Maine Beacon: "History will remember Mitt Romney, not Susan Collins"
February 13, 2020 John L. Micek
When future historians look for the last, documented instance of Republican political courage in the Trump imperium, they’ll look to one man: Sen. Mitt Romney.
In one extraordinary speech on the floor of the United States Senate on Wednesday, the Utah senator made remarks that were both utterly moving in their absolute humanity and totally damning in their vivid rebuttal of GOP capitulation to a bankrupt White House.
“I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice,” Romney told a nearly empty chamber around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, two hours before the Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump.
As The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote, Romney, fighting back tears, paused for some 12 seconds to collect himself before continuing.
“The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did,” Romney said, as the Senate gallery filled with journalists recording his remarks for the ages.
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Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who plays a maverick on television and who voted in favor of calling witnesses, sided with her Republican colleagues on acquittal, even as she called Trump’s behavior wrong.
It was the same kind of transactional and fleeting courage pioneered by former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who made late-career fame out of publicly holding up the nomination of now-Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, but who ultimately voted to confirm a flawed candidate.
Not Romney.
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https://mainebeacon.com/history-will-remember-mitt-romney-not-susan-collins/
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