Would Romney Vote Against Trump In An Impeachment Trial-- Most Republicans Won't Regardless Of The Evidence

As far as Orrin Hatch goes-- good riddance to a rotten and Trumpified piece of crap. As far as Romney… any enemy of Trump’s… Look, a Bernie Sanders clone we were never going to get in Utah. If the Democrats need 67 votes to convict Trump after the House impeaches him, I bet Senator Romney will be as open to looking at the evidence than Hatch would have been-- not to mention most Republicans. Once Romney started signaling he would like to run for the Senate seat if the doddering Hatch retired, TRump moved into action trying to persuade Hatch to start in Congress, senile and out of his gourd or not. Romney noticed. As Alex Isenstadt noted in Politico Tuesday after Hatch’s announcement, “Should Romney run and win, as many expect, he will be poised to be Trump’s most prominent GOP foil, representing the wing of traditional Republicanism that the president has purposefully cast aside. While laying the groundwork for a prospective bid, Romney has made little secret that he will be unafraid of taking on the president. The 2012 GOP nominee has informed a series of Republican Party donors, senators and power brokers in recent weeks that, while he isn’t looking to pick a fight with Trump, he is more than willing to speak out against him. During the 2016 campaign, Romney derided Trump as a ‘phony’ and ‘fraud’ and implored the party to nominate someone else.” And no one think Romney has forgotten how Trump humiliated him fly to NYC and making him eat frog’s legs with a phony promise of a job as Secretary of State.

Reporting for the Washington Post, Callum Borchers was quick to speculated that Trump’s neo-fascist attack dog, Steve Bannon will be looking to stop Romney. “The race to succeed Hatch in Utah,” he wrote, “could represent an irresistible challenge for Bannon, especially if Mitt Romney runs. As I have noted before, Romney and Breitbart News were very friendly in 2012, when the former Massachusetts governor was the GOP presidential nominee. But since Romney lost to Barack Obama-- an event that roughly coincided with Bannon assuming control of Breitbart-- Romney has become a symbol of the political establishment Breitbart reviles. When Romney opposed Roy Moore, Bannon's favored candidate in last month's special election for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, Bannon hit Romney with a personal attack. ‘You hid behind your religion,’ Bannon said at a rally for Moore, referring to Romney's Mormon faith. ‘You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam.’ Just imagine what Bannon might say if Romney actually becomes a candidate for office.”

Bannon, of course, would need to find a Romney opponent to back— ideally one who won't be accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, like Moore, or cozy up to white supremacists, like Paul Nehlen, a challenger to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) whom Breitbart supported in 2016.

The good news for Bannon is that expectations would be low for any candidate running against Romney, who is highly popular in Utah. The last candidate Bannon supported in Utah, President Trump, won the state in the 2016 general election but finished third in the Republican primary, 55 points behind Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) and just behind Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Utah is a great state for Romney and a bad one for Bannon, which means that the former White House chief strategist would be under little pressure. If he could field a candidate who could avoid embarrassment and make Romney sweat-- even a little-- Bannon might be able to use the Utah race as a big stage to take some shots at the GOP leadership.