I take occasional heat for my public skepticism towards the various career conservatives who have established themselves as members of The Resistance, at least on television. The enemy of my enemy and all that, people tell me. All I’m saying is that, once the menace of the president* is gone, it’s my considered opinion that most of these folks are going to go back to being bog-standard conservatives promoting the policies, ideology, and general worldview that made his rise inevitable in the first place. Certainly, this has been the case with the various elected Never Trumpers: Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and Young Ben Sasse have been notable for their ability to talk that which they decline to walk. There’s no reason to believe that their compatriots on various media platforms will prove to be any more promising when the danger has passed, assuming it ever does.

On Tuesday, we saw a couple of developments that illustrate this curious phenomenon. As everyone around the world knows by now, the president* went bananas on the electric Twitter machine, including among his 16 (!) Tweets what appeared to be a direct challenge to Kim Jong-un to settle things once and for all with a multi-megaton dick-measuring competition. At the same time, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch decided to hang ‘em up and, almost immediately, the many-domiciled Willard Romney emerged as the logical successor. Those of us who lived under Mitt’s barely distinguishable leadership as governor here in Massachusetts, where one bad state legislative election soured him on the job entirely, find the idea that Romney will enthusiastically embrace being junior to Mike Lee pretty hilarious. My guess? He gets bored with the whole business halfway through his first term, quits, and gets ready to run for president.

More to the point, however, was the almost instantaneous reaction from some of the newish allies from the anti-Trump right that Romney’s election will establish him prima facie as a leader among principled Republican conservatives to rein in the excesses of a presidency* gone almost completely to the zoo. There is no question that Romney and the president* do not get along. Some of the people in the Trump universe are apoplectic on the subject. (In one of his last appearances on behalf of Roy Moore in Alabama, Steve Bannon spent a sizable chunk of time ridiculing the 2012 nominee.) There also is no question that, on matters of political principle, Romney is one of the more, ahem, pliable politicians on the scene.

In 2012, he ran directly against the kind of healthcare reform that was his only real achievement as a governor. After giving a bold speech against Trump during the campaign, Romney was photographed during the transition having dinner with the president*-elect* and pitching himself for Secretary of State. One way to measure what the state of play among the Never Trumpers is going to be if we all survive this presidency* is to see how fervently they embrace the notion of Mitt Romney, Champion of Principle. All the available evidence indicates that Romney is not much more than Ben Sasse with a car elevator.

It’s hard to see him voting against the abominable tax bill, or even against any of the attempts to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act. He certainly wouldn’t have stood in Neil Gorsuch’s way, and likely would vote for whatever lower court judges the White House sent up. I think he would have voted for all the awful Cabinet choices and that he would be applauding the current deregulation frenzy, and all of these things would have happened if any of the 2016 Republican candidates had been elected president. For that matter, most of them would have occurred had Mitt Romney been elected four years earlier, if you presume Mitt Romney believed in what he was selling, which is never a sure thing.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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