24 Oct 2023

New Jersey’s GOP tries to blunt Democrats’ election abortion attacks

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New Jersey Republicans did not get the memo on abortion.

Democrats and their allies are attacking GOP candidates on the issue in every competitive legislative district — even claiming the deep blue state “is just one election away from losing abortion access.”

The Republican response: Admit the procedure is legal in New Jersey and there’s no way they can change that.

“It’s just a political issue to scare their own voters,” John DiMaio, the Republican minority leader in the state Assembly, said in a phone interview. “In reality, we have full-term abortion in New Jersey that was passed about two years ago. The governor signed it. And there’s no real push that we’re going to do anything about that.”

DiMaio’s decision to write an op-ed saying so is just one high-profile example of how New Jersey Republicans are hoping to blunt the issue, which has proved politically potent for Democrats in other parts of the country since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

New Jersey Republicans’ approach bears little resemblance to national party talking points and largely contrasts with how their counterparts in other states have dealt with abortion since the fall of Roe. The issue is indisputably a winning one for Democrats in states where abortion rights are genuinely at risk, but New Jersey’s legislative elections in November — among the few key races this year — offer one of the last chances before 2024 for the GOP to prove it can mount a real defense in a state where those rights are firmly protected.

In Virginia, one of the few other states to hold legislative elections this year, Republicans are countering campaign attacks by saying Democrats are extreme because they don’t want to place limits on abortion and that they’re spreading “disinformation.” Republicans in Kentucky are making a similar argument in that deep-red state’s governor’s race. And Ohio Republicans passed a ballot initiative asking voters next month to decide whether to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution or be the first to reject an abortion-rights measure since the end of Roe. 

One implication of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling is that the GOP feels pressure to surrender the abortion question in blue states. And now New Jersey Republicans are doing just that — attempting to gingerly sidestep the issue. The tactic follows several instances of the general public siding with abortion rights on ballot questions in far redder states. Backlash to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is also widely attributed to staving off a “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections.

Candidate responses in some of the state’s most competitive districts show how Republicans have recognized the strong support for abortion rights in New Jersey even if they do not necessarily agree.

In South Jersey, six state legislative candidates this month issued a statement distancing themselves from nearby Republican state Sen. Ed Durr (R-Gloucester) who wrote in 2020, before he was elected, that women have a choice to “close their legs” instead of getting an abortion.

Central Jersey Republican state Senate candidate Mike Pappas — who as a member of Congress in the 1990s opposed abortion even in cases of rape and incest — has refused to answer a reporter’s inquiry on whether he still holds that stance. Another candidate in a swing district in Central Jersey, Steve Dnistrian, wouldn’t take a stance on abortion when asked during an interview.

State Democrats have been battered by Republicans this summer on clean energy, dead whales washing up at the beach, sex education standards and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s lawsuits against school districts over LGBTQ policies. Now they’re trying to counter by saturating airwaves and mailboxes with ads suggesting that abortion rights will be less-protected if Republicans gain power.

Democrats hold a 25-15 majority in the Senate and a 46-34 majority in the Assembly. With their hopes buoyed by unexpected gains in 2021, in which they won six Assembly seats and one Senate seat, Republicans believe they may actually have a shot at taking control of one or both houses of the Legislature for the first time in 20 years.

Still, Democrats’ warnings that abortion rights are at risk can’t be simply dismissed. Even when Republicans have held partial power in New Jersey government, they’ve worked around the edges to curtail abortion access without attempting to ban the procedure.

Republican lawmakers, including both house’s GOP leaders, have in this legislative session introduced about a dozen bills that would restrict abortion in some way, from sweeping measures like a ban on abortions after 12 weeks to more narrowly tailored ones such as barring teaching students about it before sixth grade and then requiring schools to notify parents.

Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who opposed abortion rights, cut millions of dollars in state funds from clinics that performed them and vetoed repeated Democratic attempts to restore the funding.

And more than 20 years ago, during the waning days of their hold on both houses of the state Legislature, Republicans fought to enact a parental notification law for minors seeking abortions. After it was overturned by the state Supreme Court, they unsuccessfully sought a constitutional amendment and have re-introduced the proposal ever since.

