In a moving speech on Wednesday, February 5, 2020, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney split with his party and voted to convict President Donald Trump on abuse of power in the recent Senate impeachment trial. He was the only Republican to take this stand. The balance of the Senate voted to acquit the President on both articles of impeachment.
At the very beginning of his speech, Sen. Romney made the following statement:
I am a profoundly religious person. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.
There are many in the Christian community who would scoff and shake their heads at this statement. Why? Because Romney follows the Mormon version of Christianity and to the True Christians,™ Mormonism is not an acceptable faith before God.
Instead, adhering to their more authentic faith, the True Christians™ in Congress demonstrated their brand of piety by ignoring the blatant and glaring evidence that the President of the United States had lied. Both to them and to the people he was elected to represent.
What makes this even more astounding is how many of these True Christians™ knew Trump had done what he had been accused of — some even admitted they knew. And yet, unlike Sen. Romney, they put their personal political and monetary desires ahead of their faith.
Pointing out that he recognized his decision would very likely be “vehemently denounced,” Sen. Romney further declared that his vote to convict was based on “the inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it.”
Ahhh yes. That “oath.”
It’s more than apparent the individuals who voted against impeachment forgot the moment when they were inaugurated into their current positions. Yes, it must have slipped their mind that they placed their hand on a Bible and swore to their God to uphold the Constitution.
Further, one can’t help but wonder if they “forgot” … or (heaven forbid!) were not aware of the following scripture:
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24 (ESV)
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I’m aware that most of my blog readers harbor no convictions that a supernatural being exists or has anything to do with the activities of human beings. However, one can’t help but admire Sen. Mitt Romney for putting his faith ahead of politics and demonstrating to the world that he truly is a “Man of God.”
Nan's Notebook 
Hello Nan. I have seen the clips online. While I may not agree with him on the existence of a deity, I have to admire him standing on what he seems to deeply believe. He is not just giving lip service, he seem to think his god requires him to live by the codes most only talk about. This is even more impressive when you think that the other Mormon Republican congress people did think about the standards their god is claimed to have when they voted. Mike Crapo and Mike Lee both voted to acquit, while Tom Udall a Democrat voted to convict. I do wonder though, Romney is / was a venture capitalist. He got a large portion of his vast wealth raiding companies , taking the assets and shifting the debt, then closing or selling the worthless business. He put a lot of people out of work. How does that square with is god? Is his god OK with hurting so many other people just for extra quick money when he already was wealthy? Or does it only count when he has sworn an oath. Hugs
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Scottie … you know and I know, there’s not one single “honest and upright” politician. They all have their skeletons in the closet. They are all directed in the end by their personal goals.
Having said that, I still have to give credit to Romney for standing up — at least in this instance — for what he believes in. Besides, I wasn’t focusing so much on the politics of his statement as much as I was the fact that he chose to put (his) God first.
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Hello Nan. I agree. I do admire that he did vote his conviction knowing what it would cost him. He said in his speech he knew he would be attack viciously by tRump and the party. Did you see him deliver the speech? Nan he got overwhelmed by the emotion, that is something he has never done on camera. He is mocked for not having human emotions. No this is something that he took serious, something that he felt deeply about, and you could see it. I just wish his fellow Mormon Senators had followed his lead. Hugs
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Don’t much care or agree with the Mitt-ster on…well….on almost everything, but I do tip my hat to him for doing the right thing here. Now, let’s see if Herr Trump has his head put on a spike.
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I can’t help but picture the Mafia bosses sitting back with their cigars and brandy, smiling and praising the ongoing actions of this administration.
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This was basically a trial of a mob boss with members of his own gang making up more than half the jury. Now we’ll see if Romney finds a horse’s head (or, this being Trump, a horse’s ass) in his bed.
I do wonder where Romney’s religious convictions were during all the years he was getting rich(er) by destroying other people’s jobs.
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And at least SOME of the mafia folks had SOME honor about them. Trump and the GOP have none.
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on a “pike”
Trumpc*cks are trying to revive a state legislator’s attempt to recall Romney, but US Constitution doesn’t accommodate recalls.
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Hi Nan,
All this proves is that these True Believers believe that money and power are more important than their god, and therefore they truly believe there is no god to honour an oath to. But don’t call them atheists, atheist have no morals!
Yes, my tongue was in my cheek.
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And once again, the evangelicals have shown their true colours.
Side note, have you seen this?
