Romney Is the New McCain, But Without the Clout

The new year has opened old rifts in the Republican Party. Before he was even seated in the Senate, Mitt Romney wrote a Washington Post op-ed article attacking the un-presidential behavior of President Trump. Romney’s blast fueled speculation about a primary challenge to the president (although Romney himself later said that he had no plans to aim for the White House), and it attracted the vitriol of Trump and his supporters. Yet the foreign policy implications of Romney’s broadside are equally important, because they reveal a high-stakes struggle for the soul of Republican statecraft.

In publicly taking on the leader of his own party, Romney appears to be pursuing two worthy foreign-policy goals. The first is to position himself as heir to John McCain as the congressional conscience of U.S. diplomacy. In his later years, McCain was treated as a quasi-head of state when he traveled abroad, in part because of his influence as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in part because of his longevity and reputation as a tireless advocate for U.S. internationalism, and in part because he was willing to condemn Trump’s America First ideas (if not, usually, the president himself). His death left a void that has yet to be filled, even though an array of GOP senators — notably Lindsey Graham — have criticized Trump’s recent policy decisions such as pulling U.S. troops out of Syria.