While New Jerseyans are overwhelmingly in favor of preserving abortion rights, certain restrictions on abortions aren’t necessarily unpopular with the public. A Monmouth University poll from February found a 39 percent plurality said abortion should be legal “with some limitations.”

When DiMaio referred to “full-term” abortion being legal in New Jersey, he was talking about the fact that the state does not bar abortion at any stage. While abortions in the third trimester are rare — and, according to advocates, usually performed for medical reasons — Republicans in New Jersey often appeal to the public by noting Democrats have allowed it up to the point of birth.

Despite that, some New Jersey Republican leaders demur when asked if they would pass any abortion restriction bills if they take power.

“I’m not going to speculate on that issue. We have members that are pro-life. We have members that are pro-life with exceptions. And we have members that are pro-choice,” state Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco said in a phone interview. “But as of right now, this issue is settled law in New Jersey. And that’s why I don’t think it’s going to resonate like they’re hoping for.”

Bucco himself is a co-sponsor of the “New Jersey Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.” And DiMaio sponsors the parental notification constitutional amendment as well as legislation that would require physicians to offer women seeking an abortion an ultrasound at least 48 hours before performing an abortion (There is currently no required waiting period for an abortion in New Jersey).

Some of the Republican abortion-related bills would:

— Bar the use of fetal tissue from elective abortions for use in scientific research

— Require female jail inmates to cover the full cost of abortions

— Roll back insurance mandates for abortions

— Bar the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions unless it’s medically necessary to save a woman’s life

New Jersey’s Republican base mostly favors at least some restrictions on abortion, with 57 percent of registered Republicans in the Monmouth poll considering themselves “pro-life” compared with 34 percent who said they’re “pro-choice.”

Even as New Jersey Republicans try to avoid talking about abortion rights, New Jersey Democrats over the past decade have become more explicit in their support for them. For instance, when Christie first cut $7.5 million in funding for family planning centers, Democrats characterized them as cuts to “women’s health” centers and stressed that the money did not directly fund abortions. Today, Democrats often refer directly to Christie’s cuts as targeting Planned Parenthood.

State Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-Middlesex), who’s made abortion rights the centerpiece of his campaign against the staunchly anti-abortion Pappas, said the defunding of Planned Parenthood clinics shows that the issue is far from a red herring.

“Believe what they do, not what they say. You start with the fact that with a Democratically-controlled Legislature and a Republican governor, Planned Parenthood was defunded,” Zwicker said in a phone interview. “That’s had an enormous impact for health care for women in New Jersey.”

Zwicker acknowledged that abortion rights wouldn’t be at risk with Murphy in office. But the next governor will be elected in 2025, and Murphy, who faces term limits, won’t be on the ballot.

“It’s a meaningless statement to say that if the Republicans control the Legislature they wouldn’t do anything. Well of course not, because Gov. Murphy would be governor for two more years,” Zwicker said. “But in the election after that in 2025, who knows who wins? And under the possibility of full-Republican control of the Legislature and a Republican governor, we see extreme abortion bills already introduced.”

24 Oct 2023

Santos says he isn’t leaving. Candidates are still lining up for his seat.

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NEW YORK — The wait to replace indicted Rep. George Santos has lasted longer than his rivals expected.

Both Democratic and Republican candidates have been using that time to lay the groundwork for his ouster.

Long Island political leaders are preparing for the possibility of a special election to succeed Santos amid his legal woes. The Republican congressman is due in court Friday to answer still more criminal fraud charges.

“We will select the best candidate, and we will give 110 percent effort as we do in every race,” Nassau County GOP Chair Joe Cairo said. “We’ve probably heard from 20 different prospective candidates.”

Between the two parties, about 30 candidates — with varying degrees of viability — have been jockeying for Santos’ seat. The race is vital: It’s one of about six battleground New York House races next year critical to determining who controls Congress. It’s also dizzying with the possibility of three elections in 10 months.

Top contenders said in interviews they’re well aware of the variables in the moderate district that President Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020.

They’re ready for both a lower-turnout special election as early as January or February, if Santos is removed soon from office, as well as a June primary, if Santos sticks it out. And then there will be a November general election, when potentially redrawn district lines could be a complicating factor.

