Replacing Orrin Hatch

Railroad tracks in southern Provo's wetlands.

As many are likely aware, state delegates in Utah recently voted and selected Mike Kennedy, by a slim majority, as their preferred candidate to replace the retiring Orrin Hatch. Some may be surprised that Utah's state delegates didn't overwhelmingly love Mitt Romney. To some, the idea that the delegates would force Mitt Romney to go through the primary process, let alone, actually favor Mike Kennedy by majority, might seem unthinkable. The reality is, that delegates simply are, by and large, much more informed than the average voter. In fact, they're much more informed even, than the well informed voter.

Anybody who has read much of my blog would certainly know that I have become unhappy with the former governor from Massachusetts. I've discussed some of those reasons before. In summary, I think he has shown some very poor judgement. The action he took to counter Trump was woefully inept (and I'm not a guy who liked Trump), he has has made a habit of endorsing all the most smiley and beloved, but inwardly corrupt, politicians, and he tweeted out implicit support for Black Lives Matters and Antifa.

I talked a delegate into asking Mitt Romney about his cringe-worthy tweet with the implicit Antifa support, and his response was less than reassuring. The delegate (who is a fan of Mitt Romney's) indicated that Romney looked visibly irritated by the question and that he responded by saying, "I don't support Nazis. That was the point of that tweet. I meant one without it being a support of the other." It falls a little shy of "yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. I could have been much clearer. I want to unambiguously clarify that Black Lives Matters and Antifa are organizations that I do not support, endorse, or favor, in any way shape or form." When the core content of his tweet was a criticism by comparison, it is a little bit of a head-scratcher for him to respond to the criticism by asserting that one half of the comparison was simply something he didn't mean. None of my friends seem to be as concerned about this as I am, but I see it as part of a pattern that I am not comfortable with.

What does concern both me and my delegate friends (who are, generally, Romney fans), is his concerning habit of endorsing dishonest politicians who happen to be popular. These are politicians who say the right things and have gathered a strong following, but, for all practical purposes, have proven themselves to not be guided by the principles they profess. Salient in my mind are Gary Herbert, John Curtis, and John McCain.

Romney is not much different in the analysis. Like Herbert and Curtis, Romney is a putatively reformed progressive. While Herbert and Curtis have a current record that betrays their claims of having been reformed, Romney hasn't governed in a while, so it is hard to tell how reformed he might be on that basis. Nevertheless, thanks to the delegate system, it is possible to find out about his political tendencies. In the end, although he talks a good game about the constitution, the only real core constitutional principle he may have learned to appreciate, is that the federal government has no business telling the states what to do, and even that he may be a little weak on. To be fair, it's a very important principle, but at the end of the day, Romney endorses Utah's own violations of the 1st Amendment, and thinks we should boot out anybody who doesn't take up the mantle of implementing state-level socialized medicine once the federal government gets kicked out. He has not made friends with any respectable Constitutionalist, and he has been extremely chummy with some of the worst actors in D.C.

During the course of the delegates' candidate scrutiny, Romney somehow got around to showcasing even more of his poor judgement. I have been told that he made a habit of visibly displaying his signature gathering material at delegate events. Whether you like the signature gathering process or not, it was a slap in the face to the delegates. He didn't need their signatures. In fact, he didn't need any signatures. Without such foolishness as that, he might even have scraped together the 60% of the delegate votes that he needed to beat Mike Kennedy and avoid the primary. There's just no accounting for such bad judgement except by imagining that he was convinced to undermine his campaign for the sake of selling the blatantly unconstitutional Count My Vote to the delegates as part of the ongoing effort to turn the Utah Republican Party into a "progressive" party just as it is in many other parts of the country. (If you have been following the party politics at all, it should be clear that this is indeed the intention of a powerful faction of the party.)

I came to Utah 3 years ago and discovered a Republican party I might want to join again, but its foundation is crumbling out from under it. Utahns seem to like to make fun of the moronic politics of California, but once SB 54 is firmly established, Utah will quickly be following in California's footsteps.

Turning to Mike Kennedy, on the other hand, I see a candidate with not nearly the same level of name recognition, but he has a pretty good rating with the Libertas Institute, so he has proven that he can walk a fairly decent walk to go with his talk. When looking to counter Mitt Romney, the two key things one needs, is that the politician actually have better principles than Mitt Romney, and that he have the best and most favorable name recognition possible, so as to have the best chance in the primary. Mike Kennedy is really the logical choice. There were many opponents, including Mike Kennedy, who had better principles than Romney, but Kennedy had the most favorable name recognition. Kennedy seems to be a little weak on articulating his strengths and Romney's weaknesses. I was not a huge fan of that, but nevertheless, he's shown that he cares about the constitution, and its principles, at least as much as he talks about them.