Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has been exposed to harsh criticism for his vote to convict President Trump on a single article of impeachment, and much of it is justified. But he also deserves a vote of thanks.

His vote has demonstrated for all to see that the effort to remove Trump from office springs not from an aversion to what he does but to who he is and what he represents in the course of recent American history.

Romney’s personal animus toward Trump is well known and documented just as the illogic of Romney’s pro-impeachment vote is obvious. After all, if Romney really believed that Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine was so egregious an abuse of power then why did he feel he had to vote to hear more witnesses unless it was a way to further embarrass and humiliate an embattled president?

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But it is important to note that this anti-Trump animus which Romney shares with so many others in Washington runs much deeper than just a personal dislike of the man.

It springs from the fact that Trump has challenged, and largely disproved, a long-standing assumption in politics that dates back at least to John Adams. It is that American democracy can’t function without a ruling elite, a "natural aristocracy” in Adams’s words, who would come from the right background and the right schools and provide leadership and continuity on policy while also riding herd over the American masses who can be, as Adams put it, “unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel” unless the self-ordained best and brightest lead the way.

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Trump has shown that’s not true by a long shot. In fairness, the Bush and Obama years seemed to demonstrate to most Americans that the more policy was left to the professional Washington elite class the more they mess it up whether it’s triggering endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doing nothing about illegal immigration or kowtowing to China and secretly shipping cash to the Iranian mullahs so they can fund their terrorist efforts.

But Trump’s successful handling of U.S. domestic, as well as foreign policy, has been in defiance of that elite. It has shattered forever their claims that without their constant guidance the result could only be chaos. Even more important, Trump has also proved that when the elite are challenged they will band together to remove a president by any means fair or foul who has proved them to be impotent and wrong.

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By his vote, and the media furor swirling around it, Romney has made this clash between Trump and our self-ordained elite more evident than ever. We can see that Romney’s strategy for his political future is, ironically, to join up with the very same people and media who wrecked his reputation and presidential campaign in 2012. It demonstrates that whether they are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, their claims to being an American aristocracy without whom the country cannot survive binds them together closer than any other loyalty - even a loyalty to the truth.

As for his future, voters in Utah may have different plans for Mitt. But for now, he can enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame and adulation by the media. Meanwhile, thanks to him the rest of us can see the present more clearly and the future with more insight and growing optimism about what comes next.

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