Romney's Republicanism

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, Atlantic Magazine journalist McKay Coppins, who has a new biography of Mitt Romney, it's called Romney: A Reckoning. Some of you may know that Coppins became a nationally known journalist when Romney was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. Coppins was with Buzzfeed at the time and wrote about covering Romney, who was a Mormon as a Mormon himself with that extra understanding a journalist might have from personal experience of a candidate with a minority religion. In 2012, you might've heard Mitt Romney say things like this.

Mitt Romney: Barack Obama and I have fundamentally different visions of America. He spent the last three or four years laying the foundation for a new government-centered society. I will spend the next four years rebuilding the foundation of our opportunity society led by free people and their free enterprises.

Brian Lehrer: Mitt Romney in 2012, but by 2020, after Donald Trump was impeached for inciting insurrection and Romney was a rare exception in his party in the Senate for voting to remove Trump from office over that, he sounded like this.

Mitt Romney: Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine.

Brian Lehrer: It's also easy to forget that Mitt Romney was a Republican governor of a democratic state, Massachusetts, launched a healthcare system in the state that became a model for Obamacare, had been called Romneycare, which Republicans, of course, opposed when it went national, but also had his own hard line edge. The book he wrote for that presidential campaign was called, in a very Republican way, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Well, now he's leaving the Senate after his current term expires and very disillusioned with that body. I guess it's time for Romney, a reckoning, and McKay Coppins joins us now for it with his book of that name. We'll also touch on some of yesterday's election results. McKay, always good to have you, welcome back to WNYC, and congratulations on the book.

McKay Coppins: Thanks for having me, Brian. Happy to do it.

Brian Lehrer: Is your title more about America reckoning with Mitt Romney or Mitt Romney reckoning with America?

McKay Coppins: I think it's about a reckoning that Mitt Romney is going through about his own career, certainly, and some of the positions he's taken, some of the mistakes he's made, but also about what's happening to his party and what's happening to his country. When I started this process, it became very clear very early on that he was wrestling with some very difficult questions, and over the next two years of interviews, as I would go to his townhome in Washington, we would talk about these questions, and he was often sort of reckoning in real-time with what he had done and whether he regretted it. I think that reckoning process really is woven throughout the book.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote in the Atlantic Magazine an excerpt from the book. I don't know if his exact line is in the book or not, you tell me, but you wrote, "I had never encountered a politician so openly reckoning with what his pursuit of power had cost." Why do you put it that way? "With what his pursuit of power had cost."

McKay Coppins: Well, throughout his career, he has been somebody accused of, known for opportunism, right? He was tagged early on in his first presidential campaign as a flip-flopper, somebody who lacked sincere conviction and would say whatever it took to get elected. As a presidential candidate, I covered him as a reporter, he was very disciplined, very controlled. He stuck to his talking points. You played a little bit of his stump speech in 2012. He had a message put together by his consultants, focus-grouped, poll-tested, and he stuck to it.

Some of his pursuit of the presidency in both 2008 and 2012 involved him taking positions and saying things that he didn't really believe in. He grapples with that now, he wrestles with it because a lot of that involved courting and, indulging, and coddling, frankly, the far right elements of his party that he always found a little exotic and even alarming at times, but he knew he needed their support to win the Republican nomination.

Now he looks back on those periods, those episodes, and realizes that he was coddling an element of his party that he fundamentally didn't understand, and that would go on to become a core part of the Donald Trump movement that Romney considers a profound threat to the American project. He is now reckoning with how his coddling of that element of the party may have enabled the rise of people like Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: You quote him, in fact, saying, "A very large portion of my party really doesn't believe in the Constitution." I guess he only came to realize that after he joined the Senate, yes?

McKay Coppins: Yes. Especially after January 6th. He was in the Senate chamber when the mob broke through the police barricades and got inside the Capitol building. There's this famous video of him, he had left the Senate chamber to go to his hideaway, which is this small windowless room near the chamber. As he's on his way, he sees a Capitol police officer sprinting the opposite direction and tells him to get back inside the chamber, he is not going to be safe where he is going. Something about that experience I really think shook something loose in him. He was really deeply rattled by it. Not just his own personal experience, but seeing a mob that he

believes was incited by the leaders of his party, tried to break into the Capitol to overturn a presidential election, there's something clarifying about that. I think for Mitt Romney, even slightly radicalizing. He came to believe after January 6th that a significant chunk of his party doesn't care about democracy per se, doesn't care about the Constitution, or the American system of government. They care about power and that's basically it.