“Our job is to show up,” said Democratic candidate Zak Malamed, who once ran a donor network for aspiring politicians.

Republican hopeful Mike Sapraicone, a retired NYPD detective, said he was putting “my heart and my soul” into the run — not to mention his own cash.

Running with or without Santos

The field for New York’s 3rd Congressional District — which spreads across Nassau County and into Queens — is still in formation as better-known candidates enter or weigh bids.

Former Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi recently declared he’ll run. The 2022 Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman and 2016 Republican nominee Jack Martins, a state senator, have also been floated as special election contenders.

Santos, who took office despite fabricating much of his resume, will appear before a federal judge Friday on Long Island to be arraigned on a recent 23-count superseding indictment. The expanded case against the first-term House member now includes additional charges of wire fraud, identity theft and falsifying records.

Santos’ attorney, Joe Murray, said his client will plead not guilty on Friday.

Court papers show Santos has engaged in plea talks with prosecutors, but he has maintained his innocence and publicly declared he won’t accept a plea deal.

“They can try to expel me, but I pity the fools that go ahead and do that and think that that’s the smartest idea,” he told reporters earlier this month.

He remains defiant about running for reelection in the face of an expulsion measure proposed by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito with fellow House Republicans from Long Island and other parts of the state.

There’s a glaring problem, though: Santos refunded more campaign cash than he raised last quarter.

Democrats in his district, meanwhile, are raking in money for the election — special or otherwise — and Republicans appear just as determined to get rid of him.

The Nassau GOP has been plotting to remove him from office since he took the congressional oath in January, with party chair Cairo and more than two dozen other local Republicans demanding Santos’ resignation.

Cairo said in an interview he hasn’t spoken with Santos since December.

Ten or 15 of the 20 GOP contenders deserve serious consideration, and the process will be “hastened” if there’s a special election, the party leader said.

Cairo stressed, however, that his party is more immediately focused on local races next month.

Indeed, earlier this month, at their respective fall dinner gatherings (both held at Crest Hollow Country Club a week apart), the Nassau Democratic and Republican parties touted this year’s municipal candidates.

“The local races are important because when you get your candidates in there, you can begin to build an infrastructure, motivate voters and attract more volunteers,” Jay Jacobs, who chairs the county and state Democratic committees, said in an interview.

“We’ve enjoyed a fair amount of success the last couple years, ’21 and ’22,” Cairo said. “We think it’ll continue in ’23 and carry over into the next year.”

Winning Santos’ seat key in 2024

Santos’ swing seat is the prize party officials are laser-focused on.

The Democrats thus far have a larger, better-known, better-funded field — and they previously represented the district under Suozzi.

“I think the Democrats will take this seat,” Jacobs said. “You’ve got a mess on Capitol Hill, you’ve got George Santos, which is an embarrassment, and I’m confident we’ll have a strong candidate for that election.”

He counted four or five viable candidates in a total of about eight, so far.

Jacobs said the decision on who to give the party line to in a special election would be made by the Nassau and Queens Democrats, led by Rep. Gregory Meeks, as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Suozzi’s entry remakes the primary landscape. He’s a big name in local politics and a strong fundraiser. But he left Congress last year when he ran against Hochul in the gubernatorial primary, straining some Democratic ties in the state.

Former state Sen. Anna Kaplan, Nassau County Legislator Josh Lafazan and Austin Cheng, a health care CEO, are also declared contenders.

Malamed, a first-time candidate and a former national fundraising juggernaut, has proved his prowess by reporting $530,000 cash on hand without the self-funding that others relied on.

“If there’s a takeaway from all of this, it’s that complacency is not going to win this race,” Malamed said of the Santos saga.

A wild card is Zimmerman, who lost to Santos last year.

If there’s a special election, Suozzi is expected to be the party favorite. But Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committee member with strong labor support, could also be chosen, as well as several others.

Zimmerman and Suozzi both declined to comment.

In efforts to keep the seat, Republicans are under pressure to back a more familiar candidate after choosing a relative newcomer in Santos, whom Cairo reiterated was recommended by the Queens GOP.

