Not so principled after all…
Utah Senator Mike Lee used to have the reputation of a principled libertarian.He and Michigan’s Justin Amash were seen as allies on civil liberties and anti-authoritarianism. Amash was the real thing and jumped ship on Trump and the Republicans in disgust. Lee, on the other hand, revealed his true self: a toady for power.
A.B. Stoddard at the Bulwark has this on Lee:
Beseeching Mitt Romney for help—on Tucker Carlson’s show of all places—would have been unthinkable to Sen. Mike Lee, even recently. Yet there he was last week, demeaning himself before Fox viewers who loathe Romney, begging not only for Romney’s endorsement, but adding “you can get your entire family to donate to me.”
Over the last six years, Donald Trump has ruined many Republican political careers. Lee is now scrambling to avoid becoming another of them. The two-term senator knows exactly why his campaign is in trouble and what led to his humiliation on Fox News.
Lee isn’t in trouble because of (just) Democratic voters. His re-election is teetering because of Republican voters who are disgusted by his full embrace of Trump—including his attempts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. These machinations created space for former CIA officer Evan McMullin to run as an independent after convincing the Utah Democratic Party not to put anyone on the ballot this year. McMullin has, improbably, energized a coalition of moderate Republicans, unaffiliated voters, and Democrats behind his candidacy. Mitt Romney has chosen not to endorse either candidate, saying they are both friends.
And now the race is a dead heat.
Lee is still the favorite to win. He’s the incumbent and a Republican running in a deep-red state against an independent who’s never won a statewide election. He should be running away with this thing. But the latest Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics polls—the gold standard in Utah—found McMullin in a tight race with Lee, who was up five points and three points among likely voters in their last two polls. A Hill Research poll has McMullin ahead of Lee, 46 percent to 42 percent among active voters—when a comparable survey by the same firm had McMullin trailing Lee by 13 points in June. Meanwhile, respondents’ unfavorable view of Lee has grown, from 44 percent in June to 52 percent now.
This is the first competitive Senate race in Utah in nearly 50 years, the last one being in 1976, when Orrin Hatch defeated incumbent Frank Moss. It didn’t have to be this way. Lee easily could have been senator for life. But the combination of his Trump brown-nosing and his disconnect from his constituents—he has passed very few bills and has opposed popular bipartisan bills—have made him vulnerable.
There’s a great deal of irony in Lee’s supplication before Tucker’s throne. For starters, he chose to make his appeal to Romney while kneeling in front of a guy who frequently attacks Romney. Maybe not the best way to win friends and influence people.
But also, Lee himself has a record of refusing to endorse. He didn’t endorse Sen. Orrin Hatch for re-election in 2012 and he didn’t endorse Romney in 2018.
Call it Mike Lee’s Golden Rule: Demand from others what you would never do unto them.
It’s very interesting to see how much this era is exposing the true political hacks and opportunists. I think of Sinema on the Dem side and this guy on the other. These are empty people, no center. It’s quite clarifying.