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The incoherence of Mitt Romney

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This doesn’t even begin to make any sense, but it also helps explain why Donald Trump still has a coin flip shot, give or take, of getting re-elected:

Senator Mitt Romney, the retiring Republican from Utah and onetime standard-bearer of a party that has shifted under his feet, said Tuesday that he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the election because it might hamper a critical role he could play in helping to rebuild the G.O.P. down the line.

“I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,” Mr. Romney said at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. But, he added later: “I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election. I think there’s a good chance that the Republican Party is going to need to be rebuilt or reoriented.”

That moment could arrive immediately, he said, or after Mr. Trump’s next term, if he wins, which Mr. Romney said he thought was the race’s more likely outcome. “I believe I will have more influence in the party by virtue of saying it the way I’ve said it,” Mr. Romney said, explaining why he was stopping short of the seemingly obvious next step of an endorsement for Ms. Harris. “I’m not planning on changing.” . . .

Mr. Romney has made no secret of his disgust for Mr. Trump, imploring donors and Republican candidates during this year’s G.O.P. primary to unite around someone else. When that did not happen, he said he could not vote for Mr. Trump in November because character mattered more than policy.

“When someone has been determined by a jury to have committed sexual assault, that is not someone who I want my kids and grandkids to see as president of the United States,” he told MSNBC, a reference to the civil case brought against Mr. Trump by the former magazine writer E. Jean Carroll.

Mr. Romney also holds Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, in particularly low esteem.

“I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more,” Mr. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, last year.

At the other end of the political relevance spectrum:

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein stands no chance of becoming president. It’s even clear to some of her supporters.

But a vote for Stein in a critical state could accomplish one goal: Keeping Kamala Harris out of the White House in her race against Donald Trump.

Former Seattle City Council member and prominent Indian-American political activist Kshama Sawant made that clear at a recent event. Sawanta is against the Democratic and Republican parties, and she’s the founder of Workers Strike Back, which opposes the war in Gaza and calls for a ceasefire.

Here’s what Sawant had to say:

“The election has already started. Absentee ballots have been sent. We need to catch up rapidly. We need everyone here to get active. We need to be clear about what our goals are. We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic, we could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.”

The notion that another Trump presidency would be good for the residents of Gaza and the West Bank is barking lunacy even by the non-existent standards of rationality that prevail in Leftier Than Thou politics in this country. Still, Romney’s position is much worse, because Mitt Romney could actually make a difference in the election. A refusal to vote for Harris is a functional vote for Trump.

Here I’ll just mention the bizarre politics of regular LGM commenter Yorkshire Hate Reader, who I believe one of my esteemed colleagues banned, because he’s resurfaced as Yorkie Hate Reader (clever, very). YHR loves to post about how we pay no attention to things like how Harris is too cozy with Silicon Valley tech money, and instead keep posting on why it would be bad to re-elect Trump. What I never get about such types is what relevance, under current political conditions, it could possibly have that Harris is too friendly with the SV tech bros? I mean Joe Biden was too friendly with Citi for exactly the same reason, and that, too, was and is completely irrelevant under the circumstances.

But some people can just never accept the reality of two and only two political options in the current American political system. (The previous sentence is a covert plea for a post from The Gumper, who we haven’t heard from recently).

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