Staffers from Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) failed 2012 presidential campaign are joining former staffers of President George W. Bush and the late John McCain to help elect Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris.
Thirty-four former Romney staffers have signed onto the group “Romney Alumni for Biden” where they accuse President Trump’s of leading the United States “in the wrong direction” and say the nation needs Biden-Harris in the White House to usher in a “mantle of global leadership.”
They write in an open letter:
What unites us now is a deep conviction that four more years of a Trump presidency will morally bankrupt this country, irreparably damage our democracy, and permanently transform the Republican Party into a toxic personality cult.
We can’t sit by and allow that to happen.
As lifelong Republicans, we came to this conclusion in different ways and at different times. Some of us voted for Trump in 2016, excited for a no-nonsense political outsider to take on the Washington status quo. Many others never supported him to begin with, shocked that a party committed to the ideals of personal responsibility and patriotic duty would nominate an unhinged narcissist that routinely conflates loyalty to himself with love for country.
The staffers include:
- Vicki Blanton
- Erin Bradley
- Brittany Ladd
- Kristy Campbell
- Robert Morello
- John Hadlock
- Mike Sistak
- Judy Gowen
- Matt Kilfoyle
- John Voith
- Jon Evans
- Jennifer Dodds
- Gabriel Schoenfeld
- Micah Spangler
- David Boyajian
- Mark Voyger
- Emmet O’Neal
- Joe Greeley
- Betsy Rupp
- James Dalthorp
- Anthony Golia
- Kate Weinstein
- Priti Kothari
- Mike Treiser
- Mark McNulty
- Colin Russ
- Breck Denny
- Andrew Stern
- Barrick Bollman
- Mark Hancock
- Chad Adler
- Barb Brady
- Jill (Neunaber) Rulli
- Matt Coote
- Addison Jenkins
- Jonathan Glick
Romney, whose presidential campaign became defined by his claim that “corporations are people,” garnered just 47 percent in 2012 against Obama’s 51 percent. Trump, with his economic nationalist agenda, blew away Democrat Hillary Clinton by winning states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.
“Obama lost the midterms in 2010 but won re-election, largely because he ran as the populist candidate of change against the corporatist Mitt Romney,” anti-monopolist Matt Stoller has said. “That was a blown election for the GOP; they should have won it.”
As Breitbart News reported, the Romney staffers now join hundreds of former staffers from McCain’s failed 2008 presidential campaign against President Obama and former Bush staffers.
Likewise, the Romney, McCain, Bush staffers join former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staffers — who worked for the agency in 2017, 2018, and 2019 — in their pledge to help elect Biden and Harris.
Former presidential candidate and columnist Pat Buchanan said Trump’s populist transformation of the Republican Party has shut the door on the 2008 and 2012 business-centric platforms.
“Trump has also changed the character and composition of the GOP, making it more of a working- and middle-class party,” Buchanan wrote in his latest column. “Where … George W. Bush peached a global crusade for democracy ‘to end tyranny in our world,’ Trump is all-in on ‘America first.’ Bush transnationalism belongs to yesterday.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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