A month or so ago, I wrote a piece about politics and how I no longer feel I can ignore what I consider to be the demise of our beloved America. I pledged to open another Substack blog and put up a post a day, for people like me, who want to help, but maybe from the bottom up. As in ‘we the people’ making the changes we need to make to live in the country we want to live in. One small thing a day to right the course of the ship that seems to be headed toward an iceberg larger than Greenland. I have spoken to a number of people who are feeding me ideas, and I hope you will sign up to receive it, forward it to friends, and when it moves you, I hope you will do the Daily To Do. One small commitment every single day until we can all breathe without fear and concern for the future.
It launches today, October 1, and here is the link to sign up to receive. Would love to hear your ideas! Would love to make a difference. Christine
October 1, 2023, Thank you Mitt Romney
Aside from the time he strapped his dog to the top of the car during a family road trip, I always sort of liked Romney. One thing is for sure—I was never afraid of him being president. He didn't scare me. His family didn't scare me. If he had won in 2012, I would have sighed—and then gone on to barely pay attention to his years in the White House.
That was certainly not my experience during the tenure of our most recent Republican president. And yet during that presidency, Romney again showed us who he was. In February of 2020—nearly a year before the atrocity of January 6th—Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment. If there had ever been any doubt, I knew then that he was an honorable man. He paid dearly for that vote. Outcast. Like The Scarlet Letter outcast.
Then there was the second impeachment, and the death threats, and the way he was treated at home by those who voted for him—treatment that bordered on violent hatred. I found out that he had to spend thousands of dollars a day to get the security he needed to avoid violent death at the hands of some MAGA lunatic. Did you know that Romney has always had a fear of violent death? And yet, he still stands up for what he believes is right.
Fellow lovers of democracy, we owe this man. Just like we owe Liz Cheney. Both lost a lot to stand up for what was right, when they could have easily justified staying in power and trying to fight from within, without any personal risk or the loss of the jobs they loved.
Here are a few excerpts from an article just published by The Atlantic, about his book that is coming out in mid-October, I think they show just how much he has given up to do the right thing when everyone around him is not.
Romney’s isolation in Washington didn’t surprise me. In less than a decade, he’d gone from Republican standard-bearer and presidential nominee to party pariah thanks to a series of public clashes with Trump. What I didn’t quite expect was how candid he was ready to be. He instructed his scheduler to block off evenings for weekly interviews, and told me that no subject would be off-limits. He handed over hundreds of pages of his private journals and years’ worth of personal correspondence, including sensitive emails with some of the most powerful Republicans in the country. When he couldn’t find the key to an old filing cabinet that contained some of his personal papers, he took a crowbar to it and deposited stacks of campaign documents and legal pads in my lap. He’d kept all of this stuff, he explained, because he thought he might write a memoir one day, but he’d decided against it. “I can’t be objective about my own life,” he said.
Perhaps Romney’s most surprising discovery upon entering the Senate was that his disgust with Trump was not unique among his Republican colleagues. “Almost without exception,” he told me, “they shared my view of the president.” In public, of course, they played their parts as Trump loyalists, often contorting themselves rhetorically to defend the president’s most indefensible behavior. But in private, they ridiculed his ignorance, rolled their eyes at his antics, and made incisive observations about his warped, toddlerlike psyche. Romney recalled one senior Republican senator frankly admitting, “He has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.”
This dissonance soon wore on Romney’s patience. Every time he publicly criticized Trump, it seemed, some Republican senator would smarmily sidle up to him in private and express solidarity. “I sure wish I could do what you do,” they’d say, or “Gosh, I wish I had the constituency you have,” and then they’d look at him expectantly, as if waiting for Romney to convey profound gratitude. This happened so often that he started keeping a tally; at one point, he told his staff that he’d had more than a dozen similar exchanges. He developed a go-to response for such occasions: “There are worse things than losing an election. Take it from somebody who knows.”
So, first up for Democracy Daily? Showing Romney… and others… that we will support those who do the right thing.
Have a fabulous To Do Day!
Christine
Today's To-Do
Romney has a biography coming out on October 12th. He is telling it all—the way he remembers it. I read an excerpt, and I can tell you it is an excellent book. Excellent. Here is a conservative Republican explaining what is wrong in DC, without an axe to grind.
How about we make sure that this book has more pre-orders than any book that has come out in the last ten years? Click here to pre-order.
How about you order a copy for yourself—and one for your Republican friend who’s told you he just can't see himself pulling the lever for a Democrat?
How about, once you get said book, you write a review on Amazon, or Goodreads, or wherever you have a profile?
How about we make this the best-selling book in the last five years? How about we show America how very many of us appreciate this man's sacrifice?
And, while we’re at it, how about we all send him a postcard or note thanking him for his service before he leaves office at the end of the year? A real thank you note, for someone who deserves our thanks.
When the Democracy Daily column debuts with a tribute to Mitt Romney, a Republican who put his country before party, his morals before security and popularity, then asks us to take our first action to read his book, I AM IN. Unity and finding the "high road" on both sides of the aisle have never been more appealing to me. My pre-order to Romney's book in IN.