Sen. David Perdue: Mitt Romney makes the same mistake that cost him the White House

With his attempted character assassination of the president, a fellow Republican, Romney put self-interest ahead of the larger national interest: conservative Republican governance. The op-ed brought to mind 2012, when many Republicans chose to divide the party by continually bashing each other. Romney eventually discovered that many discouraged GOP voters decided to stay home on Election Day.

Like others who have run for president and failed, Romney has taken a stance that smacks of jealousy and resentment. It does nothing but serve the radical liberal left and further divides conservatives.

As the only former chief executive of a Fortune 500 company in Congress, I was initially thrilled by the prospect of welcoming another business guy to the Senate. But Romney’s behavior — before he was sworn in or cast his first vote as the new senator from Utah — was deeply disappointing.

He ran to the media instead of picking up the phone. That is exactly what is wrong with Washington. Too many career politicians focus on finger-pointing for their own self-interest rather than on getting results.

We have seen what a divided party means for Republicans. It means we help put Democrats in charge. It means we help them advance their radical liberal agenda, which has proven to fail the very people they claim to champion: the working women and men of America.

Conservatives know that bigger government, higher taxes and single-payer health care should not be the way forward. It’s fiscally and socially irresponsible.

The mainstream media and Democrats want to further divide Republicans, and now Romney has played right into their hands. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) filled that role before his retirement; the last thing we need now in the Senate is a Jeff Flake on steroids. We certainly don’t need more distractions. We need constructive leaders who want to get things done.

Like many other leaders in history, Trump is certainly an unusual president. He does not fit the typical mold of a Washington politician. That is exactly why the American people, fed up with business as usual, elected him.

The presidency is bigger than any one individual. It is about providing a vision and executing an agenda to advance all Americans. Criticism of the president or his policy decisions is, of course, not off-limits. But I believe it is much more productive to have candid conversations behind the scenes.

The Republican agenda is working. Just look at the results. As the news about employment and wages on Friday confirmed, over the past two years, the United States has undergone an astonishing economic turnaround. The economy is growing at twice the rate it did under President Barack Obama. More than 4.4 million new jobs were created in 2017 and 2018 . Middle-class income is at an all-time high. Overall unemployment is the lowest in 50 years, and African American, Hispanic and Asian American unemployment is at historically low levels.

Clearly, this president understands that his primary role is to protect Americans. He is strengthening the military and reasserting U.S. leadership around the world. These results would be absolutely celebrated if anyone else were president. Instead, “the resistance” has spread from the political extremes to the media and now to the Republican Party itself.

Imagine if Romney had been elected president and removed hundreds of regulations, passed a historic tax bill, made the United States’ NATO allies pay their fair share, negotiated a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, and stood up to China. Would he have been met with this type of resistance? Of course not.

We are on track to change the nation’s direction for the better. We are on track to restore economic opportunity, fiscal responsibility, limited government and individual liberty. I hope Romney, who plans to caucus with Republicans, will reconsider continuing his harmful behavior as he begins his Senate career.

Instead, I hope he will join me as one of the few business-minded leaders who can stay focused on getting the job done.

Steve Hilton: Hey, Trump haters (on both sides) could you just admit that this is a successful presidency?

In the evil populist “Trump’s America,” here’s what happened to energy-related carbon emissions: In 2017, they fell by 0.5 percent. But in the saintly globalist European Union, they went up by 1.5 percent in the same period. In fact, per-capita carbon emissions in Trump’s America are nearly at a 70-year low.

It turns out energy deregulation does more to fight climate change than going to conferences. I guess you might call that an “inconvenient truth.” This one’s pretty inconvenient if you’re the kind of person that goes around saying Trump is a fake populist, that he’s not doing anything to help the forgotten men and women in this country.

.. Look, America’s poverty rate was lower in President Trump’s first year than at any point in the Obama administration.

Okay. Whatever, you Trump haters are probably saying. But of course the middle class was screwed by the Trump tax cuts that only helped the rich, right?

Oh wait. The Trump tax cuts doubled the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for families. That’s a huge change that takes millions of Americans out of federal income tax altogether and has effectively increased incomes for middle class families across the country.

.. What else helps the middle class? Jobs. But of course that “idiot” Trump couldn’t create them.

“When somebody says – like the person you just mentioned that I’m not going to advertise for – that he’s going to bring all these jobs back. Well, how exactly are you going to do that?” Obama once said. “He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, what – how – exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have?”

Yeah, Trump, what magic wand do you have? I don’t know, maybe just better economic policy. The kind that results in the lowest unemployment rate since 1969. And the lowest African-American unemployment ever.

.. Also, wasn’t Trump going to crash the economy? Hillary Clinton thought so, telling an audience, “Economists – left, right, and center – all agree: Donald Trump will drive America back into recession.”

Left, right and center, inconvenient truth, Hillary. Even the New York times just gave Trump credit for the fact that the U.S. economy is on track for its “best annual performance since 2005.”

Alright, whatever. Jobs and growth … but Trump still isn’t delivering his promises to working people. I mean, after decades of stagnation, incomes are still flat, aren’t they?

“A key thing we’ve been looking at for quite a while that doesn’t seem to be moving much are wages,” CBS correspondent Anthony Mason said on-air.

Oh dear. That turns out not be true any more. Wages have risen all the way through the last two years and were up 3.1 percent in the last quarter – the highest level in a decade.

Fine. But it’s all going to be ruined, isn’t it, by Trump’s crazy trade war with China? In fact, the elitists seem to hate Trump so much, they even took China’s side. Remember how they thrilled to the brutal autocrat Xi Jinping at Davos last year? They just lapped up his speech on the virtues of globalization. The president of the EU-owned European Investment Bank said, “In these times of a lack of leadership, particularly in Europe, it was quite impressive.”

Oooh President Xi! You’re quite impressive!

What’s actually happening is that President Trump’s pressure is working. China is on the back foot, making trade concessions, and now pledging to drop its “Made in China 2025” program, which was Xi Jinping’s grand plan to achieve world domination in the industries of the future.

We’ll see if they mean it. But even the fact that they’re saying it is a major victory for that “idiot” Trump, who obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing. Just like with North Korea, remember?

It was outgoing President Obama who told President-elect Donald Trump that North Korea would be his number one problem. Trump actually listened to him, did something about it, and turned our relationship around in a way that has made the world incomparably safer.

And then, just this past week, we saw incredibly important substantive progress from this administration. Major criminal justice reform, led by Jared Kushner, is now looking good for passage in the Senate. A major new effort to revitalize urban America and rebuild low-income neighborhoods is being led by Ben Carson. And there’s a highly significant new strategy from John Bolton to fight China’s attempted colonization of Africa.

.. Look, the point here is this: We’ll never persuade the Trump haters on the left and the right to change their feelings about the president. They just can’t stand him. And more than anything, it’s aesthetic. They find him vulgar … not to their taste.

Fine. But could you just focus on the facts? Could you just acknowledge – even for a day or so over Christmas – that on the facts, on policy, on the substance, that this is, so far, a pretty successful presidency?