Retired NYPD detective Mike Sapraicone and Afghanistan war veteran Kellen Curry are the top fundraisers; Sapraicone far more familiar to Long Island political leaders as a donor to both parties.

Sapraicone has $520,000 in cash on hand, recent filings showed.

“I’m so tired of looking at the far, far left and the far, far right,” he said in an interview. “I thought it was about time we have somebody who cares about the people who elect them.”

Another name being circulated is Jack Martins, the state senator who ran for Congress in 2016 and 2008. He said in an interview that his preference is to stay on Long Island.

“My priorities are my district, continuing to serve in the Senate and the quality of life that I have with my wife and children,” Martins explained. “And I’m very concerned about the impact that Washington will have on that.”

But he did not rule out a run: “We will have that conversation if and when it comes up.”

Santos has few friends in politics as he returns to federal court, but Queens Republican Party Chair Anthony Nunziato still has not called for his ouster.

Acknowledging that Queens makes up a small part of the district and the boundaries could change in the redistricting process, Nunziato said in an interview that he’ll defer to Cairo on endorsing a candidate.

“Show the proof, let him prove himself,” Nunziato added of Santos, with whom he still talks. “To me, to have the tail wag the dog doesn’t make any sense.”

Jeff Coltin contributed to this report.

24 Oct 2023

3 things to watch at POLITICO’s CHIPS update

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It’s been more than a year since Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which set aside nearly $53 billion in subsidies in a bid to restore America as a global leader in chip manufacturing and research. As the Commerce Department works to get that money out the door — and as Congress tries to pass more bills bolstering the domestic chip sector — POLITICO’s CHIPS Update will examine how Washington delivering on its promises.

The summit starts Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. EST in Washington, D.C., and guests can still register to attend here.

Here are three things to watch at POLITICO’s CHIPS Update: Feds, Fabs, and the Future of the Industry:

The impact of new export controls: Last week’s decision by the Biden administration to impose new restrictions on the sale of advanced AI chips to China is not being welcomed by the chip industry. In fact, chip executives have warned that cutting off their access to Chinese chip revenue will require them to slow down or even pare back their plans to build new fabs and foundries in the United States. David Isaacs, head of government affairs at the Semiconductor Industry Association, will lay out the chip industry’s worries over the new export controls — and Adrienne Elrod at the CHIPS program office of the Commerce Department will address how the Biden administration is responding to those concerns.

Who’s getting paid? The Commerce Department is expected to spend the first tranche of $39 billion in chip manufacturing subsidies by the end of the year — and some of the biggest companies are lining up for a share. Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of global operations at chip giant Micron, will discuss what his company needs from Washington, and how the industry plans to leverage federal subsidies for maximum benefit.

Workforce woes: Leaders across the chip industry say Washington’s efforts to reinvigorate high-tech manufacturing won’t work without skilled workers at new abs and foundries. The need is especially acute for employees with advanced STEM degrees, who are often non-citizens and are unable to work in the U.S. without reforms to the immigration system. Experts on the high-tech workforce including Shari Liss, executive director of the SEMI Foundation, and Michael Spencer, interim chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering at Morgan State University, will discuss what changes are needed to attract women, people of color and other underrepresented groups to the microchip industry.

24 Oct 2023

How Mitt Romney Reckoned With His Own Complicity in Trump’s Rise

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McKay Coppins sat across from Mitt Romney in the senator’s Capitol Hill office looking for a higher level of alarm.

It was the night of Dec. 14, 2021, a little less than a year after the insurrection and not quite a year before the next set of midterms, and Coppins wanted to know if Romney was seeing the same warning signs that he was — a slew of Republicans on ballots across the country who had supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Romney, in Coppins’ recollection, seemed to downplay the threat.

“I’m sure there are some people who might succumb to corruption,” Romney said, “but the great majority of states and elected officials and even legislators are not going to do so.”

“Well,” Coppins said, invoking the Trump-incited riots, “after January 6, you told me you were very concerned about the fragility of democracy. Are you still concerned about it?”