He had bought into the idea, and it's kind of a partisan idea that's very common in Republican circles, that theirs was the party of the Constitution, right? That progressives and Democrats were the ones who were willing to toss aside constitutional precedents for their own agenda, but after January 6th, he realized that large portions of his party only care about staying in power and are willing to basically set aside the entire architecture of American democracy to stay in power. I think it was really jarring for him. It's one of the reasons he decided to cooperate with me for this book. He wanted to expose the depth of hypocrisy and cynicism that's at the heart of both his Senate caucus, but he believes his party in the Trump era. I think it's been really eye-opening for him.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, Trump once said, "We should suspend the Constitution," because the Constitution didn't provide enough pathways for Trump to overturn the election, which he was arguing was rigged. On the 2024 presidential race, though, and to the point you were just making about various people in his party, you have a quote of Romney comparing Trump and Ron DeSantis, in which Romney asks, "Do you want an authoritarian who's smart or one who's not smart?" Remind me, which one does he think is the smart one?

McKay Coppins: He thinks Ron DeSantis is the smart one. This is the tricky thing that he's grappling with now, right? He believes Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy both because of his illiberal attitudes, also because of his very blatant character defects. Mitt Romney has come to believe that the greatest effect that a president has is on the character of the country. In that regard, Donald Trump is a manifest failure.

What's interesting is that he said he wants to do everything he can to stop Donald Trump from getting a second term, but when I asked him, "Well, does that involve backing somebody like Ron DeSantis?" He struggled to answer that because he said, on the one hand, he believes Ron DeSantis is much smarter than Donald Trump, is also slightly more within the mainstream of American politics, but he also acknowledges that DeSantis has a lot of the same authoritarian tendencies that Donald Trump has.

His fear is that if we were to put somebody with Donald Trump's same illiberal attitudes but with a higher IQ and more discipline into the Oval Office, that might be even more dangerous. He wrestled with that. He ultimately decided, just so the listeners know, he came to the conclusion that DeSantis still wouldn't be as dangerous as Donald Trump and that if it came down to it, he would do what was necessary to help him. He also has been watching the primaries unfold and does not have a lot of confidence that somebody besides Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Did he cite to you any particular things that DeSantis has done as governor or maybe things he's advocated on the campaign trail as a candidate for president that he thinks are explicitly authoritarian?

McKay Coppins: I think he was especially, and this makes sense to a certain extent, that he was especially alarmed by DeSantis's crusade to punish the Disney Corporation for its stance on LGBTQ issues. He saw that as an example of the kind of government overreach that Romney, as a 2012 candidate, was constantly railing against. He said that there are certain other, what he calls, odious qualities that DeSantis has. His penchant for culture war stunts, like rounding up illegal immigrants and flying them to Martha's Vineyard. He sees that as repellent. There are a number of things about DeSantis's political persona and his record that he finds scary, frankly. He still ultimately comes down on the side of, he wouldn't be as bad as Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we're talking to Atlantic magazine journalist, McKay Coppins, who has a new biography of Mitt Romney called Romney: A Reckoning. Obviously, this is not just about the life of Mitt Romney, but also about the political times we're living in right now. We can take your phone calls, questions, comments, stories of hanging out with Mitt Romney, 212-433, WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text us at that number. Let's take a call now. Elliot in Manhattanville, you're on WNYC with McKay Coppins. Hi, Elliot.

Elliot: Hi. Thanks for taking my call and happy day after election day. Mr. Coppins, congratulations on your book. I'm really very, very curious to note, because you did hang out with him, apparently, and you've had a lot of access, did he really think that the Republican Party was abiding by the Constitution like during the Reagan years or when William Rehnquist became chief justice and they started mangling every right known to any of us. Was he asleep? Was he in trance? Is he naïve? Was he paying attention?

Brian Lehrer: Interesting way to put it.

McKay Coppins: This is the interesting thing about Romney. He still remains basically a conservative. Ideologically, temperamentally especially, he is right of center. He believes Ronald Reagan was a good president. He supports a lot of the things Reagan did. What's interesting is that his own political roots actually go back to the liberal wing of the Republican Party in the 1950s and '60s. His dad, George Romney, was a liberal Republican who supported civil rights, denounced Barry Goldwater at the Republican Convention. I think that is [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: He was Governor of Michigan, George Romney, right?

McKay Coppins: He was the governor of Michigan, that's right. Mitt, I think, probably identifies more with that brand of republicanism, if he's being honest with himself. That brand of republicanism barely exists anymore at the national level. There are still moderate Republican governors in some Democratic states, but there really isn't a liberal wing of the party anymore. So I think that in order to have any career in Republican politics, he did have to reinvent himself to a certain extent into a Reaganite conservative. I think people will have different views of how successful that was and whether that's a good thing but his own real political roots go back to that kind of liberal republicanism of the mid-20th century.

Brian Lehrer: How do you think his father shaped his original politics?

