Tag: Mitt Romney

2022 Election Results and Reflections

Posted on by David Rodeback

We’re less than eight weeks past Election Day, that increasingly fuzzy temporal landmark, and I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think the 2022 election is finally over.

Georgia’s routine, belated runoff is history. Counties and states with more or less functional election apparatus have long since released their official numbers. And in the last few days three more things happened. Pennsylvania finally certified its results, the final tally in the State of Washington gave one US House seat to the Democrat candidate who had trailed earlier, and, though an appeal is pending, an Arizona judge rejected Kari Lake’s challenge to that state’s gubernatorial results.

I waited to finish and post this commentary until after my own county in Utah, aptly named Utah County, certified its results — on schedule — just before Thanksgiving, because my friend and neighbor Sarah Beeson was in an Alpine School Board race so close that we didn’t know the outcome before then. She won by 60 votes or 0.28%.

After that, I waited for Georgia and some non-electoral things. I don’t do this for a living, you see. And who wants to pore over politics at Christmas? But Christmas is now 364 weeks away. Let’s get this behind us while it’s still 2022, shall we?

Silver Linings and Points of Light

Posted on by David Rodeback

I share many Americans’ gloom in the present political moment. My conservative concerns are legion. But I see points of light in the night sky. I see silver linings to the dark clouds, suggesting the light still burns beyond them.

To be sure, I don’t always write cheerfully.

  • Four posts ago I wrote about not giving ourselves permission to hate people. Hatred is as dark as darkness gets.
  • Three posts ago I wrote about social media censorship and possible measures against it — for a future day when we may have a government which isn’t in bed with Big Tech.
  • Two posts ago I wrote about the rush to reimpeachment and its motives. My thoughts were not sweetness and light.
  • Last time I described a dark and detailed dream about freedom, truth, and their enemies’ raging lust for power. I’ll let you decide, when you read it, whether you think it was really just a dream.

In one or two of those sober posts, and in private conversations with several readers, in person and online, I promised happy thoughts to come — because there are some.

I have three potentially therapeutic things for you. (In some cases I may have to explain the cheering effect.) They are danger signs we don’t see yet, those happy thoughts I promised, and things to do.

Impeachment Votes: Reasons, Spin, Romney

Posted on by David Rodeback

Has enough time passed that we can look calmly at certain aspects of President Trump’s impeachment and trial? Locally, the Utah legislature has backed off; they’re not pushing through a resolution censuring Senator Mitt Romney for voting yea on one article of impeachment. There are still a couple of electronic billboards along I-15 in Salt Lake County which are inviting him to quit, but that could go on for years.

[Later note: For some reason this post did not become visible to the public generally when it should have. One way or another, it’s my mistake, and I apologize. The billboards on my commute telling Senator Romney to resign seem to have disappeared by now, and our minds are on other, bigger things. But the lessons here are portable, and the experience bears remembering, even if you’re reading this in March, not February, 2020. As ever, thanks for reading!]

Aftermath, 2018 Election Edition

Posted on by David Rodeback
It otter go more quickly, don't you think?

The 2018 election is mostly behind us by now. In the past I usually haven’t waited a week to recap an election and inject my own mordant thoughts. In the past we almost always had firm results on Election Night. But this is the age of the mail-in ballot, when Election Day is too late to vote by mail, and Election Night is too soon to draw firm conclusions.

man waiting - 2018 election
First we vote. Then we wait and wait . . .

So locally we’re waiting for Utah County in particular, which our governor dubbed “an epicenter of dysfunction,” to finish counting ballots (not just the ones which come late but properly postmarked in the mail). The highest-profile race yet in doubt is in the Fourth Congressional District, where Republican incumbent Mia Love trails Democratic challenger Ben McAdams by a few thousand votes, with some Utah County (read: heavily Republican) votes yet to be counted. We may know that result today.

Nationally, we just got final results in a tight US Senate race in Arizona, where Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s seat has taken a bizarre and dispiriting turn to the nutty left.

We’re waiting for a November 27 runoff election in Mississippi, where neither major party’s US Senate candidate got 50 percent of the vote.

And we’re waiting on the outcome of another circus in south Florida, where gubernatorial and US Senate races apparently won by Republicans are subject to a perverse, familiar drama in – where else? – Broward County (with a sideshow in Palm Beach County), where election law is merely a set of inconvenient suggestions, to be ignored as long, as defiantly, and as comprehensively as possible. It’s anybody’s guess whether they’ll have time to “discover” enough boxes of mysteriously “misplaced” ballots to turn the results Democratic before the long arm of the law arrives.

David’s Handy Election Guide – 2018 General Election

Posted on by David Rodeback

Election Day is Tuesday, November 6. For those of us in Utah, that means our mail-in ballots must be postmarked the day before, or earlier, if we don’t want to visit a polling place in person on Election Day. For further information about polling places and more, see vote.utah.gov.

