Thread by @costareports

In private speech tonight at Cheney fundraiser, Senator Romney warned over 200 Republicans gathered in Northern Virginia of the ‘extraordinary challenge’ to preserve American democracy, with threats now abroad and at home, per 5 attendees...

Attendees described Romney, the GOP’s 2012 nominee, as delivering the remarks as a warning for the group, which included many longtime members of the GOP establishment, all as U.S. confronts Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as Trump continues to exert power inside the party...

“We are really the only significant experiment in democracy and preserving liberal democracy is an extraordinary challenge,” Romney said, according to the attendees, who gathered at the Hilton hotel in McLean.

Romney told the crowd that he has a chart in his office tracing the history of civilizations over the past 4,000 years, a reminder of how they can rise and collapse, and of how unusual American democracy is in global history. Autocracy is the chart’s “default setting," he warned.

At home, Romney said, “what has kept us from falling in with the same kind of authoritarian leader as Vladimir Putin are the strengths of our institutions, the rule of law, our courts, Congress.” He then praised Cheney for doing "right... when others want to look away."

My story for @CBSNews tonight, after staking out the Hilton in McLean...
cbsnews.com/news/mitt-romn…