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PARK CITY, Utah — Alarmed by the dominance of Donald Trump less than 100 days before the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) urged an influential group of his onetime campaign donors to help narrow the GOP field to one viable challenger who can face off against the former president for the nomination.
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Romney, one of the most outspoken Republican critics of Trump, addressed his longtime financial backers at a gathering in Park City less than a month after announcing that he will not run for reelection next year. Free from those constraints, he did not mince words when describing the dysfunction in his party just days after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) was ousted as House speaker by a faction of far-right Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), a Trump acolyte.
“I think our party has multiple personality disorder, and I think the Democratic Party does as well,” the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said Tuesday during a fireside chat with his former running mate, Paul D. Ryan. “We don’t know what we are or what we stand for within our party.”
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan host 2024 candidates at influential donor summit
The policy gathering, known as the E2 Summit — so named for “experts and enthusiasts” — was launched by Romney a decade ago, before he became a U.S. senator, and has been helmed by Ryan since 2019.
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In a wide-ranging discussion that touched on what the U.S. role should be in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, as well as the threats to the United States posed by China, Russia and Iran, both Romney and Ryan expressed concern about the GOP’s ability to grapple with those complex issues.
Romney said he told Ryan that he had no clear answer when Ryan asked him what the conservative movement would look like after Trump. Ryan touched on his own concern that the party is now driven by “populism untethered to principles” and more frequently tethered to “the cult of Donald Trump’s personality.”
The former House speaker defined the Republican Party’s problem as such: “A guy, he’s 77 years old — and he’s got like 91 counts, and he’s got a shelf life. … Hopefully it’s February, but maybe it’s a little longer,” Ryan said, alluding to the dozens of criminal charges Trump faces in multiple trials next year.
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Earlier in the day, the group heard from four of the contenders vying for the Republican presidential nomination — Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Christie and Doug Burgum — in sessions that were closed to the press. Ryan on Tuesday night asked Romney to pinpoint how soon donors would have to coalesce around one candidate — essentially forcing lower-tier candidates from the race — to avoid the “train wreck coming” that would be Trump clinching the GOP nomination.
With Trump maintaining a wide lead in polls of the GOP race, Romney acknowledged that a “train wreck is the most likely scenario, but not necessary.”
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Speaking as a former presidential nominee, Romney said it would be difficult for the candidates to bow out of the race even if they believed it was “in the best interest of the country.”
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Narrowing the field, he argued, will hinge on the willingness of the donors who are financing them to say “it’s time to step aside.”
Romney predicted that multiple candidates will try to stay in the race for the early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — though some will run out of money before then. He said he viewed the end of February as “D-Day.”
“I’d like it to coalesce earlier; I just think it has to happen,” Romney said. “I want to put responsibility on your shoulders as the people who are financing campaigns to have some say as to when it’s time for the person you support to say, ‘Okay, I’m getting behind someone else.’”
In an interview with The Washington Post previewing his decision not to run for reelection in Utah, Romney said he was concerned about how difficult it had become for the U.S. House to operate. He also expressed his dissatisfaction with the potential choice before voters in the general election, stating that President Biden “is unable to lead on important matters and Trump is unwilling to lead on important matters.”
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He elaborated on those thoughts Tuesday night after all-day policy sessions at the E2 Summit, which was organized by the private equity firm known as Solamere Capital, founded by Eric Scheuermann, Romney’s former finance chair Spencer Zwick and Tagg Romney, Mitt Romney’s son. (Ryan is one of Solamere’s partners.)
Explaining his decision to leave the Senate, Romney noted that words such as “bipartisan” and “compromise” had become anathema to primary elections.
In part because of the divisions in the House, he said, he had concluded that there would be far fewer opportunities to effectively move legislation with the small bipartisan group of colleagues that he has worked closely with, including Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine), and Rob Portman (Ohio), who has since left the Senate; as well as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), a former Democrat turned independent.
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In the current political environment, Romney said, he did not think senators and House members would be able to solve his top five issues — addressing the emergence of China, reducing the nation’s debt, parsing the threats posed by artificial intelligence and tackling climate change and immigration. Those issues will require presidential leadership, he said.
“I’m going to work like crazy for whoever the next president is,” he said, “to see if I can’t get that president to finally address these issues, because the clock is running out.”
2024 presidential candidates Republican candidates are vying for the 2024 presidential nomination in a crowded field. Here are nine things to watch as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up. And catch up on the winners and losers from the second GOP debate
Republicans: Top contenders for the GOP 2024 nomination include former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024.
Democrats: President Biden is running for reelection in 2024. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024.
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