GOP Senate Candidate Blasts ‘Out Of Touch’ Romney

After gaining national prominence as the governor of Massachusetts and then as the failed 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has settled in as a U.S. senator representing Utah.

Since the earliest days of his term, which began in 2019, he has faced widespread criticism from the conservative wing of his party who frequently describe him — in the parlance of former President Donald Trump — as a “Republican in name only.”

During a recent Breitbart News interview, the GOP mayor of Riverton, Utah, took aim at the senator, describing him as “so out of touch” with the voters in his own party. Trent Staggs, who is running for the Senate seat currently occupied by Romney, couched his remarks in the context of a recent interview during which Trump called the senator a “loser” who would easily be defeated by “the right candidate.”

“I saw the article, saw the story, and I can really understand why President Trump would have those feelings,” the mayor said. “I mean, look, here’s a guy in Romney that really earnestly sought [Trump’s] approval back in 2012, highlighted that endorsement, really used it from the president, and then in 2016, goes out … at the University of Utah, gives a speech where he calls him a phony and a fraud, and really attacked President Trump.”

That inconsistency continued after the 2016 election, Staggs explained, punctuated by Romney’s effort to “make amends” and solicit a Trump endorsement before his own 2018 senatorial bid.

“And here he goes again, just constantly going after the president,” he concluded.

In fact, Staggs contended that Romney could have likely made Barack Obama a one-term president if he had criticized his 2012 opponent as harshly as he has subsequently denounced Trump.

“Utahns are sick and tired of this,” the mayor added. “They’re tired of his misplaced or misguided passion against President Trump, and what we’d rather see is action. We’d rather see our senators doing what they said they would do and trying to bring about conservative principles in this country and the change that we need that he had campaigned on.” 

Romney recently called on campaign donors to stop supporting long-shot candidates in the crowded Republican primary field to drop out in order to reduce the likelihood that Trump will be able to secure the 2024 nomination based on a plurality of support among GOP voters.

Staggs also ridiculed that position, insisting that Romney “doesn’t understand why Republicans voters have shunned him.”