McKay Coppins: Well, his father looms large. In almost every conversation we had, he would end up bringing up his dad in one way or another. I think that in some ways he was inspired by the stand that his dad took against the extremist forces that were taking over the Republican Party in the '60s. On the other hand, I think a lot of Mitt's own political career, especially when he was running for president, was shaped almost in contrast to his dad's. Because his dad ran for President himself, ultimately failed to win the nomination in part because of a gaff he made during an interview about his changing approach to the Vietnam War.

Mitt took a lesson from that, which was, "My dad was the embodiment of integrity in public service. He was a radical truth-teller." He found that all inspiring. On the other hand, it's probably the thing that kept him from the White House. Mitt, for a lot of his political career, was trying to not repeat the mistakes his dad made and to kind of swim with the mainstream of the Republican Party, never make a gaff that would end his campaign. It's really only been in this last chapter of his political career where he's been reaching for his dad's legacy in a different way, where he realizes he's not going to be president, but he could be remembered for standing up against the right-wing forces in his party the way his dad did.

Brian Lehrer: Does that story about his father changing positions on Vietnam and paying a price within his party for it inform the book that Romney wrote that I mentioned in the intro, No Apology, which is such a hardline Republican title. Subtitle was The Case for American Greatness. This came out a little before he ran for President in 2012. What was going on at that time? Maybe Obama, maybe other Democrats did think the United States owed the world an apology for how the Iraq War was conducted. Romney dug in, no apology. We're the greatest country. Is there a relationship between his father's experience and that book, do you think?

McKay Coppins: Yes, it's a good point. I don't know if he would make that explicit connection, but I do think that his dad's willingness to openly grapple as a presidential candidate with how his mind was being changed and how his position was changing was something that Mitt Romney saw as, again, admirable on a personal level, but also politically disadvantageous. That no apology mentality really ran through his 2012 presidential campaign, and I do think was a reaction to what his dad had gone through.

Brian Lehrer: Henry in Montclair, you're on WNYC with McKay Coppins. Hi, Henry.

Henry: Hi, how are you? My question has to do with Ronna McDaniel, who was a member of the Romney family, had been chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and then became chair of the National Republican Party and was an enabler and a supporter and a fervent admirer of Donald Trump and the MAGA mindset. Does he talk about Ronna McDaniel and his lack of influence on her?

McKay Coppins: Yes, there's a story toward the end of the book about a confrontation he had with Ronna McDaniel. Ronna is his niece. He told me that, for the most part, they didn't really talk that often about politics because they just fundamentally disagreed on the state, and future, and direction of the Republican Party. Ronna was a stalwart Trump ally. Mitt Romney, of course, was an opponent of Trump's and continues to be outspoken about that.

He did call her up after January 6th, and it was because the RNC put out a statement, I think this was like a year later, put out a statement that seemed to suggest that what happened on January 6th, the capital riots, the attempted insurrection, was legitimate political speech. Mitt Romney saw that statement and was just beside himself, apoplectic that the RNC, the institutional voice of the Republican Party, would seem to be defending what happened on January 6th as legitimate political speech. He called up Ronna and asked her, "What's going on with this statement?" Ronna, apparently, according to Mitt, backed down and said, "This statement is being taken out of context." The RNC did actually walk back that statement a little bit afterward.

It's interesting, what Mitt told me about that exchange afterward is that what Ronna was reacting to, what the RNC was reacting to is this incentive structure that's in place right now in Republican politics where normal sane Republicans who want to stay in power, and I think Ronna probably falls in that category, keep having to be presented with new lines to cross, new ethical lines, moral lines to cross, to stay on the right side of Donald Trump.

What Mitt Romney said is, "The dilemma we keep facing as Republicans is that the line keeps getting moved and moved and moved to the point where now Republicans are having to defend an attempted insurrection to overturn a presidential election." Mitt has decided that at this point in his life and career, he's not going to cross those lines anymore, but his niece and a lot of other Republicans still are.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, Ronna McDaniel is still the chair of the Republican National Committee, isn't she?

McKay Coppins: She is, yes.

Brian Lehrer: With that mindset and obviously most of the party seems to be there too, but just worth mentioning because I think the caller put her in the past, but she's still the RNC chair as a MAGA Republican. Listener texts, if he wants to do a sincere mea culpa, Romney should endorse Biden in an election contest with Trump. You think he might do that?

McKay Coppins: Yes, I've been asked about that. I can tell you that he certainly prefers, I think it's fair to say, he would be less frightened by a second Biden term than he would a Trump term. I've asked him, "Will you endorse in this election?" He always says, "I don't think endorsements, especially from me, make a difference. Republicans do not like me. They're not going to follow my lead." I don't know what he would do. I think that if he does anything to try to help Biden or stop Trump, it'll be primarily behind the scenes. In 2016 and 2020, in both cases, he did work to try to prevent Trump from winning. I would imagine he'll do the same thing in '24.