Romney acknowledged he was — because of Trump, because of Trump’s “Big Lie” — “but I don’t know how widespread that is,” he said. “I’m not at the point of moral panic,” he added. “I do think that people fundamentally don’t want to be dishonest and acknowledge to themselves that they’re a dishonest person, that they’ve lied, and that they’ve thwarted democracy.”

This moment does not appear in Coppins’ biography of Romney, which is just out today. I know about it because of a handful of recent conversations I had with Coppins about the highly unusual, often clandestine conversation the two men had in more than 45 interviews over the course of more than two years. Romney: A Reckoning is filled with fun fodder for publication-day hype: unvarnished and unflattering assessments by Romney of many of the most prominent Republicans alive. But the book’s most meaningful contribution to what remains of civic discourse is the uncommonly intimate glimpse it offers of a man in elected office engaged in a hard grappling with the reality and consequences of Trump’s rise, the country’s (and in particular his party’s) increasingly antidemocratic, even authoritarian bent, and ultimately the complicated question of his own complicity.

Getting an answer to that last question required Coppins on numerous occasions to press Romney in ways he did not always like, to connect dots Romney did not always see as connected — to ultimately force him to recognize the rationalizations he had made in his career, the junctures at which he might have sacrificed his principles amidst his quest for power.

That night in Romney’s office was one of those moments.

Behind Coppins on the wall was a Rand McNally “histomap,” charting the rise and fall of the world’s leading civilizations through some 4,000 years of history, the key to the falls frequently meant the emergence of tyrants. “A man gets some people around him and begins to oppress and dominate others,” Romney told Coppins the first time he showed him the map. America’s experiment in self-rule “is fighting against human nature,” he said. “Authoritarianism,” he explained, “is like a gargoyle lurking over the cathedral, ready to pounce.” Was Romney, literally looking at a graphic depiction of a reason for democracies’ destruction, soft-pedaling the present danger?

“I see what you’re saying,” Coppins told him. “Nobody wants to think of themselves as a thief or a liar or whatever, but the conditions of the partisan media landscape are such that you don’t have to believe that you’re a liar. You can decide to believe in these various conspiracy theories or say, ‘Well, I’m only doing this because the other side does it,’ or, ‘What I’m doing is only correcting the corruption of the other side.’”

Romney, Coppins recalled, sat back in his chair, sort of slumped — “almost like a psychic sigh.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Romney told Coppins. “I am concerned.”

It started in church.

Coppins on June 13, 2021, was sitting in adult Sunday school in the gym of his Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints in Oakton, Va., when he received an unexpected text message from Romney. Coppins had launched the work for the book, and Romney was a willing participant in the project. “Thought this might set the stage for our chat,” the text message from Romney said.

In Coppins’ email inbox was an attachment to Romney’s private journal running from right after his loss in the 2012 presidential campaign through the tumultuous election of 2016 — the first, it turned out, of tranches of personal documents Romney offered up. Coppins couldn’t help but start reading. “… probably should note my own feelings now that I am in the air and have a few minutes to write. Disappointed is the best word. Not angry, not despondent, maybe a little numb …” They had had a general conversation about papers or notes he might like to show or share, but Romney during his career had been known for control more than candor, and Coppins at that early stage of the work hadn’t yet thought to even specifically ask for this. “My immediate reaction was, ‘Oh, he’s entering into this in good faith,’” Coppins told me. “It showed me he was taking this seriously.”

There are different ways to take in this book. It’s an astonishing, nearly unprecedented catalog of intraparty critique. Steadily more depressing the deeper one reads, it’s a reminder of the grave current state of the republic. But it’s also, and maybe all the more importantly, a deft study of the capacity for rationalization — in this case an accounting of the chronology of Romney’s rationalizations in the business world at Bain Capital as (depending on somebody’s perspective) either a “blue-chip corporate turnaround artist” or “ruthless plutocrat who profited from destroying livelihoods,” as a political candidate starting in Massachusetts, as a presidential candidate starting in 2008, as a smart, sober, logical, capable, coherent, hyper-prepared person attempting to navigate this American era dominated by a figure he considered from the start if not outright odious then obviously absurd.

“Romney discovered,” Coppins writes, “a remarkable ability to justify his choices to himself.”

“I have learned through my life experience,” Romney told Coppins, “that it’s human to rationalize what’s in our best interest.”

