When Donald and Harry S. Truman Left Washington to Run Away: A Conversation with Romney About the “Russia Hoax” and the Politics of Tomorrow
Mr. Romney, 76, has few friends in Washington, and he did not follow President Harry S. Truman’s adage to get himself a dog. That, plus the absence of his wife, Ann, has left him living a lonely bachelor’s existence in a brick townhouse near the Capitol, where he spends most evenings stretched out in a leather recliner, eating dinner alone while watching shows including “Ted Lasso” and “Better Call Saul.”
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska gives him a freezer full of specialty fish for dinner. Mr. Romney — who is partial to meatloaf bathed in ketchup and brown sugar — does not even like salmon, but he said he slathers it in ketchup, slaps it on a hamburger bun and makes do.
When Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Trump, his colleagues would approach him privately to express their support. He told his staff at one point that the list reached more than a dozen.
Mr. Romney also recalled a 2019 visit Mr. Trump made to the weekly Senate Republican lunch in the Capitol. The senators gave the president a standing ovation and were attentive and encouraging during his remarks about what he called the “Russia hoax.” They nodded when he said the G.O.P. would be known as “the party of health care” after they moved on from impeachment. The senators burst out laughing when Mr. Trump left the room.
The news that Romney won’t run for reelection was framed by Romney as a passing of the torch. “At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s,” he said in a video statement. There is a time for a new generation of leaders. They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.” He said that Joe Biden and Donald Trump aren’t leading their party to confront the major issues facing our country. Next generation of leaders are needed to take America to the next stage of leadership.
Besides, as Coppins reveals in an Atlantic excerpt from his book, Romney himself thought of running a third-party campaign for president in 2024, deciding against it only out of fear that it would throw the election to Trump. America is stagnant under the control of the gerontocracy, so Romney isn’t quitting because of that. He is giving up on a second term because his brand of stolid, upstanding conservatism is now obsolete, replaced with a conspiratorial and sometimes violent authoritarianism. His reluctance to say so clearly, at the cost of breaking with his party definitively, is evidence of something tragic in his character.
We know what Romney really thinks because of the access he offered Coppins, with whom he met weekly, giving him diaries, private papers and emails. Romney said that a large portion of his party didn’t believe in the Constitution.