A Reckoning with Truth and the Rise of Political Violence

A new article on Sen. Mitt Romney reveals just how far the Republican Party has fallen.

McKay Coppins of The Atlantic published an excerpt from an upcoming biography of Mitt Romney, who recently announced he would not run for re-election as a Senator from Utah. The new book is titled, Romney: A Reckoning. 

The Atlantic article describes the soul searching of the former presidential candidate, who sought to offer a “reasonable Republican” alternative the authoritarian movement of Donald Trump.

Romney’s withdrawal from the Republican party is a significant sign of the times we are in. The story is also a reckoning with where we are now in American politics and a very alarming one.

Coppins writes, “I had never encountered a politician so openly reckoning with what his pursuit of power had cost. ‘A very large portion of my party,’ (Romney) told me one day, ‘really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.’” 

Romney realized this more clearly after the attempted coup on January 6, instigated by Trump and enabled by Republican leaders.

Coppins describes how Romney has become obsessed with a large map, printed in 1931 by Rand McNally, charting the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful civilizations. “But what struck Romney most about the map was how thoroughly it was dominated by tyrants of some kind—pharaohs, emperors, kaisers, kings. ‘A man gets some people around him and begins to oppress and dominate others,’” Romney told his interviewer. “It’s a testosterone-related phenomenon, perhaps. I don’t know. But in the history of the world, that’s what happens.” 

The map on Sen. Mitt Romney’s office wall.

America’s experiment in self-rule “is fighting against human nature … It is a very fragile thing,” he told Coppins. “Authoritarianism is like a gargoyle lurking over the cathedral, ready to pounce.” 

When Romney first won his Senate seat, he thought many in his party were “just nervous and needed a nudge. A role model, perhaps.” As the former nominee, he told Coppins, he felt that he “had the potential to be an alternative voice for Republicans.”

“Almost without exception,” Romney said, “they shared my view of the president.” 

“In public, of course, they played their parts as Trump loyalists, often contorting themselves rhetorically to defend the president’s most indefensible behavior. But in private, they ridiculed his ignorance, rolled their eyes at his antics, and made incisive observations about his warped, toddler-like psyche.”

Romney recalled one senior Republican Senator frankly admitting, “‘He has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.’”

Romney says he was warned by colleagues not to vote for the impeachment of Trump, who told him that “the first consideration” for a Senator or Member of Congress facing any vote, must be “how your vote will affect your re-election.”

I have often said I wouldn’t need both hands to count the number of incumbents on the Hill I have known – on both sides of the political aisle – who would vote for something that might cost them their next election. 

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I was struck even more deeply by what Romney said about senators’ worries not just about their political survival, but their actual survival: that is, the violent threats against politicians who vote the “wrong way.” 

“Think of your personal safety. Think of your children,” he was told. The Utah senator himself now spends $5,000 a day on security. 

Romney experienced being booed and not even allowed to speak. His attackers, Coppins writes, were: 

“Model citizens, well-behaved Mormons, respectable patriots and pillars of the community, with kids and church callings and responsibilities at work. Many of them had probably been among his most enthusiastic supporters in 2012. Now they were acting like wild children.” He went on, “And if he was being honest with himself, there were moments up on that stage when he was afraid of them.” 

“There are deranged people among us,” Romney told him. “And in Utah, people carry guns. It only takes one really disturbed person.” Coppins writes that Romney, “Let the words hang in the air for a moment, declining to answer the question his confession begged: How long can a democracy last when its elected leaders live in fear of physical violence from their constituents?”

And now, many people who take oaths of office are experiencing threats of violence–all the way from Congress to local officials and election workers. Rachel Kleinfeld, a widely respected democracy scholar, told me on the Soul of the Nation podcast: 

“Other casualties of violence are the people who are choosing not to run for office. Threats have not only risen 10-fold in the last few years against members of Congress — they have also skyrocketed against mayors and local office holders. A 2021 poll by the National League of Cities found 81 percent of local leaders have experienced threats or violence.”

It’s important to note that these threats of violence are not random. They are a timeworn tactic of autocratic and fascist movements, as Harvard scholar Steven Levitsky told me on the Soul of the Nation. 

I have a chapter in my new book about the escalation of such political violence based on fear, lies, and hate. And I see evidence of that more each week.

As I was writing this column, I was also watching Attorney General General Merrick Garland at a hearing of the Republican controlled House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

I witnessed a complete disrespect of the Attorney General, combined with lie after lie about the Justice Department told by GOP committee members, with Garland not being given a chance to honestly respond. To see Members of Congress repeating utter falsehoods and conspiracy theories that transformed a judicial oversight committee hearing into hateful political theater was not only wrong but very dangerous. 

Garland spoke of the great “danger” in attacking individuals in the Justice Department, and elsewhere in government, and reported escalating threats and attacks on FBI agents around the country, as they and the Justice Department are now continually attacked by Trump’s allies. Republicans now realize that the repetition of lies can overcome the truth to audiences who don’t know any better and whose grievances and anger, stoked by partisan lies, can lead to escalating violence. 

The phrase “truly evil” came from Attorney General Garland in relation to the human suffering of so many to Fentanyl addiction, a terrible and complex problem. That language is what I would use to describe the lies that lead to violence – from Donald Trump and his dishonest and hateful enablers like Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who are trying to turn people against government and the rule of law. Again, this is right from the playbook of authoritarian movements. 

These are truly evil men, which must be named, and resisted with the courage and power of the truth which can only set us free – as Jesus continues to remind us. A reckoning with truth is what we all need now.