In business? People had to be fired because he and Bain had a fiduciary responsibility to their investors. These companies, after all, already weren’t doing well. And in politics? Making nice with people he didn’t really like? Saying stuff he didn’t totally believe? “You say things that make the audience respond positively,” he told Coppins. “I admit it.”

In 2012, for instance, Romney agreed to accept the endorsement of Trump — at Trump’s insistence at Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas — because he calculated it would help him beat Barack Obama. And to do that, he needed not just Romney Republicans, of course, but also Donald Trump fans. Some of his advisers — even Nancy Reagan — told him to steer clear. “Romney was quick to rationalize keeping Trump inside the tent,” Coppins writes. “Alienating a guy with a massive bullhorn and a habit of holding grudges seemed risky. And while, yes, Trump was clearly ridiculous and vapid and filled with outlandish ideas, Obama had accepted endorsements and checks from every dolt and crackpot in Hollywood, from Kanye West to Lena Dunham to Adam Levine — why couldn’t Romney have his own silly celebrity surrogate? But the truth, which surprised even Romney himself, was that he liked Trump. Or at least, he liked having him around. Trump was funny and outrageous and talking to him broke up the monotony of the campaign trail.”

As for the insidious, racist and Trump-led “birther” smear? Romney “did not see” that having “a racial arc to it,” he told Coppins. “And perhaps I’m not as sensitive in that regard as I should be.”

Also: “I need to get to 50.1 percent or more,” Romney told reporters at the time.

By 2016, having lost and owing Trump nothing, Romney was freer to offer his true thoughts about the shocking presidential hopeful. Romney, in Coppins’ telling, considered Trump a “buffoon,” an “unabashed demagogue,” a “manifestly unqualified madman” and a “profoundly depraved and broken person whose election would coarsen America’s culture.” His “number one priority” was to stop him. When Chris Christie became arguably the first major establishment Republican to endorse Trump, Romney sent Christie an email: “He is unquestionably mentally unstable, and he is racist, bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic, vulgar and prone to violence. There is simply no rational argument that could lead me to vote for someone with those characteristics. I believe your endorsement of him severely diminishes you morally — though probably not politically — and that you must withdraw that support to preserve your integrity and character.” When Reince Priebus, then the chair of the Republican National Committee, called Romney to urge him to endorse Trump, Romney laughed and called Trump “nuts.”

Yet in the end, Romney met with Trump after he was elected, first at Trump’s Bedminster club in New Jersey, then at the restaurant Jean-Georges in New York, to talk about being his secretary of state. He had in mind what at the time was a familiar refrain. He could help Trump, he thought, by being “an adult in the room.” But there was, of course, this, too: “I wanted to be president,” Romney told Coppins. “If you can’t be president, being secretary of state’s not a bad spot to come thereafter.” Romney obviously didn’t get the job — partly because he didn’t fully retract what he had said about Trump — but Trump got a picture widely viewed as humiliating to Romney.

Romney was elected to the Senate in 2018. One of the first things he did was write an op-ed criticizing Trump. He voted for his impeachment. Twice. He marched with Black Lives Matters protesters. Again and again, Romney was struck by the cravenness and cowardice of his colleagues. And on Jan. 6, 2021, he raged at Josh Hawley: “You did this!” He thought about Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. “The madness has come on us for our sins.” What Romney didn’t do that day, Coppins writes, was think to turn any of those ruminations or recriminations more toward himself. Is any of it my fault, too?

A week and a day, though, after Coppins had gotten Romney’s text in Sunday school at church, the two of them eating pepperoni pizza from Andy’s in his Capitol Hill townhome with the blinds drawn, Romney edged slightly closer to that difficult question. They were talking about a piece he’d recently read on The Bulwark. They were talking about Matt Gaetz. Part of what Romney said made it in the book: “I don’t recognize my party in some respects. … The things that people say in my party — it’s, like, how can I even associate myself with a party that’s doing some of those things and saying some of those things?”

But most of what he said that night did not. “Matt Gaetz … 20 years ago he would be run out of our party. … Now he’s celebrated,” Romney told Coppins. He was staring down at his kitchen table, based on Coppins’ notes, his face “twisted” into a “pained expression.”

