Outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney is eviscerating the Democratic Party for hemorrhaging its working-class base, blaming staunch progressives and “provoking a rebuke” for the exodus.
The outgoing Utah senator praised President-elect Donald Trump for transforming the Republican Party into the party of the working class and predicted both parties are headed for a policy readjustment.
“The Democrats kicked them out,” Romney, 77, said Sunday on CNN's “State of the Union.”
“The Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren faction of the Democratic Party, in part by defunding the police…and by injecting biological males into women’s sports, has made many working-class people He ran away from the Democratic Party.
Last month, Trump, 78, became the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote for president. The president-elect also received the strongest support from minority voters for the Republican Party in decades.
Many in the party's progressive wing blame Democrats for shifting more centrist in the 2024 cycle and for not nominating populist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as their standard bearer in 2016. are.
“One of the challenges for my party is that our policies are not necessarily aligned with the interests of our voters, so there will be a change in direction,” Romney said of Republicans.
“It's the Democrats who are in trouble. I mean, I don't know how they're going to recover,” he continued. “They've lost their base. Unionists and women have left…Democrats are seen not as rich people, but as college professors and woke scolds.”
Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to abandon many of her leftist positions from the 2020 cycle, including banning fracking, decriminalizing illegal border crossings, and Medicare for All.
She also sought to curry favor with Republican voters by highlighting support from party turncoats like former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). In the end, Trump won all seven battleground states.
“The Democratic Party has seriously misread the direction of the country and the attitude of the country,” he said. “And President Trump took advantage of that, and he should have.”
Despite being a vocal critic of Trump, Romney acknowledged that “MAGA is the Republican Party” and said Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has the best chance of winning the 2028 Republican presidential election. I expected it.
The Beehive state senator has not said who he voted for in 2024, but he declined to announce his support for the 2024 cycle. I hope you stay If he can get out of that, he will be able to retain some of his influence over the party going forward.
Back in 2016, Romney wrote a presidential candidate letter to his wife, Ann.
The former 2012 Republican presidential candidate also suggested that President Trump has a mission for the next administration.
“He won by a landslide. He said what he was going to do, and that's what he's doing,” Romney said. “People are saying, oh, I don't like this appointment or this policy he's talking about, but those are the things he said he would do when he ran.”
Still, Mr. Romney acknowledged that Mr. Trump tapped into an “unusual group of people” who were “not the people I would have chosen.”
Anchor Jake Tapper brought up President Trump's suggestion in an interview aired last week that members of the now-defunct House of Representatives Select Committee on January 6th should go to prison, and previously He hinted at launching investigations into other political opponents.
But despite their obvious differences, Romney said he's not too worried about Trump going after him.
“No, actually, I've been pretty clean all my life. I'm not really worried about criminal investigations,” Romney said when asked if he feared being targeted. “By the way, I don't know how much of an exaggeration the president's statement is.”
I think President Trump is likely to try to focus on the future. ”
Romney also reflected on his accomplishments and said that despite Trump's election victory, history may not judge him well for his machinations leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. I predicted that it would not be possible.
“I don't know if history is written by the winners of this event. Politics is written by the winners. But history books are usually written by academics of some kind,” he said. “The attack on the Capitol… would be considered an abuse, a felony, and wrong.”
Mr. Romney announced his retirement last year, but stressed that he was “not retiring from fighting.” He will be replaced by Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah).
“History will remember Mitt Romney,” the outgoing senator said of his accomplishments. “I want my family to remember me as someone who stood up for what I believed in, was not ashamed of my fundamental beliefs, loved my country, and did what I believed was right. .”
