SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – They are distant cousins, courtly would-be presidents and scions of Mormon dynasties once enmeshed in long and unsuccessful races to the White House. Now Donald Trump, the brash Manhattanite who got there first, may have revived the rivalry between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman by considering each of them for secretary of State.
“Here they are again,” said LaVarr Webb, a former Republican strategist who worked for former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt. “How personal it is, how deep it goes, I don’t know.”
The very prospect of revisiting the Romney-Huntsman competition gives the subject the sensitivity of a toothache among Utahns – where Romney beat out Huntsman to head the 2002 Olympics – and awkwardness in national politics, where the two have vied for years. Among their similarities: Both men have issued searing criticism of a president-elect who values loyalty above all else.
Trump’s plan to bring jobs home from China and Japan? “Flimsy at best,” Romney has said. On national security? “Alarming.” Trump’s conduct toward women? “Corrupt(s) America’s face to the world.”
“When it comes to foreign policy, he is very, very not smart,” the 2012 GOP presidential nominee said of Trump in March.