Evangelist preacher Franklin Graham planned a seven-city UK tour. All seven venues have dropped him
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/06/uk/franklin-graham-uk-tour-scli-intl/index.html
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Just read that a bit ago. HAHAHAHA!!! Smart people in the UK! They know *crap* when they see it.
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Delicious, isn’t it 🙂
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Robertson did a post on it …
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Pissed, no doubt.
And, naturally, being a wanker, he can not pause for even a second to at least *try* to understand why.
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Obviously, Romney is the only one not scared shitless of tRump. . . It’ll be interesting to see how he’s ‘dealt with’.
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Romney was elected a senator in 2018, so he’s not up for re-election anytime soon. Thus, he can withstand Trump & Company’s vitriol without fear of losing his senate seat for four more years, by which time Trump will be out of the White House and (hopefully) in a prison cell where he belongs.
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Hello Nan. Just read that the State Legislature is considering censuring Romney out of fear that tRump will take his displuse out on the state. One legislator used the word retribution and admitted they were afraid of what tRump will do. Another is preparing a bill to implement some type of recall of a Senator which is getting a large out of state support. It has begun. Hugs
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You vote your conscience and you get beat to smithereens. That really makes everyone else want to stand up, too. I don’t like him,but I agree, he bucked a hard and dangerous opponent. He may have lost his job, let’s hope that’s all he loses.
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It comes naturally to those with no honor to loathe one who does appear to have honor. They know full well what he makes them look like in comparison, and he threatens to prod awake the conscience they have so carefully sedated.
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How ironic that Trump’s approval rating is up to 50@ at the same time the country’s moral discernment and character are going down the tubes.
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Trump’s apparent boost in popularity probably doesn’t mean anything.
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Probably, I agree. BUT !!! It will mean everything to him. He grabs onto every little thing to boast and brag about. What he fails to realize (and probably never will) is that “numbers” mean nothing in the big picture.
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BTW, that website you linked to is fantastic! Thank you … I’ve bookmarked it.
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Oh yes, Electoral-Vote is a great site — it’s been one of my main sources for political analysis for years.
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That’s very observant.
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I am willing to wager what Mitt makes in a minute that he lands on his feet at a minimum. I have no idea why he ran for the Senate, but he knows. I would be a McCain Republican, if I were not a life-long Dem moderate.
Both of these men did something no one else in their party had the balls to do. For that, I must nod and sheath my sword, but I shan’t kneel. Insane courage is rare and should be respected. Above all else —- honor.
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Just read the latest from Heather. That girl scares me, and gives me hope at the same time. I get the very strong sense (there’s a really neat-o map of the US in there too) that if Trump keeps up his tantrums and tries to cut down anyone else verbally, he will be hard pressed to find anyone who speaks English who will support him. He’s gone rogue. Fox (or if you will, Faux) news is helping stir the pot, too. Nodding and smiling seriously.
He is, I notice, still fighting Obama for the 2016 presidency, and still witch hunting Hillary. Good going, boss.
I do admire his rationalizations: I think they called these syllogisms when I was in high school:
I didn’t do it
I did it, but I had to, so it doesn’t matter
I did it, but I can do anything i want cause Im President
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As I was reading Marie Yovanovitch’s comments, I took a seat on the other side of the aisle … and could hear the snide and sarcastic remarks being made about her. It made me ill.
There simply is no honor left within certain elements of this country. None. The individuals that support Trump and his *sick* perspectives on life and politics have become so indoctrinated that anyone who criticizes him in any way is fair game. As much as I feel sick to my stomach to say it … I truly think this country is bordering on an armed rebellion. Someone is going to round up others who feel Trump is being unjustly attacked and all hell is going to break loose.
And you know what? Trump, smiling broadly, will take his black marker and tick off each “evil and sick person” that falls to the ground.
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We’re VERY close to this happening, IMO.
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I truly think this country is bordering on an armed rebellion
I know a lot of people worry about this, and the wingnut blogs tend to be full of threats of it, but personally I’m not too concerned. They have a lot of guns, but almost all of them are stupid and disorganized. The only time they’ve actually tried an armed action that I know of, they ended up seizing a bird sanctuary visitor kiosk in the middle of nowhere, forgetting to pack enough socks, and going on the internet to beg people to send them Cheetos. I really don’t think they have the mental capability or skill to do much better. They relish talking about their fantasies of destroying and humiliating their enemies, but they don’t have what it takes to actually do it.
They also like to claim that in a real right-vs-left internal conflict in the US, the military would join their side. I rather doubt that too. A huge proportion of the rank-and-file troops are black and Hispanic. The top leadership has to be pretty sick of Trump’s endless insults. And in both cases most of them probably take their oaths to the Constitution quite seriously.
