As the 2016 Republican nominee hawked his new hotel in downtown Washington on Wednesday, the 2012 Republican nominee was a few blocks up the street, giving morose business leaders a taste of what might have been.
Legal reform was ostensibly the subject of Mitt Romney’s address at the ornate U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters Wednesday afternoon. But just about every sentence from the measured 2012 Republican standard-bearer offered a study in contrasts with the fiery, bombastic Donald Trump — and it was clear the well-heeled audience missed him, greeting Romney with a standing ovation.
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“Title the speech ‘I told you so,’” Chamber President Tom Donohue said he had suggested of Romney’s keynote. “Of course, he’s a little too polite [for] that.”
And in his speech, which clocked in at just under 13 minutes, Romney was polite, taking only veiled and mild swipes at both Trump and Hillary Clinton — a far cry from his successor’s frequent bouts of name-calling. But more subtly, with his optimistic assertions that America is “the greatest nation in the history of the earth” and his nods to businesses started by first- and second-generation immigrants, Romney offered a clear rebuke to Trump’s often-dark nativism.
“I’ve watched the presidential debates, I’ve looked at the give-and-take, there’s been almost no discussion of those things I’ve described,” he lamented after sketching out economic and educational challenges facing the country. “The national debt and how to deal with it, reforming entitlements, I don’t think either candidate for president has said they’re going to reform entitlements one way or another.”
In other public statements on Trump, Romney has been far more critical, bashing him on previous occasions as a “phony” and a “fraud,” whose remarks about assaulting women are “vile degradations” that “demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America’s face to the world.”
And 13 days before the election, there was no hint at an olive branch. Instead, Romney made a point to talk up America’s values and accomplishments, even as he sketched out its challenges. It was another sharp contrast with Trump, who, with his slogan “make America great again,” routinely paints a picture of a country in decline.
“A nation which is an innovative nation should win” in a changing economic climate, Romney said. Hitting an optimistic note, he continued, “That’s exactly who we are.”
Romney's use of “win” appears an obvious challenge to Trump, whose chief complaints about the country’s current state is that it doesn’t “win anymore.”
Romney, a business-oriented Republican embraced in 2012 by the GOP establishment, has come to embody moderate Republican opposition to Trump. In the suburbs of cities like Philadelphia and Milwaukee, there are significant pockets of voters who identify as Romney Republicans — eminently comfortable with, even enthusiastic about, the former Massachusetts governor, but deeply put off by Trump and reluctant, at best, to vote for him.
Opposition to Trump by those Romney Republicans has undercut his ability to consolidate his base, making longtime Republican suburban strongholds suddenly competitive this year. And that sentiment was on vivid display at the Chamber, where, ahead of the former nominee’s speech, pockets of Romney loyalists huddled together and could be heard reminiscing about his campaign and lamenting that he wasn’t the nominee this time around.
Prominent backers of the former governor were in attendance, including Ron Kaufman, the Republican National Committeemman from Massachusetts and a top Romney adviser, and Matt Rhoades, Romney’s former campaign manager.
Meanwhile, less than a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump was opening his new hotel, Trump International, an activity — far from the campaign trail — that he said was “a metaphor for what we can accomplish for this country, the same kind of thing.”
Romney, too, was reflective about what could be accomplished for America — and he expressed regret that, as the 2012 nominee, he hadn’t more clearly communicated why, in his view, pro-business policies benefit the middle class.
“It’s something which, gosh, I kick myself as a Republican nominee for president for having not done a better job communicating this,” he said, going on to add, “What my primary audience hears is something which they can connect with, but the audience at large, they think the reason I’m talking about business is because all I care about is rich people and business leaders. Look, rich people are going to do well whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge. Real people who suffer when business is leaving or not successful are the people in the middle class.”
After his keynote, a program official asked Romney why he had left the business sector to go into politics. Before delving into his political story, he offered a wisecrack.
“Delusion,” he said to laughs.
