It's painfully obvious to any longtime observer of Mitt Romney that he did this for the same reason he's done almost everything else in his political career: opportunism. He saw a way to become relevant to the media again, so he took it. The end.
Spare us the windy lectures about principles. The principle at stake here is that Romney is damaging real issues that matter to real conservatives, hard-working American people, by doing his bit to install a socialist or outright communist in the White House in 2020.
I remember when the True Conservatives sneered at Trump voters in 2016 that he didn't really care about their issues and wouldn't be a reliable champion. Guess what? He turned out to be pretty darn reliable, and Mitt Romney is trying to sabotage him.
We're back to the same tiresome crap that soured so many people on the "conservative" establishment. It's all Beltway games and power plays to them. It's all academic discussions and theories, thousand-word essays and paens to abstract "principles."
Out here in the real world, we're watching the sworn enemies of the American middle class line up for their shot at total power - power they will use to ensure real conservative issues NEVER make headway again - while Romney plants a knife in the only guy standing in their way.
This isn't some abstract discussion. This isn't a daydream about how you wish somebody else ran a better race in 2016, or 2012. This is here and now, real life, with enormous stakes and consequences. The salient fact about Trump isn't that he's imperfect. It's that he's THERE.
There is no respectable "conservative principle" in helping the Dems with their ridiculous impeachment sham. There isn't even a decent conservative principle in setting up all future presidents of all parties to get impeached by the opposition for subjective "abuse of power."
And there most certainly isn't some chattering-class "principle" that's worth condemning America to rule by socialists to score some kind of pissy little point against Donald Trump. Nobody wants to read your True Conservative case for putting Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office.
Trump did a good job of laying out the principles that really matter in his SOTU. He provided a list of everything the Dems will destroy if they get the chance. Mitt Romney did what he could to help them get their chance. There isn't a damn thing conservative about it. /end