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I disagree, Infidel. I definitely think Trump is reaching the baser instincts of certain individuals. And I don’t think it would necessarily have to be an “organized” action. I tend to think someone who has a lot of influence over his buddies may simply light the match.
Some of the protests that have taken place over the years (not just under the current administration) have also illustrated that there are people willing to be physical about their viewpoints. The difference in this would be that it’s not at an “organized” event so there wouldn’t be any law enforcement hanging around to keep control. These folk would just head out the door to do their thing.
Of course I hope it never happens, but considering the climate of the country … I can’t deny the possibility.
BTW, the incident you referenced was not against any one individual … it was against the “government” and the claimed “rights” of the people.
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See: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/racially-motivated-violent-extremism-isis-national-threat-priority-fbi-director-christopher-wray/
Wray also said he’s instructed the FBI’s more than 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which work with state and local law enforcement around the country, “to have domestic terrorism squarely in their sights.”
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The last time this happened was in the 60s, with sit ins and Kent State and riots…it was ugly, and it seemed eternal. I mentioned to my husband a few years back, we’re due, or even overdue, for a new round of stuff like that. It’s kind of a blowing off of steam, ugly, and quite predictable.
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I have given some thought to this lately. I do tend to lean towards what Infidel753 said.
We have had two armed rebellions in Finland during our short indipendence. (Yeah, I know it sounds like we were some sort of banana republic.) The first one was in the aftermath of WWI and it was a direct result of wider European famine caused by the war, that reached our small country at the brink of our indipendence. One reason may have been that we had a lot of guns as a result of the war and a nother one was definetily the deep division between social classes. A lot of it has been explained by ideological reasons and sure enough the Soviet revolution presented new possibilities to the common people, but I think, that to the average person during that time all those ideologies meant less, than generally thought. The fight was about starvation and of priviledge. In our then very agrarian country the land owners, that is farmers were infact profiteering with already diminished food and especially grain. The situation became intolerable to the workers especially in the cities and the parliament altough first set a law against it, made in effect the law null and void. The workers were organized by socialists into red guards, that first started to confiscate food, and then siezed the power. The more priviledged classes organized into white guards, had some help from Germany and won the war in the name of democracy. After the war and massed killings of the losers in concentration camps, the socialists soon won the elections and then through democratic action slowly brought down the most overt priviledges and socioeconomic injustices. By then the war in Europe was over and the threat of famine no longer posed a threat.
Second time we had a rebellion, was during the rise of Fascism in Europe during the 1930’s. It was organized by a bunch of actual professional officers serving in the army at the time and some farmer volunteers from the most religious part of our country. They were well armed, organized and trained, because most of the revolutionaries belonged to the nationalist paramilitary. They were bitter, because they had been on the winning side of the previous civil war, they had produced a sort of “social media bubble” of their own through newspapers and by word from neighbour to neighbour and they honestly thought they represented some sort of “silent majority” in a country that was being socialized, even though communism and communist newspapers were banned. Sure enough, it all seemed like a conspiracy by the liberals and socialists against their conservative and “traditional values” to themselves. But the rebellion dried up in a matter of days, when it was revealed to them, that they were not infact supported by the majority of the nation and that they were infact mostly a bunch of loud minority, rather than any silent majority. Their leadership also suffered from the fact, that the officers in charge of their actions were all serious alcoholists, because that was the only emotional “medication” they had been able to muster to deal with their traumas from fighting in the “Great War” and then in the civil war here in Finland, not to mention their jobs as commandants of the concentration camps, where thousands of the red guards were “eliminated”.
We have too many of right-wing extremists and garden variety “ethno nationalists”, (that is racists) today here, who keep up this noise about their fantasies of violent civil war, in wich they assume a patriotic majority sets itself on their side and then they drive away, or maim the Greens, the Socialists, the Feminists, the Liberals and the immigrants. Who all, from the point of view of the conservative nationalist seem to demand they changed their lifestyle to a more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable one. I think this sort of rethoric is now being spread among them by professional “troll factories” in countries like Russia, that does not want to see democracy overwhelm authoritarianism anywhere. Yet, that propaganda from the outside has little effect on how these stupid and ignorant people react to the pressure of the ever changing culture around them. Once it was just Rock & Roll, that their grandparents, who shared the same fear of change had to oppose, but now they feel themselves besieged by ideals, that they do not comprehend and that therefore necessarily seem threatening to them, because they have no tools or skills to face the changes.
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