This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Mitt Romney did the nation a great service. He bravely put his reputation and tranquility on the line to illuminate for the Republican Party why Donald Trump's beliefs and behavior are harmful to America. If the Republican Party ignores Romney's prescient predictions about what will occur under a Trump presidency, it will sign its own political death warrant as a legitimate national party.
A political party that knowingly chooses a nominee who repeatedly demonstrates his incivility, vulgarity and propensity for threatening and bullying anyone who opposes him, has lost its soul and is not worthy to lead this nation. Any politician that rightly criticizes Trump for his recklessness and maliciousness and then turns around and vows to support him as the Party's nominee is not worthy of admiration.
In the coming weeks, we will see subtle attempts to redefine and repackage Trump as a more measured and moderate figure. This unfolding strategy is intended to make it palatable for more Republicans to actively support him as their nominee, and then to prepare the nation to vote for him as a presidential candidate.
Increasingly, many of Trump's supporters are trying to reassure Republicans that he is just playing to the angry crowd for its support and that he doesn't really believe his own rhetoric. They suggest he will adjust his beliefs and behavior at the opportune time. Even now Trump is beginning to hint that he will become more "flexible" from his harsh positions towards immigrants. He boasts that he can and will become more presidential.
Strikingly, Trump, with his apologists at his side, forearmed with a stratagem, is beginning to promulgate propaganda from an earlier era. The copied stratagem is designed to first foment division and dissension to establish a political foothold upon manufactured consternation and confusion, which it has successfully achieved. It will then deploy disinformation devised to deceive the broader public into supporting a Trump candidacy.
While he will try to fool the nation in the coming weeks, Trump's self-addicted personality might get in the way. It is what he prizes. He built not only his persona but also his business brand on his self-adulation. He regularly proclaims how great he is and that the Trump way is what made him "very, very, very rich and successful." It remains to be seen whether he can actuate the next phase of the political playbook he has heretofore artfully followed from another generation.
Meanwhile, no one in the Republican Party is addressing why 40 percent of its members are angry with the political establishment and why they are turning to a politician who has absolutely no clue what their fears and frustrations are all about. While he screams into the microphone, "I love the poorly educated," Trump has not presented one solution to help them, other than scapegoating Mexicans and Muslims for all their problems, promising he will deport every illegal immigrant in the country. Without specific solutions offered by other candidates, it should be no surprise so many are choosing Trump over nothing.
The Republican Party did this to itself. To our everlasting shame, we ignored the poor, uneducated and disenfranchised far too long, and because of it, we enabled an anti-establishment movement to develop in our midst that will probably carry the likes of Trump through the convention. Mitt Romney has courageously helped us see the truth about Donald Trump. Now, we need him, from the wisdom of his own previous presidential candidacy, to help us see the stark truth about our party before it is too late.
Stuart C. Reid is a Republican former state senator from Ogden.