Before we proceed, here’s a pro tip: Your ballot will not tell you that it is continued on the reverse side, but it might be. Mine is. Don’t forget to check.

Now let’s look at my ballot. Yours is probably different in some ways, but if you’re in Utah, a lot will be the same. I’ll summarize my thoughts on each race and issue. They certainly don’t have to be your thoughts too. Comments are a welcome place for your thoughts here, as always.

I’ll hazard some predictions too, at least for my own entertainment.

Mr. Justice Mike Lee? Not in 2018.

Posted on by David Rodeback

United States Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) is said to be on the short list, but perhaps not the shorter list, to fill the US Supreme Court seat opened by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement.

Here we’ll consider why President Trump might nominate Utah’s junior senator — and why he probably won’t.

Senator Mike Lee
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah)

My Plan for Mitt Romney (An Open Letter)

Posted on by David Rodeback

Dear Mr. Romney:

I voted for you in the 2012 presidential election, and I still think you’d have made an uncommonly good president. I was pleased to hear that you’re running for the US Senate seat which Senator Orrin Hatch will vacate at the end of his term. I’ll be eager to see what you can accomplish.

I’m sure you want to make a difference for Utah itself, not just for the country. So I have an idea for you. First, I’ll tell you what it is. Then I’ll explain.

United Utah

I propose that you change your party affiliation from Republican to United Utah, then run for that party’s nomination for US Senate.

US Capitol
The Capitol in Washington, DC

If you do, I will join that party too, and many others will also, I expect.

You’ll have little difficulty getting their nomination. Right now their website lists no candidate for that office, but even if there is opposition, you have enough support in Utah to win. You could simply urge your supporters to join the United Utah Party, so they can vote for you in its primary. If they’re Republicans now, as I was from age 18 through August 2016, they probably already know that most of the Utah GOP leadership doesn’t want you or them. If they’re unaffiliated, as I am now, perhaps it’s because the feeling is mutual.

Once you’re on the general election ballot, party affiliation won’t matter much. You’ll win in a landslide, assuming you’ve campaigned effectively at all.

Notes on the Second Presidential Debate

Posted on by David Rodeback

[Here are my notes on the first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate.]

My friends, welcome to The Freedom Habit, where we gaze into the abyss and report back, so you won’t have to.

You’re welcome. I’ll tell you how to thank me later.

The second presidential debate was Sunday evening. It was calculated by some to be the end of Donald Trump’s campaign, in the wake of some lecherous old audio someone released last week. It wasn’t that. Whether he won or not, I don’t know, but he survived for the moment.

I won’t say it was pretty.

I’ll tell you what I thought, and some of what was said, but if you want to be comprehensive, you’ll have to contemplate the abyss yourself. Video and a transcript are easy to find on the web.

It’s up to you to decide which of my thoughts are subjective and which are objective. I simply represent them as what I thought, either during or after the spectacle.

second presidential debate

Four Candidate Views of What Should Be Free

Posted on by David Rodeback

Why These Speeches?

National convention acceptance speeches are not perfect windows into candidates’ minds. But they pull in larger audiences than most other political speeches, so they’re crafted with unusual care. They’re a combination of what the candidate wants to say, what key advisors and benefactors want to hear, and what they all — candidate, advisors, donors, party officials, and pollsters alike — think the American people want to hear.

Precisely because they are a careful blend of so many things, they are interesting summaries of a party’s politics in a presidential election year. So this year’s speeches are not just old, pre-Olympic news. They’re useful portraits of our time.

trump and clinton speeched

Why I’m No Longer a Republican

Posted on by David Rodeback

The “what” is in my title. Here’s the “why.” Why I’m no longer a member of the Republican Party, that is.

It may help if I explain why I was a Republican in the first place — officially for one-third of a century, and unofficially for several years before that.

Reagan and Me

I conducted my first political poll before the 1976 Republican presidential primary in Idaho. I was in fifth grade. As went my poll of voters’ children, so went the actual vote in my adopted home state: former California Governor Ronald Reagan won by a huge margin over incumbent President Gerald Ford. Ford went on to win the nomination, then lost to Democrat and former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Reagan was elected president in 1980 and reelected in 1984.

Even in 1976 I was aware that the GOP didn’t really want Ronald Reagan. He was too conservative for the party establishment. As we saw then and more strikingly in 1980, much of the rank and file felt differently.

Ronald Reagan

Reagan was the biggest reason why, long before I could register to vote, I claimed to be a Republican. In a political sense at least, I was raised on his brief daily radio commentaries. His thinking made sense to me, and it still does. In 1984 I was pleased and proud to vote for him in my first presidential election and his last.