52 pages • 1 hour read
McKay CoppinsRomney: A Reckoning
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Political Context: The January 6 Capitol Insurrection
The January 6, 2021, insurrection is featured in the prologue and more thoroughly explored in Chapter 15. The text illuminates the insurrection from Romney’s perspective; Coppins demonstrates that Romney tried to prevent it. Five people died either at the scene or in its immediate aftermath, and four responding officers died by suicide within seven months following their experience.
Trump encouraged thousands of his supporters to gather in DC to protest the certification of election results. At the rally, he stood behind a bulletproof glass and urged Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results, inciting the crowd to violence.
Militia groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers promoted political violence. The far-right participants included anti-vaccine activists, followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, Holocaust deniers, Neo-Nazis, and Neo-Confederates. More than two thousand rioters stormed the Capitol building, vandalizing and destroying offices and corridors. Over 1,200 rioters have been charged for their roles; most of them are white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, militia members, and right-wing evangelicals.
Historians are struggling to characterize this unprecedented assault. The Republican Party continues to be divided by the fallout. Though Ted Cruz acknowledged that the event should be characterized as a terrorist attack, he refused to support its investigation.
On January 13, Trump was impeached for the second time over his role in inciting this insurrection. However, all but seven Republican senators voted “not guilty,” and Trump was acquitted. Political scientists fear that the perception of insurrection without consequences will justify further violent movements. In December 2022, a right-wing terrorist group attempted to carry out an insurrection in Germany; in January 2023, supporters of the defeated Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro attacked federal buildings in Brasilia.
Social Context: Social Media in Politics
As Coppins notes, the 2012 election was the first in which Twitter played a major role. An understanding of how social media has changed the nature of politics is essential in analyzing this text. Romney’s political career, like that of his peers, spans an era in which print media gave way to digital, and politicians struggled to adjust to the changing media landscape. Romney became the poster child for the memeification of gaffes made during a campaign, and he learned firsthand just how quickly mistakes can be made and immortalized.
The role of social media in contemporary politics cannot be overstated. Politicians must very strategically cultivate their image and present their beliefs to the world; it has become easier than ever for politicians to speak directly to voters, but at the same time it has become easier for their mistakes to be shared and amplified. While Trump has used this to his advantage to gain followers, Romney’s campaign was severely wounded by the rapid dissemination of his mistakes and his failure to act as if he were under constant surveillance. After creating an anonymous “lurker” Twitter account, for example, he was quickly discovered because he made the mistake of following all of his relatives and advisors.
Anecdotes that were designed to make him look good backfired and made him look terrible. One of his sons tried to share an anecdote in which Romney strapped the family dog, sick with diarrhea, to the top of the car while on a road trip; rather than looking like a problem solver, he looked like someone who does not care about animals. His tendency to make “verbal typos” did not play well, and Coppins suggests that Romney’s attempts at jokes were often misconstrued in ways that made him appear insensitive.