“If I watch Fox and — what is it? — OAN,” Romney continued, “I mean, is this my party?”

For a moment, Coppins thought, Romney seemed to be talking to himself.

They had an agreement. Romney would have no editorial control but would get to read the manuscript before it was published. Coppins in return would at least listen to his concerns. And so Coppins headed back to Romney’s townhome earlier this year for one final time.

Coppins had figured Romney would have misgivings mostly about what he had said about his fellow Republicans — about Ted Cruz (“frightening”), about John Kasich (“too undisciplined”), about Scott Walker (“too opportunistic”), about Rick Perry (“prima donna, low-IQ personality”), about Rick Santorum (“sanctimonious, severe and strange,” “driven by ego, not principle”) about Michele Bachmann (a “nut case”), about Bobby Jindal (a “twit”) …

Not so much.

“The stuff that he was more focused on was just this idea of his rationalization,” Coppins told me. “I think he was surprised when he read it by how much attention I gave to these moments in his career when he found himself rationalizing in his own self-interest,” he said. “He felt that I was giving those moments too much weight. And I think maybe he worried that the reader would come away thinking that his entire life and political career have been one sort of downward drift into moral relativism and nihilism.”

For what it’s worth, I didn’t come away thinking that, but I told Coppins I did come away thinking that this is what makes this book so interesting, and also important. Even Romney — manifestly diligent and disciplined, apparently more self-aware, let’s say, than some of his peers, committed to his faith in a way that seems not at all fake — even Romney was and might to a certain extent still be susceptible to these kinds of rationalizations. And even for Coppins and Romney, with their shared Mormon backgrounds, values and trust, it was hard to have this conversation.

“I really do think that a huge part of this kind of crisis moment that our politics have landed in is there’s an epidemic of self-justification and rationalizing in the American political class,” Coppins told me. “So many people have internalized the idea that getting reelected is what matters, and fitting comfortably in your partisan tribe is what matters, and that it’s almost kind of like self-righteous and quaint to talk too much about your conscience and your principles.”

Coppins in the book asks Romney if he would have voted for Trump’s impeachment 30 years earlier — at the beginning of his political career instead of the end, in other words, when he still harbored the very highest ambitions.

His answer sits on the page as honest as it is unnerving.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Romney told Coppins. “I think I recognize now my capacity to rationalize decisions that are in my self-interest. And I don’t know that I recognized that to the same degree back then.”

“In our two years of interviews, Romney’s efforts to process his party’s evolution — and his own — were halting and messy. He’d seem to confess complicity in one meeting, then walk it back in the next. He’d get angry and then cool off.” Romney’s rationalizations, “he argued, have been the exceptions in his life, not the rule, and they’re hardly unique to him. Fair enough,” Coppins writes in the epilogue. “But his rationalizations fascinate me because they’re so common in Washington. The path to this fraught moment in American history is paved with compromises made for political advantage that didn’t seem like compromises at the time.”

In one of our last conversations last week, Coppins offered additional context: “I think he has a hard time kind of accepting blame for the Trump era when he’s one of vanishingly few Republicans who did anything to try to stop it. And none of the other Republicans who are way more complicit are willing to accept blame,” he told me. “He doesn’t think that it’s his fault that Donald Trump ended up becoming president. I think the way he sees it is, in the grand ledger … by standing on that stage in 2012, he may have added a little bit of weight on the side of helping him — but then, in 2016, he added way more on the other side in trying to stop him.”

This stance makes sense. It’s hard not to sympathize. It’s ironic, too, that the very fact of Romney’s earnest self-examination — an act almost no one else in his party has ventured — is leading to a measure of scrutiny more intense than is typically directed at Trump’s worst enablers.

Romney: A Reckoning is a fine and sensible title. But Coppins at one point had a different pick. “I wanted to name the book,” he told me, in a nod to the histomap on Romney’s wall, “The Cathedral and the Gargoyle.” His publisher said no. Wouldn’t sell. And maybe so. But still. “I sometimes,” Coppins said of Romney, “tried to be the person who would remind him of the gargoyle.”