Will Willard Get His Own Ring In The Trumpy-the-Clown Circus Tent?

Tricia Erickson is a well-known one woman anti-Mormon freakshow and right-wing, Trump-backing sociopath. While most normal Americans are freaking out over Trumpy-the-Clown appointments like Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Betsy DeVos, Mike Pompeo, Ben Carson-- and threats of positions for a collection of dangerous misfits and grifters from Rudy Giuliani, Kris Kobach, Wilbur Ross, Jan Brewer, Forrest Lucas, Harold Hamm, Mike Huckabee and Harold Ford to Joe Arpaio, Steven Mnuchin, Sarah Palin, Jeb Hensarling and John Bolton... Ericsson is obsessed with someone else she fears Trump is about the give a job to, Mitt Romney. "[I]t is quite astounding," she wrote to her e-mail list yesterday, "that Trump would even consider bringing Mitt Romney into any office under his administration. Romney has not only been working for years to keep Trump out of office, but he (Romney) has a track record of horrible judgement that has already changed and harmed the landscape of our country and the American People on so many levels that it would take a book to cover it all... I am hereby warning, not only this new administration, but also the entire country regarding EVER placing Mitt Romney in ANY seat within POTUS."

So what's her gripe against Romney, apart from the anti-Mormon bigotry she's best known for? She has pages and pages of anti-Romney boilerplate-- from raising taxes in Massachusetts and promoting "the homosexual agenda" there to RomneyCare, liberal judicial appointments and assertions that Romney is pro-Choice. (He was but, like Trump, he changed his position, actually long before Trump did.) She accuses him of being a draft dodger (as was Trump, of course) and of being a racist. "Why, she snarled like a rabid dog, "hasn't Mitt renounced the HORRIFIC RACISM AGAINST BLACKS & Native Americans in his Mormon 'faith' and historical doctrine?"

Mitt Romney was relying on the backlash against Barack Obama’s radical policies to propel him into the presidency. Ever the image master, like Obama, he is, again, positioning himself as the white horse, the savior of the country. He is counting on the American electorate to ignore his record, flip flops and insatiable quest for power that began with his father. Where Obama’s brand was hope and change and the anti-Bush, Romney’s is Mr. Fix-it and the anti-Obama.

To make himself relevant again, he rebranded himself as the "anti-Trump"....as he flip flops again.

She bills herself as a "recognized expert on Mormonism," when, in fact, she's a recognized bigot, misanthrope and sociopath. Her book, Can Mitt Romney Serve Two Masters. I bet Thom Hartmann is embarrassed for having put her on his TV show!



So while Joe Scarborough is pushing Trump to pick Romney as Secretary of State-- and implies to his morning audience that it's in the bag, other Trumpists have other ideas. Many people say who's ever with Trump the moment before he goes up to the podium to announce his choice, will pick the next Secretary of State. Many say it's come down to a choice between Romney and Giuliani, although others see him making Giuliani the Director of National Intelligence, a very frightening prospect. Other Trumpists-- primarily Newt Gingrich-- want him to give the job to Newt Gingrich and supposedly David Petraeus and John Bolton are still in the running. Mike Huckabee is an advocate of the insanity pushed by Erickson and is hissing it into Trump's ears whenever he gets the chance. In a message Huckabee later deleted, he tweeted: "Nice to have meeting--but no admin spot; Mitt said Trump was con man; phony. That's insult to Trump voters."

Yesterday, Politico reported that Huckabee and other Trump allies are making a concerted effort to steer him away from Romney.

Huckabee warned that appointments of disloyal Republicans could prove to be a distraction in a president’s administration, arguing that such a person could be a problem because he or she doesn’t have a sense of commitment to or compatibility with the president-elect.

“It’s not about that I don’t care for Mitt personally, but I’m still very unhappy that Mitt did everything he could to derail Donald Trump,” Huckabee told Fox News. “He didn’t just go after him from a standpoint of saying I disagree with his policy on immigration or I disagree with his policy on taxes. He attacked him on a personal level about his character, integrity, his honor.”

The president-elect is looking at both Romney and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani for secretary of state, but the search for that post could still broaden. It does not appear that a final decision is imminent, even though Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller said on Wednesday that Trump is spending "significant time" on the deliberations.

Romney delivered a blistering speech in March in Salt Lake City in which he called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.” He also tried to pick a convention floor fight, boldly calling on voters to cast their primary ballot for whatever Republican had a chance to beat Trump in their state.

He also used his speech to warn of the dangers of a Trump administration, mocking his business acumen-- “A business genius he is not,” Romney said-- and blasting his “flimsy at best” policies. He also described his foreign policy chops as “very, very not smart,” and said that “dishonesty” was the hallmark of his campaign.

Trump, who had repeatedly dismissed Romney as a failed candidate, immediately returned fire, saying Romney was a “choke artist” who begged for his endorsement and would have “dropped to his knees” had he asked him to.

On Wednesday, Huckabee accused Romney of not only “savaging” the man Republicans overwhelmingly elected as their nominee with his rhetoric during the campaign but also “savaging the voters.”

“It would be a real insult to all those Donald Trump voters who worked really hard. That’s what I think he has to stop and consider,” Huckabee said.

The only way Romney “could even be considered for a post like that,” he continued, is if “he goes to a microphone in a very public place and repudiates everything he said in that famous Salt Lake City speech and everything he said after that, where he said Donald Trump wasn’t fit, that he lacked character. I mean on and on. That’s beyond just the normal political infighting that we all experience.”

Gingrich characterized Romney as Trump’s “most vicious and most explicit opponent all through the campaign on the Republican side” and suggested his loyalty would be to himself, citing his presidential aspirations.

“You have to list out all the things he said and think, ‘Is this guy really gonna be loyal?’ But also, you know, Governor Romney wanted to be president, not secretary of state, and you have to ask the question: When he goes overseas, is he gonna be the secretary of state for President Trump or is he gonna be Mitt Romney’s own secretary state?” Gingrich asked. “I will support whoever President-elect Trump picks because he has the right, I think as the new president, to build the team he wants to build, but I would suggest there are a lot of other people who are more qualified than Romney in foreign policy and who are also have not been as actively hostile as he’s been.”