Howie Carr: Mitt Romney heads into RINO retirement

Sen. Willard Mitt Romney is retiring from politics due to ill health.

The voters got sick of him.

Actually I wanted to start this column with the traditional, “And so, farewell, Mitt Romney….”

But the reality is, the odds are great that “Pierre Delecto” (for that was indeed his Twitter nom de plume) is not going anywhere, at least not for a while.

You know damn well Romney still fantasizes about becoming president. And believe it or not, there are a bunch of political has-beens and never-weres who are searching desperately for a doomed candidate to run for president under the “No Labels” label.

Romney and Joe Manchin may end up flipping a coin to see who gets to be the Jill Stein of 2024.

But when it comes to bust-out candidates for president, who better than the current senator from Utah and former governor of Massachusetts, who has already failed twice, in 2008 and 2012.

Mitt made his announcement with a videotaped message saying that it was “time for a new generation.”

Then, in true Mittens fashion, excerpts were leaked from a new biography in which he denounced two of his Republican colleagues in the Senate – Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance.

Hawley is 43 years old. Vance is 39. So much for that new generation.

Mitt is often described as a RINO – a Republican in Name Only. I don’t think he even rises to that sad level. He’s a charter member of the GOP’s “Useful Idiot” wing, meaning useful to the Democrats, especially when he attacks another Republican.

But No Labels isn’t the right name for Mitt’s new party. How about “No Principles?”

Remember when he bragged that he was “severely conservative?” Or when he told his landscaper in Belmont to stop hiring illegal aliens – “I’m running for president for Pete’s sake.”

So it was totally in character that Mittens would include in his announcement a blast at Donald Trump. He truly detests the former president, mainly, I think, because they are the same age. Both were born in 1946, Mitt on March 12 and Trump on June 14.

And yet Trump is the one who became president – on his first try.

A French leader once said that the Germans are either at your throat or at your feet. Trump could say the same of Mitt Romney. In 2012, Trump made him fly to Las Vegas.

“He was begging for my endorsement,” Trump recalled. “I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.”

Trump said this in 2016, when Mitt was denouncing him – he was at Trump’s throat, you might say. Then Trump won and Mitt flew to New York to beg – beg! – for a job in the new administration. At Trump’s feet, as it were.

Trump gave him the back of his hand, so Mittens decided to move to Utah and run for the Senate. You know, just like he moved back to Massachusetts in 2002 to run for governor.

After one term as governor, he got bored and decided not to run for a second term. Now after one term in the Senate, he gets bored and decides not to run for a second term.

Do you begin to detect a pattern here?

He quit as governor because he didn’t think it was improving his prospects for winning the presidency. I would suggest the same m.o. is in play here.

It’s all about Mitt’s father, George Romney, the late governor of Michigan, one of Mitt’s many home states. George ran for president in 1968, but his campaign imploded after he said on television that during a visit to Vietnam, he’d been “brainwashed.”

(Comedian Mort Sahl commented that given George Romney’s towering intellect, a brain wash seemed like overkill, and that a “light rinse” would have gotten the job done just as well.)

Mitt has always relished the fake accolades of state-run media. I’m sure that since his announcement, he’s been eagerly searching the Internet for any positive reviews.

That was the whole rationale behind his “Pierre Delecto” alias on Twitter – he wanted to give himself big wet slobbering kisses on social media!

It was pitiful, but this pathetic craving for approval is a blind spot for all RINO’s.

Remember John McCain – when he was running as the RINO candidate in 2008, state-run media swooned, talking about his bus, the Straight Talk Express.

Once McCain won the nomination against Obama, the Democrats’ amen chorus turned on him. The comrades began calling McCain’s bus the Strait Jacket Express.

Mitt learned nothing from this. The fellow travelers loved him when he was running against real Republicans in the primary, but then they turned on him like a pack of rabid jackals!

He gave women cancer! He was a homophobe in prep school!

And worst of all, he put his dog in a crate on the top of his car and drove the beast to Michigan. One morning during the Republican convention in 2012, the New York Times ran not one, but two columns on the same op-ed page denouncing his treatment of poor Seamus, the Irish setter.

Remember, Romney didn’t kill Seamus. And he was running against a guy who’d admitted eating dogs as a boy in Indonesia.

Then during the debates, the plus-sized moderator Candy Crowley teamed up with Obama to destroy Romney. And Mitt’s response was the same as when a drunk Ted Kennedy lunged for his throat in the 1994 Senate debate at Faneuil Hall.

Mitt dropped to the floor and went into the fetal position and began whimpering for his mommy.

Trump described him perfectly back in 2016:

“Mitt is indeed a choke artist. He choked like I’ve never seen anyone choke.”

But now Mitt is retiring from politics – again. He’s denouncing the lack of civility and bipartisanship – again. He’s ripping Trump – again.

I can see the editorials in state-run media now. He’s an elder statesman. He’s grown, evolved. Why can’t we get Republicans like Mitt Romney anymore?

There are five Sunday-morning political chat shows on TV that nobody watches anymore. Trump’s already booked for Meet the Press this week. That leaves four for Mitt to beg to go on. The over-under on how many he makes is three.

I’ll take the over.

(Buy Howie’s new book “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)