RUTHFULLY YOURS

The last few weeks have not been a happy time for the royalty which once ruled the Republican Party.

Liz Cheney lost her leadership role in the House Republican Conference. Mitt Romney was not met with overwhelming acclaim at the Utah Republican Convention. And former President George W. Bush did an interview which again demonstrated his irrelevance to both his party and the country.

The GOP’s royal families – the Bushes, Romneys and Cheneys — view the party as their patrimony. Romney is the son of a governor who ran for president in 1964.

Founded by Senator Prescott Bush, the Bush dynasty has included congressmen, governors and two presidents. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a vice president.

The Republican royalty despise Donald Trump. He may have Mar-a-Lago, but he’s not a member of their country club.

They feel that they and those like them should rule the realm. Trump has succeeded in touching the hearts of Middle Americans in ways they never could. Try to imagine Mitt Happens packing in 50,000 at a rally, or Bikers for Romney. Okay, you can stop laughing now.

The hoi polloi aren’t supposed to run the GOP. They’re supposed to shut up, vote as they’re told and leave the decision-making to their betters. Trump is the champion of the disaffected rank and file, and the Republican Royalty hates him for that too.

But now, the Bushes, Romneys and Cheneys are going the way of the Bourbons, Hapsburgs and Romanovs.

Willard Mitt was roundly booed when he spoke at the Utah Republican Convention on May 1st and barely survived a vote of censure (711 to 798). Mitt was miffed, chiding delegates with: ”Aren’t you embarrassed?” Apparently not.

The junior Senator from Utah was heckled with cries of “traitor.” But this is unfair. In this context, treason means betraying deeply held beliefs. Romney has none. After being elected governor of Massachusettson a pro-abortion platform, Mitt did an about-face and embraced the pro-life cause when it was time to run for President and he needed the nomination of a passionately pro-life party.

Outraged by the treatment of his personage, Romney petulantly reminded delegates that he was the son of Michigan Governor George Romney and himself the Republican nominee in 2012. After losing the Republican Presidential nomination in 1964, elder Romney refused to support Barry Goldwater. The acorn and tree analogy would seem appropriate here.

Mitt’s 2012 campaign was an embarrassment. After clawing his way to the Republican nomination, he threw it away. In the foreign policy debate (when Obama should have been reeling from Benghazi), Romney turned in a stellar performance as a wet dishrag.

The Utah Republican voted to impeach the leader of his own party twice. (The last time after he’d left office.) On the second vote, Romney raged that Trump “undermined democracy” by challenging the outcome of a fraudulent election.

Worse, said Mitt, he incited what the Democrats and Never-Trumpers call the “insurrection” of January 6, as if there was a real danger that a gaggle of goofballs were going to overthrow a government with a two-million man military.

Apparently, by telling his supporters to keep their protest at the Capitol “peaceful,” Trump had incited violence –thus, a non-incitement of a non-insurrection.

In an interview on the NBC’s Today Show on April 20, ex-president George W. Bush condemned the Republican party as “isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent nativist.” (No wonder he and Michelle Obama, Miss Un-America, have what the media call a “special friendship.”) He’s fed up with the GOP “calling people names and scaring people about immigration.” Apparently, 175,000 illegal border crossings in April (up from 75,000 the year before) is no cause for alarm.

Certainly not for W. More illegals mean more peons to mow his lawn, wash his car and care for the grandkids. Unlike so many in border states, Bush doesn’t have to live cheek-by-jowl with immigrant criminals and gang members and see the flow of narcotics over the border with all of the undocumented workers.

George is like his brother, Bonnie Prince Jeb, who started his 2016 campaign by declaring that illegals weren’t lawbreakers at all, but people who “committed…an act of love” to provide for their families.

The Bush family was actually shocked by the reaction. “You mean Republicans don’t like illegal immigrants? But then who cuts their grass and washes their cars?”Instead of Dallas, W’s presidential library should have been located in Bridgeport, CT., next to the P.T. Barnum Museum.

Last week, Liz Cheney was removed from the number three post among House Republicans. Voting to impeach Trump wasn’t nearly enough for her. The Wyoming Barely Republican has carried on a vendetta against the former president, earning the applause of Nutty Nancy, who lauds Cheney as “a leader of great courage, patriotism and integrity” for buying into the January 6 myth that Madam Speaker helped to create.

Princess Leia alternates between being a whiny victim and an intergalactic warrior bent on revenge. She says she intends to be a leader “in a fight to bring our party back to substance and principle” — with her incessant attacks on the one man who can restore Congress to Republican control.

House Republicans didn’t strip Cheney of her leadership role out of love for Donald Trump, but for fear of losing his millions of devoted supporters – patriotic Americans who are scared of illegal immigration, who believe the so-called insurrection is a Democrat/media con, and who think real Republicans should control the Party of Reagan (who was also despised by the RINO elite).

Republican royalists are vestiges of a bygone era, living in exile, warmed by memories of a time when they were relevant. They need to be reminded of the adage – “Lead, follow or get out of the way.” Since they can’t lead and refuse to follow, that would leave exiting, stage left.