WaPo laments the pending demise of GOPe/Dem/Media fav Maverick, hope Romney carries their torch[WAPO] In more ways than one, followers of traditional Republican orthodoxy are facing an emotional inflection point this week.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), at home battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, will not attend this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of foreign policy leaders from NATO nations that has become a central clearinghouse for global security matters and a celebration of Western values and democratic institutions.
McCain, an avatar of all of the above, has been a regular attendee for decades. Last year, less than a month after President Trump took office, he stole the show with a speech that denounced the new president’s refusal to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent,” McCain said there last February.
But with McCain’s retreat comes the reemergence of another man: Mitt Romney, his political rival for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Romney had been scheduled to begin his campaign for senator from Utah on Thursday, but he delayed the announcement Wednesday “out of respect for the victims and their families” of a shooting at a South Florida high school.