Retiring Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) is settling scores against many of his fellow Republicans in a newly released tell-all book and took some shots at colleagues who didn’t go along with anti-gun legislation after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas last year.
The horrific massacre of 19 young children and two of their teachers at Robb Elementary School in May 2022 was a golden opportunity for Democrats to pass sweeping new anti-Second Amendment measures and they found plenty of willing accomplices on the other side of the aisle, including the sanctimonious failed GOP presidential candidate.
In the best-selling book on Romney’s trials and tribulations since going to Washington, D.C., author McKay Coppins writes of the senator’s perception that the carnage in the Uvalde classrooms represented his calling to “do something” about the mass shootings that have plagued America.
“Grief overwhelms the soul. Children slaughtered. Lives extinguished. Parents’ hearts wrenched. Incomprehensible. I offer prayer and condolence but know that it is grossly inadequate. We must find answers,” Romney wrote on Twitter, since renamed X, after the shooting.
Grief overwhelms the soul. Children slaughtered. Lives extinguished. Parents’ hearts wrenched. Incomprehensible. I offer prayer and condolence but know that it is grossly inadequate. We must find answers.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 24, 2022
“When you’re not in the Senate, you say to yourself, Someone ought to do something about that. When you’re in the Senate, it’s like Okay, one of us ought to do something about that,” the former governor of ultra-liberal Massachusetts is quoted in Coppins’ book “Mitt Romney: A Reckoning” which was released last month.
The push for a bipartisan gun control bill that could advance President Joe Biden’s war on law-abiding gun owners was aided by the media as well as some serious star power with actor Matthew McConaughey who is a Uvalde native paying a visit to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers.
Legislation would eventually pass with GOP support but Romney nurtured a grudge with some Republican holdouts who he ratted out in the book, accusing them of being motivated by the most cynical of reasons for not lining up behind Biden and the Democrats.
“[T]he senators took turns grumbling over the fact that they were being forced to vote on such a divisive bill in an election year. [Sen.] Ron Johnson [(R-WI)] protested that it was a “lose-lose” for his campaign. [Sen.] Mike Lee [(R-UT)] complained that he was in a tight race and would rather not be made to take a ‘bad vote.’ As the conversation continued in this vein, Romney’s agitation mounted. Afterward, he reported to his staff that every single point raised by his colleagues focused on the bill’s implications on the midterm elections — not on its substance, or whether it would prevent future gun deaths,” Romney said in the excerpt published by Mediaite.
The Trump-hating senator was also quoted as saying, “I have come to recognize that the overwhelming consideration in how people vote is whether it will help or hurt their reelection prospects. … Amazing that a democracy can function like this.”
Thrilled to share that my book ROMNEY: A RECKONING will debut at No. 3 on the New York Times Best Sellers list! Can’t tell you how grateful I am for everyone who’s bought the book, read it, shared it, and engaged with it. This entire experience has been surreal. pic.twitter.com/nAIUKSCGxW
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) November 2, 2023
“Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump’s GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president’s supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection,” reads the Amazon description of the Coppins’ book.
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