clean, but some grave infirmity of will has restrained the senator from going further. He has not done what events, reason, and common decency are screaming out for him to do: renounce his membership in a movement that has become in many respects indistinguishable from a cult, and in chief respect, a soulless and shameless pursuer of power for power's sake.
A compelling role model from the last century points the way for Mr. Romney. The senator from Utah cannot be unfamiliar with the career of Winston Churchill, a man who found cause in the course of his career to exit his political party not once, but twice. Mr. Romney is also surely aware of Churchill's "wilderness years" in the 1930s, when his opposition to the appeasement of Hitler made him an outcast among his fellow Conservatives. What ultimately resulted from the great man's stubborn demonstrations of principle over party? He proved prescient and was entirely vindicated. Churchill became prime minister and was as responsible as any single person for saving western civilization from Nazi tyranny.
It happens that the United States today urgently requires saving from the careening descent of the Republican Party. As recently as 10 years ago, no one could have imagined the GOP of today. The party has clearly undergone a collective sacrifice of conscience. It is increasingly nativist in outlook; shamefully supportive of the Big Lie about the 2020 election; and repulsively frantic to conceal the roots of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower today shelters the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Furthermore, and perhaps most menacingly, Republicans appear prepared to anoint as their champion in the next presidential election a twice-impeached pathological liar whose name augurs to go down in history with Quisling's.
To be a pariah in the Republican Party today is to wear a badge of noble character. Hello there, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Unfortunately, neither of those individuals bring with them olympian gravitas, and neither of them can reach Churchillian heights behind a podium. Mitt Romney does and could.
Posterity is watching. To lance the boil of Republican degeneration, Mr. Romney's credentials are unmatched. In both the private and public spheres his accomplishments are legion. No one in the American political firmament stands better positioned to demonstrate bold integrity. The senator should be asked to answer the call, stop acting the milquetoast—and send a redeeming quake through American politics.—Michael Carin, Canada
Ed. Note: Michael Carin has authored seven books, including the novel "Churchill At Munich."
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Our incorrigible tribalism is not what's driving today's illiberalism. Just because liberalism does not allow us to indulge our "natural" tribal side in public institutions does not mean it requires us to ignore it in our private commitments. Unlike Marxism, it allows us to distribute the fruits of our labor to our own before others. That, combined with its commitment to pluralism, as Institute for Humane Studies President Emily Chamlee-Wright notes, allows us to benefit from whatever tribal hardwiring we have without its damaging effect. One can debate whether Western liberalism has struck the right balance between individualism and communitarianism. But the fact of the matter is that liberalism is more like a balanced Mediterranean diet that works with our constitution, not against it. It might not satisfy our itch for red meat, but the explosion of flavors it offers is addictive in its own right. It is hard to imagine that returning to the "natural" paleo diet can ever be an attractive option for anyone who has tasted the Great Enrichment—especially Americans who have feasted on it and become the richest people on the planet. As Wright notes, the more liberal institutions became culturally embedded, the more they are taken for granted. There is an internal contradiction at the heart of liberalism, namely, that liberalism undermines the conditions for its own renewal. It's not an easy problem to solve, but it is not as hopeless as trying to beat back the alleged cancer of tribalism. Constant, the 19th-century liberal philosopher, believed the cure to "forgetting" was repeated reminders about the importance of constitutional governance. That means making a renewed case for liberalism suitable for our times. —
The Freedom to Vote Act will make it easier for citizens to participate in our elections by standardizing vote-by-mail and early voting, ban partisan gerrymandering, provide more transparency of political ads, and protect the integrity of our elections by requiring voter-verified paper ballots and protecting against election subversion and the politicizing of our election workers.
