'Mitt-ism' vs. 'Trumpism': Romney's return to national stage flares GOP divide
By Robert Costa and Ashley Parker January 10 at 6:00 AM
Mitt Romney’s comeback on the national stage, through the byway of his probable bid for the Senate in Utah, has prompted a sharp debate among Republicans over whether traditional political figures are still welcome as leaders of a party dominated by President Trump.
Those arguments have intensified amid the rush of speculation in recent weeks over Romney’s next steps, with the looming presence of the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee on the ballot in this year’s midterm elections seen as a new front in the civil war that has gripped the party.
Many establishment voices, eager for a resurgence in the Trump era, have seized on the prospect of Senator Romney as a clean-cut Republican counterweight to the unorthodox and chaotic Trump presidency. Trump-aligned conservatives, meanwhile, have recoiled and said the party’s base voters have moved on and would shun the former Massachusetts governor as an elite relic of the sort of conventional politics they rejected by embracing the reality television star-turned-president.
Both sides acknowledge that regardless of whether Romney, 70, runs this year for the seat held by retiring Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Republicans nationally would continue to be consumed by identity debates, fallout from the party’s balkanization and discord over what its voters want from its leaders — insider or outsider, polished or raw, champion of Wall Street or economic populist.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-ism-vs-trumpism-romneys-return-to-national-stage-flares-gop-divide/2018/01/09/2b67ea8a-f09b-11e7-97bf-bba379b809ab_story.html
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