Headline Roundup • September 14th, 2023
As Mitt Romney Retires, What Legacy Does He Leave Behind?
Politics,Mitt Romney,US Senate,Republican Party,Gerontocracy,Donald Trump,Mitch McConnell,2024 Presidential Election
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) announced he would not seek reelection in 2024 on Wednesday, calling for “a new generation of leaders” ahead of the release of his new biography.
Key Quotes: “Frankly, it’s 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,” the former GOP presidential nominee said in a statement. On the 2024 race for the White House, Romney added, “We face critical challenges—mounting national debt, climate change, and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China. Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront them.”
Biography Revelations: In Romney’s biography, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is quoted calling former President Donald Trump “an idiot” who “doesn't think when he says things.”
Reactions from the Left: Voices on the left generally spoke positively about Romney and negatively about the GOP he will leave behind. The Editorial Board of the Salt Lake Tribune (Lean Left bias) said Romney’s votes to impeach Trump were “the picture of a Profile in Courage.” A guest op-ed in MSNBC (Left bias) said his legacy was “well-earned,” but “his brand of Republicanism has now failed.”
Reactions from the Right: Voices on the right were mixed. A Washington Examiner (Lean Right bias) writer said Romney retired “with dignity,” unlike “the rest of our gerontocracy.” One National Review (Right bias) writer called him “the right man at the wrong time,” but others said his legacy was “flawed” or that he was “no profile in courage.”
Featured Coverage of this Story
Mandel Ngan/AFP
When I met Mitt Romney, we were aboard a six-seater chartered jet headed for Iowa. It was 2007, and he was a former Massachusetts governor embarking on a bid for the presidency.
What was on his mind that morning was a four-decade-old letter he had come across the day before as he was searching through family mementos for old photos that his campaign had requested. The letter was from his father and was about standing up for what was important — even, or maybe especially, when it goes against the...
Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune
Nothing in Mitt Romney’s long political career became him like the leaving of it.
Romney’s announcement Wednesday that he was stepping aside after a single term in the U.S. Senate says a lot about Utah’s best-known and — outside the radical right wing of his own party — most admired politician. Much of it good.
And it says a lot about the state of politics in America today. A lot of it bad.
What happens next will be up to the voters of Utah.
Those voters will not only have a...
SENATOR MITT ROMNEY/YOUTUBE
At 1:38 p.m. on Wednesday, Sen. Mitt Romney officially declared his political career dead. Despite multiple attempts to resuscitate it in 2012 and 2018, Romney’s tenure as a pompous D.C. partisan is done.
The Utah Republican clearly desires to leave a political legacy that is hailed by the corporate media and the Washington uniparty. In his retirement announcement, Romney hinged the success of his first and only Senate term on the “particularly productive” performance he’s made in passing several key pieces of President Joe Biden’s legislative wish list.
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