UT-SEN 2024: Romney retiring

[Senator Incitatus]

It is darkly comic, exhausting to watch some of my political allies celebrate this when the Romney child benefit bill is something they'd have worshipped had it been proposed in some Catholic backwater country.

I will be sorry to see him go, but his position did become untenable after the first impeachment. I'd really liked to have seen how he'd have done as Secretary of State; he always had a statesman's mind. He was just a little too late to catch the wave.

[Senator Incitatus]

Good riddance. His replacement will vote the same way on almost every issue. Mittens just pretended like there was nothing he could do to stop Trump, whereas his replacement will actively encourage Trump. So six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Uh, Romney literally voted to convict and remove Trump from office twice (the only Republican to do so). So, what are you talking about?

...

If he really believed Trump was unfit for office and a threat to our country, he would not have voted to implement his policies. ...

This just doesn't make any sense at all; it's a child's mimicry of adult courage. The policies he voted for were not "Donald Trump's policies"—they were the shared policies of Trump and a Republican Congress, almost certainly would have been signed by Mike Pence as well, and had nothing to do with fitness to serve.

[Senator Incitatus]

Ballard would be a pretty strong candidate barring something heretofore unknown. I don't see why an activist is a bad fit for the Senate; Charles Sumner was basically "some activist lawyer" before his election.

And really I don't use ever this word lightly, especially when it comes to celebrities or politicians (of which Ballard is already both, in light of the cleverly partisan way Sound of Freedom was marketed), but if half of what is claimed about Ballard is true, he is a genuine hero. It would be nice to have one of those around. Ballard is a serious advocate with expertise and experience working with Congress, not just some dude they made a movie about like J.D. Vance.

[Senator Incitatus]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1709626125985497125

Very interesting fun fact, though I assume partly because they’ve had longer tenures than most.