It’s pretty common for conservatives to complain about moderate Republicans, but with exceptions most of the moderates come home to the party when needed. Without Susan Collins–a favorite target of RINO critics–the Supreme Court would still lean left. So as frustrated as I often get with moderate Republicans, I cut a lot of slack for those in tough seats.

It’s even good for we conservatives to be reminded that the Party needs more than its hardcore base to accomplish its goals, and that we have to learn to live with a certain amount of frustration. If I lived in Maine I would even vote for Collins, despite being far to the right of her. She is the most conservative candidate who can win, and having a liberal Republican is far better than having a Leftist Democrat in office. (Don’t hate me for admitting this!)

But even an old softie like me has his limits. The grifters at the Lincoln Project, the Never Trumpers who have allied with Democrats to take out anybody who deviates from the Neocon line, and the “Republicans” who get quoted hating on conservatives in the MSM will all spend eternity in the 9th circle of Hell for all I care.

Mitt Romney has come to fit this mold, and I look forward to the possibility that Utah voters will give him the boot. We can hope, at least.

In a new book reviewed by Politico an important tidbit was buried. At a time Joe Biden was testing the waters to see if he should run for president, Mitt Romney urged him to run. In 2018. At a party where they were celebrating Republican losses in the midterm elections.

Monitoring the results from Virginia, he talked to candidates he’d campaigned for and plenty he didn’t, congratulating some, consoling others and catching up with more still.

It felt a lot better than last time he’d done this — that dark November night in 2016 — and not just because his party was winning this time. He was also hearing a welcome refrain, sometimes from surprising corners of the political universe. At one point he connected with Mitt Romney, Obama’s old foe who’d been easily elected to the Senate as a rare Trump-opposing Republican. They were warm as Biden cheered the result. Then Romney got to the point: You have to run, he said.

Remember when Joe Biden claimed that Mitt Romney would put black Americans back in chains, implying he wanted to bring back slavery? I sure do, but Romney apparently doesn’t.

It makes me ill, if not surprised. We knew even back when he ran for president that he was wobbly. But we defended him because he was better than Obama.

New York Magazine has a long excerpt of the book to read if you are so inclined.

If Joe Biden’s abrupt turnaround can be attributed to a style of governance that is still emerging, that style is decidedly un-Obaman. Who understands the presidency best? @gdebenedetti reports in this excerpt adapted from "The Long Alliance," out today https://t.co/M2f9AUWcf0

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) September 13, 2022

It feels like a betrayal to see the long line of Republican operatives and “conservative” intellectuals stab us in the back because the Republican candidate didn’t kowtow to them, but we all suspected that they were grifters anyway. How many of us really thought that Bill Kristol was a serious thinker rather than somebody who was cashing in on his father’s reputation?

But when a sitting US Senator actually urges Joe Biden to run against a sitting Republican president it is a genuine betrayal. It would be understandable if he were engaged in recruiting alternatives to Trump within his own political party. We have primaries all the time, and while it does lower the chance of a victory in the general election it can have a cleansing effect in the long run. Ronald Reagan took on Gerald Ford, and he saved America by capturing the heart of the Republican Party and winning in 1980.