Mitt Romney booed at Utah Republican convention

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Sen. Mitt Romney met a much less-than-favorable reception at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday, where he was called a “traitor” and a “communist” as he vied to get a work in edgewise, according to The Guardian.

In response to the hostile crowd, consisting of more than 2,100 delegates, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported that Romney asked, “Aren’t you embarrassed?”

Addressing the Maverik Center in West Valley City, he explained, “I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues.”

Though six other Republican senators voted to convict then-President Donald Trump in his second impeachment, Romney is the only Republican to vote for Trump’s impeachment twice — for seeking political dirt on his then-political opponent Joe Biden from Ukraine and then again for instigating the fatal Capitol riot on January 6, encouraging his supporters to “fight like hell” and misleading them to believe the 2020 election was stolen by now-President Biden, The Guardian reports.

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“You can boo all you like,” said Romney, who was elected senator from Utah in 2018. “I’ve been a Republican all of my life. My dad was the governor of Michigan and I was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.”

The Utah convention’s disapproval of Romney calls further attention to the 70% of Republicans who believe that the election was illegitimate, as revealed by a CNN poll reported by The Guardian.

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At the convention, a motion to censure Romney failed by a hair, with 798 votes to 711. Davis county delegate and author of the resolution Don Guymon said Romney’s impeachment votes “hurt the constitution and hurt the party,” according to The Guardian.

“This was a process driven by Democrats who hated Trump,” Guymon told the Associated Press. “Romney’s vote in the first impeachment emboldened Democrats who continued to harass Trump.”

Emily de Azavedo Brown, a delegate from Salt Lake county, told the AP, “If the point of all this is to let Mitt Romney know we’re displeased with him, trust me, he knows. Let’s not turn this into a Trump or no Trump thing. Are we a party of principle or a party of a person?”

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Other Republicans showed their support for Romney in further statements, like Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who told CNN’s State of the Union she was “appalled” by the crowd’s response in Utah.

“Mitt Romney is an outstanding senator who serves his state and our country well,” she said. “We Republicans need to remember that we are united by fundamental principles … we are not a party that is led by just one person.”

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