Brian Lehrer: We haven't touched yet your story of origin as a journalist covering Mitt Romney back in 2012 when you were working for BuzzFeed and the fact that you were a Mormon yourself covering the rare National Mormon candidate. I'm curious, looking back now, what you think you might have brought to our national understanding of Romney since your journalism at that time got so much attention that we might not have otherwise gotten, or do we make too much of it to even ask that question?

McKay Coppins: No, I think it's a fair question. It's funny, in 2012, Romney's campaign actually was pretty wary of me as a reporter because I was constantly writing stories about the intersection of Mitt Romney's faith and his politics. Just as a matter of political strategy, his campaign had decided that they didn't want to talk about the Mormon issue, they wanted to avoid it and so I was that obnoxious reporter writing the inconvenient stories that they didn't like. They never gave me access to Mitt Romney in 2012, I never interviewed him.

I think the thing to understand about him is that his faith is really central to his identity. Part of the reason he came across in 2012 as plastic and inauthentic is because his campaign took that element of his life off the table. They never wanted to talk about it. They never wanted to let him talk about his extensive private service as a lay leader in the church. The problem is that when you take that element of his biography out of the campaign messaging or the political persona, you're kind of left with this shell of a candidate. I think that he didn't come across as who he was, but his faith has always been non-negotiable for him.

He was advised at various points in his first election to distance himself from Mormonism. To say that, basically, this is a tradition of my forefathers, but it's not central to what I believe. He flatly refused to do that. Instead, he gave a famous speech at the Bush Presidential Library saying that if people didn't want to accept him as a Mormon president, then so be it. It is central to who he is, and I think that in this last chapter of his career, he's returned to his faith time and again as he's been made to take these pretty unpopular stands.

I'll just tell you one thing that he told me. Early on in this process, as I interviewed him for this book, he said, "I think it's an advantage that you get the Mormon thing." I didn't totally know what he meant, but as we talked he said-- both he and I grew up Mormon in places where there are not a lot of Mormons, he in Michigan, myself in Massachusetts.

He said that growing up Mormon outside of a place like Utah, you get used to being different in ways that are important to you. I think that that theme has run through these last several years as he's become increasingly isolated in the Republican Party. He's been indifferent in ways that are important to him and I think he's drawn on his experience as a Mormon in taking those unpopular positions in his party.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly, Trump has carried largely Mormon Utah, but I've gotten the sense that compared to, say, evangelical Christian right voters who are maybe somewhat different from Mormons, even though people who are not either of those things may lump them together, that Mormons are more skeptical of Trump than what we usually call evangelical Christians. You think that's right?

McKay Coppins: Yes. There's no question. In 2016, Trump won Utah with 45% of the vote. He won less than half the votes in Utah, but there was a third-party conservative candidate who drew a lot of Mormon votes away. Polls have repeatedly shown that Mormons are pretty skeptical of Donald Trump. They used to be the most reliably Republican religious group in America, and now are increasingly identifying as independents, young Mormons are becoming Democrats. Trump has really changed the political face of Mormonism in America.

Brian Lehrer: Last question. What's your own take as a journalist covering Republicans on yesterday's election results if you haven't been too consumed with your book tour to pay attention?

McKay Coppins: I've been able to follow the news. I think it's another example of a good night for Democrats. Democrats have performed very well in these special elections and off-year elections. Look, something that Romney told me at one point in our interviews was that he felt like the party in the Trump years was increasingly shedding thoughtful considerate people. That, in his words, what was left was this core of angry, resentful individuals, and that the party in the Trump era has built itself around catering to an angry core of voters that doesn't represent the majority of the country.

How that will manifest in a presidential election next year is an open question, I think Joe Biden has his own problems and baggage, but I do think that the party in the Trump era has become too narrowly focused on its base, and it's becoming difficult to present a palatable message to the suburbs and swing states and people that Mitt Romney, for example, used to be pretty good at catering too.

Brian Lehrer: Recent polls notwithstanding?

McKay Coppins: Yes. Look, this is the problem though. It's not happening in a vacuum. Joe Biden, I think, has some real problems as a candidate, and he has very low approval ratings, favorability ratings, his age just is an issue whether people want to acknowledge it or not. I think we've never really had an election like this, or at least not since probably Theodore Roosevelt, where we have essentially two people who can sort of claim incumbency, not Trump really, but both have been presidents running against each other. I don't think anyone in my position can confidently predict how that will shake out, but I do think that Republicans are going to have their own issues. The question is just whether the Biden campaign can exploit it effectively.

Brian Lehrer: McKay Coppins from the Atlantic Magazine, now author of the book, Romney: A Reckoning. McKay, thanks a lot.

McKay Coppins: Hey, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

 

 

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