Does Mitt Romney really want to ditch Trump and bring back awful Bush-Cheney foreign policy? – Washington Examiner

When Mitt Romney penned an op-ed attack on President Trump’s character, that critique began not surprisingly with the fallout surrounding the president’s recent decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

“The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December,” the incoming senator from Utah lamented in his op-ed. “The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs all defined his presidency down.”

Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney favors a more restrained foreign policy that is more in line with the president’s “America First” vision. It’s not a stretch to assume Mulvaney is one of the new White House appointments Romney considers inexperienced.

Romney’s “sucker” comment references Trump’s Christmas speech to U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, in which the president said “we’re no longer the suckers” on the world stage, adding that “America shouldn’t be doing the fighting for every nation on earth.”

While a U.S. president could probably find a more tactful way of saying this, Trump is essentially right — and it took a leader as unconventional, and perhaps uncouth, as him to finally tell the entire Washington foreign policy establishment that things must change whether they like it or not. The broad sentiment of Trump’s Iraq comments is that America’s way of waging war forever has been a failure. It would not be hard for anyone who has followed U.S. foreign policy over the last two decades to reach the same conclusion.

Yet, few in either party agree with the president on this. An exception, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been one of the very few in Washington who has supported Trump’s withdrawal plans, and therefore, it was no surprise when he defended the president against Romney’s attacks Wednesday.

Paul was right to come out swinging.

Romney’s op-ed touches on many issues, but a prevailing theme is that Romney seems to think Trump’s lack of character is inextricably bound up in the president’s more restrained foreign policy positions, at least of late. “The world needs American leadership, and it is in America’s interest to provide it,” Romney insisted, with his vague endorsement of policing the world. “A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace.”

This is George W. Bush-Dick Cheney nostalgia. Does Romney want Trump to topple Assad or maybe put American boots on the ground in Iran? The U.S. helped topple authoritarian regimes in Iraq and Libya in recent decades. How did that work out? Does Romney care? Do any of his hawkish friends? Might Trump be more presidential for this crowd if he repeated the Iraq War? Maybe as a character-building exercise?

This thinking reflects the same failed hyperinterventionist philosophy Romney and virtually the entire Washington establishment believes Trump should pursue if he wants to “ rise to the mantle of the presidency.”

It’s nuts.

It is no coincidence that the “Never Trump” slice of the Republican Party that Romney’s op-ed indicates he intends to lead also includes many of the Bush-era neoconservatives who learned zero lessons from recent U.S. foreign adventures. It’s no coincidence that for all his flip-flopping, Romney’s long-standing definition of “American Greatness” is indistinguishable from the Republican Party’s definition circa 2003.

It’s no coincidence that most of these “Never Trump” zealots despise Rand Paul.

Politically, they should. Paul is against nearly every dumb military position these people stubbornly continue to advocate for, and that an American president now allies more with Republicans like Paul than Romney really should concern the Washington establishment. It’s unprecedented in modern political history.

It’s likely why Paul responded in kind so quickly to Romney. He gets the stakes. It’s about more than just one op-ed. It’s about which direction the GOP will take today, and in a Trump-less future.

He can attack the president all he likes, but Romney represents yesterday’s Republican Party through and through. The same GOP brand that got former President Barack Obama elected in 2008 and 2012 — thanks Mitt! — and Trump in 2016.

Romney might not be wrong in some of his critiques of Trump’s character. But learning from the past should count for character, too.

Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner ‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.