REPORT: Romney is at the top of the list for Secretary of State

Well so much for my dream of John Bolton being Secretary of State. His name hasn’t been mentioned in headlines for a while now but I was still holding out hope.

It looks now like Romney is going to get the nod:

WSJ – President-elect Donald Trump is leaning toward asking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to be his secretary of state, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Delaying Mr. Trump’s decision about secretary of state is an internal tug of war between supporters of Mr. Romney, and those urging the selection of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. A third group is pressing the president-elect to keep searching for candidates.

The New York businessman views Mr. Romney as the prototypical choice to be the nation’s top diplomat, and a group of advisers inside the transition are pushing him to select the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. Two people said Mr. Trump is inclined to select Mr. Romney.

Here’s another tidbit from the New York Times:

Transition officials say the meeting with Mr. Romney, a moderate Republican who was the party’s nominee for president in 2012, may not have been simply for show. They say that Mr. Trump believes that Mr. Romney, with his patrician bearing, looks the part of a top diplomat right out of “central casting” — the same phrase Mr. Trump used to describe Mike Pence before choosing him as his running mate.

Man that so sounds like Trump.

Allahpundit sums this up pretty well at Hotair:

Trump supposedly likes Romney in the role because he “looks the part of a top diplomat right out of ‘central casting,’” which is both true and a weirdly superficial reason to put someone in charge of U.S. diplomacy. But here’s the wrinkle: Romney is well qualified and would be a strong pick, especially if you’re worried that Trump’s admiration for Putin would lead him to roll over on Russia absent strong pushback from his inner circle. …

Romney’s temperament is better suited to a diplomatic role than the pugnacious Giuliani’s is, he wouldn’t have the ethical conflicts mentioned in the excerpt that Rudy has, and most importantly he’d be less likely to be a yes-man in the position — I think. I respect Romney enough to believe that he wouldn’t keep quiet about bad decisions or rubber-stamp irresponsible foreign-policy measures for fear of getting on Trump’s bad side again, but it’s true that Mitt would need to prove his loyalty at first in a way that Giuliani wouldn’t. Rudy might be able to speak more freely at the beginning than Mitt would. How much is that worth?

He does have a point. If Trump wanted a ‘yes man’ there are plenty of others he could have filled the role with. Instead he’s choosing a man who criticized him very harshly in the primary and never really went to bat for him in the general. I guess there’s something to be said for that.


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