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WASHINGTON – As Democrats in the House advance with a dismissal investigation against President Trump, Republicans have rushed to defend Trump, or at least tempered their critics to avoid furious retaliation.
Among the handful of exceptions, however, there has been no stronger and more important than Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a personality who once embodied the essence of the Republican Party before Mr. Trump requisitioned it, and now finds himself in an isolated category of his own.
Since the first reports last week that Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., causing ever-increasing fury in the capital, Mr. Romney has been repeatedly the first Republican legislator to express his concerns about the conduct of the president.
He said he was "deeply troubled" by Trump's efforts to obtain political assistance from a foreign leader and refused to prevent the president from being impeached.
Mr. Romney's public statements reflect what many members of his party believe in private, but almost systematically refuse to say: they are confronted with overwhelming revelations about the president that are difficult to explain and that do not allow one to know There are other damaging elements to come. . What's more, they face a leader whose political appetite for legitimate or imagined setbacks is insatiable, and responds to the crisis with new, angry threats and new accusations that will only increase the pressure on them. to choose a part.
This represents an unenviable dilemma for Republicans at a decisive moment for the party. Any internal divide in the coming year could undermine both Mr. Trump's re-election and Republicans' hopes of retaining their majority in the Senate and taking over the House's place.
For Mr. Romney, who represents a state in which he is loved and is unlikely to seek another office, it is a time when he thinks the country should override the party.
"Every person has to search his own heart and do what he thinks is right – that's what I do," he said.
Romney's willingness to issue measured criticism of Trump has displeased liberal activists, who see his comments as flagrant at the moment. He has also enraged the president's most loyal allies, who regard the Utah senator as a resentful foe. Yet it could be decisive for a third constituency: his fellow lawmakers.
As Senate Republicans begin to grapple with the unattractive prospect of serving as jurors in the indictment of their own party's president, Mr. Romney has become a crucial figure.
"He is in a different place than many politicians who still feel in the party and who hope to be president someday," said Connecticut Senator Christopher S. Murphy, a Democrat who became a friend with Mr. Romney after serving the Foreign Relations Committee. "He's a loyal Republican, but it's not his first priority, he's a little behind."
For Mr. Romney and Mr. Trump, this is the last, and perhaps the last, part of an offbeat relationship between two men who share the same political ambition. It began when Mr. Romney, as Republican presidential candidate for the 2012 presidency, sought the approval of Mr. Trump. It continued until 2016, when the former Massachusetts governor began the year as a fierce critic of Mr. Trump, but ended it as a begging, sharing dinner. with an elected president hoping to become his secretary of state.
Now, however, Mr. Romney occupies a position of crucial power. It could be part of an effort to finally dismiss Mr. Trump from his post and is already in the ear – and perhaps even awareness – of other Republicans.
He downplays his role, noting that he is not trying to carry out an insurgency against the president.
"I spoke because I think it's a matter of importance and personal principle," he said. "No more no less."
But in reproaching Mr. Trump, he offers Democrats the ability to thwart claims that the investigation would be a totally partisan and politically nurtured witch hunt, as the president has repeatedly said. And Mr. Romney covers and puts pressure on his Republican compatriots, who anxiously analyze what must be said about a scandal that only increased on Thursday when the radio revealed that Mr. Trump had appeared in private suggesting that government officials who had worried about his relations with the media. Ukraine deserves to be severely punished.
The chief advisers to the president recognize the threat posed by a character as well known as Mr. Romney, perhaps the second most famous Republican elected in Washington, and try to isolate him. After his critical remarks on the case of Ukraine, Mr. Trump responded to the senator by post a video on Twitter Mr. Romney, at the time of the 2012 elections, learned with disgust that he had lost the race to the presidency.
"Mitt Romney is still disappointed that he has never been elected President of the United States and Donald Trump has been elected," said Corey Lewandowski, former campaign director for Trump, who could lead the president's public relations defense. against dismissal.
Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., went even further, saying that Mr. Romney "knew that as long as Donald Trump ran the GOP, it would be irrelevant."
He stated that Mr. Romney was "desperate to be loved by the left and the media" and that it was "always bitter that my father had succeeded where he had failed embarrassingly".
Yet, since Mr. Romney publicly announced his alarm on Sunday, claiming that Mr. Trump's alleged conduct was "disturbing to the extreme," other Republicans have gradually begun to issue notes of "no-one's". ;worry.
On Wednesday, after reviewing the secret complaint of an information whistleblower who expressed concern over Trump's conduct, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska adopted Mr. Romney's wording, calling the report "troubling "and saying that" the Republicans should not surround the carts. "Mr. Sasse has already strongly criticized Mr. Trump, but he recalled his comments well before his run to the re-election of 2020 and received the endorsement of the president earlier this year.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Thursday he was concerned about the statement in the report that White House officials have sought to restrict access to the transcript of Trump's appeal to Mr. Zelensky. Rep. Michael Turner, a Republican from Ohio and a member of the intelligence committee, said during a hearing on the subject that Trump's conversation "is not acceptable".
Romney said he was not trying to steer a party that he said was essentially under the control of Mr. Trump. But while the 70-year-old is considering what he acknowledges to be probably his last period of public service, his friends are appalled by what he considers to be the winning immorality at any given time. President and the will of his party to remain a mother in the face of such misconduct.
In addition, he is deeply concerned about the behavior of Rudolph Giuliani, the president's personal advocate and rival Romney's 2008 Republican presidential primary.
"I do not really know who he was acting on behalf of Ukraine," said Romney about Giuliani. (In response, the former mayor of New York said, "Where is he on Mars? I was acting on behalf of Donald Trump.")
And even though he insisted that he was not trying to push other Republicans, it was impossible to miss his outrage.
"I can not imagine being in the Senate or any other position of responsibility and looking around to see who's with you," Romney said. "You defend what you believe in."
His challenge as the debate on destitution unfolds will be how to balance his outrage and take advantage of his platform, without seeming more godly than the just.
Appearing at a forum sponsored by Atlantic magazine this week, he clearly distinguished himself from other politicians, who he said were more sensitive to political considerations.
"It's just in human nature to see things in a way that's consistent with your own worldview and your perception of what's needed to preserve your position of power," Romney said. "I do not know why I am not so afflicted as others perhaps in this respect; it may be because I am old and have done other things. "
Some of his more pro-Trump colleagues are already expressing their irritation with Mr Romney, who they say reacts excessively to revelations about the president's relations with Ukraine.
"I am very troubled by anyone looking for an excuse to see the inconvenience of this operation," said Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, reaffirming Mr. Romney's word. The Senator from Utah, he said, has "an ax to crush".
Some of Romney's aides believe his outrage can at least shame the senators who, as Republican strategist Mike Murphy explained, "have a moral compass."
But Mr. Murphy, a longtime friend of Romney and anti-Trump Republican, said, "It's going to take a while, even if the press cycle wants that in an hour."
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