Republicanism changed under Roy Blunt’s feet, leaving him no place to stand
In 2012, Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri issued an extraordinary statement urging then-Rep. Todd Akin to end his Senate race against Democrat Claire McCaskill.
Akin had caused an uproar in a television interview, claiming a woman’s body can “shut down” a pregnancy in a case of “legitimate rape.” The congressman’s foolishness put a winnable seat in jeopardy.
“We do not believe it serves the national interest for Congressman Todd Akin to stay in this race,” the statement said. It was signed by Blunt, who had rounded up four former senators, all Republicans — Jim Talent, Kit Bond, John Ashcroft and Jack Danforth — to join him.
It didn’t work. Akin stayed in the race, and got trounced that November.
We don’t know for sure why Blunt said Monday he would not seek a third term in the Senate. The prospect of a grinding statewide race may have worried him. Fundraising would be an issue. Spending the next two years in the Senate minority would leave him less to accomplish.
It’s unlikely Blunt was afraid of a testy GOP primary. It was Blunt, after all, who eviscerated Bill Webster in the 1992 Missouri governor’s primary — his merry-go-round ad attacking Webster, in which an actor stuffs his pockets full of cash, remains a classic.
Maybe he just wanted to spend more time with his family.
But it’s likely Blunt also knew a bleak truth: His Republican party has traveled an enormous distance from that summer of 2012, in ways that leave politicians like him no place to stand.
Once it was easy to get GOP elders to denounce Todd Akin. Now, Akin’s spiritual heir, Sen. Josh Hawley, raises his fist to incite an insurrectionist riot — and takes in $1 million almost overnight.
You may know this in your own family: It’s hard these days, in fact almost impossible, to find a middle ground in public affairs. You must pick sides. That’s what Donald Trump taught us, and it’s his biggest and most troubling legacy.
Roy Blunt was and is a partisan Republican. After the Sandy Hook massacre, he stubbornly refused to contemplate stricter gun laws. (To his credit, he turned to mental health reform, one of his larger accomplishments.) As a member of the House, he voted to impeach Bill Clinton; as a senator, he voted to acquit Trump twice.
But Blunt’s understanding of what Republicanism means is not the same as Trump’s, or Hawley’s, or Sen. Ted Cruz’s, or any of the radio and TV yakkers’. For Blunt, Republicanism is regular order, fiscal discipline, incremental progress. That’s the side he’s on.
It’s also a belief that a politician is measured by his or her accomplishments, not by bluster. Blunt is “Face the Nation” in a Sean Hannity world. In 2021 GOP politics, that’s hardly a recipe for victory.
Yet we shouldn’t let Blunt off the hook just because his party has changed, or voters have gone to their corners. The senator never really pushed back against wacky Trumpism, and that left him silent when he should have spoken up.
Blunt was once Missouri’s secretary of state. He knows the 2020 presidential election was fully legitimate. Yet his silence encouraged the baseless claims of fraud that led directly to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
The 2012 Blunt would have had the moral clarity — and the political awareness — to speak the truth about the election, when it mattered. The 2021 Blunt did not.
He would likely say he had no choice: Opposing Trump, and Trumpism, would have left him without influence in his party. He could speak up and be powerless, or acquiesce to Trump and be powerless, too. Donald Trump is a distortion field too strong for most to resist.
In such situations, the usual answer is to do what’s right and let the politics follow. Blunt’s decision to retire from the Senate may reflect his admission that he could never figure out a way to do that.
This story was originally published March 8, 2021 at 12:44 PM.
