"Pilloried by Democrats during his 2012 run, Romney has emerged as a strong voice for a bygone kind of politics."

Said Jake Tapper, introducing Mitt Romney on "State of the Union" yesterday.

Romney gave a long interview, and maybe you saw a clip of it, but I want to do my own edit:

ROMNEY: Donald Trump won. He won overwhelmingly. He said what he was going to do, and that's what he's doing. I mean, people are saying, oh, I don't like this appointment or this policy that he's talking about. But those are the things he said he was going to do when he ran. So you can't complain about someone who does what he said he was going to do. And I agree with him on a lot of policy fronts. I disagree with him on some things. But it's like, OK, give him a chance to do what he said he's going to do and see how it works out.... 

TAPPER:  Are you worried at all about being a target for retribution, you or members of your family?

ROMNEY: No, actually, I have been pretty clean throughout my life. I'm not particularly worried about criminal investigations. And I don't know how much, by the way, of what the president says is hyperbole, because there was a lot of this person ought to be jailed and that person ought to be jailed that was said during the last two campaigns. But I think President Trump is likely to try and focus on the future. People who committed crimes, I'm sure, will be prosecuted. But I think that's few and far between....

TAPPER: ... I'm wondering... what you've learned from things that didn't go the way you wanted.

ROMNEY: ... I had some campaigns that didn't work.... I should have been more assertive in some places, pushed harder than I did, created more energy and heat than I did, went along quietly a little longer than I probably should have....

TAPPER: What's an example of someplace that you wish you had been more assertive?

He doesn't say in that second debate with Obama, when I let Candy Crowley push me back, so I'm not that interested in what he did say. You can go look it up. I linked to the transcript. Something vague about China.

After a break, Tapper brings up Romney's performance in the second debate — but it's not the Candy Crowley pushback! It's just the unfortunate locution "binders full of women."

TAPPER: Kind of incredible that that was considered a gaffe when you look back at it, 2012. Mitt Romney was pilloried by Democrats for saying that he had -- quote -- "binders full of women" -- unquote -- applicants for his Cabinet, his governor.... But, like life, politics ain't fair.... 

ROMNEY: ... as I look back at campaigns and think about the angst that surrounded any mistake that I or a campaign member made... And so these things were blown at a huge proportion. And in this campaign, and in the prior campaign that President Trump ran, I mean, they talked about flooding the zone with various excrement.... It's like, hey, if you make a mistake, just make a bunch more, and people will forget the first one. It's like -- and so we look today, it's like -- it's like, that's kind of amusing to see the kinds of things that, looking back, look quaint. But, by the way, you look at President Obama's campaign, he was, in some respects, smart to go after me and say, OK, here's a rich business guy. We're going to characterize him as a plutocrat that doesn't care about people. And he -- he went with that narrative, put it out there before I could really effectively respond, and was successful in doing so. I'm honored by the fact, by the way, that David Axelrod, who was his strategist -- and I have become friendly and had a number of events together since then. He said: "I'm glad I didn't know you, because I couldn't have said the things about you then that I know about you today."...

Ironically, that makes me want to say OK, here's a rich business guy. 

After a break, Tapper plays a clip of Romney, in March 2016, saying: "Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill." But Tapper doesn't invite commentary about that. His next question to Romney is:

TAPPER: You said in an interview a few months ago that -- quote -- "There's a good chance that the Republican Party is going to be -- is going to need to be rebuilt or reoriented" and that you want to have a voice in the post-Trump Republican Party. Do you think that there's still -- you think there's going to be a post-Trump Republican Party, or is MAGA now the Republican Party?

Romney's answer to this question is, I think, what got quoted most in social media yesterday: 

ROMNEY: Oh, MAGA is the Republican Party, and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today. And if you were to ask me who the nominee will be in 2028, I think it'll be J.D. Vance, all right? He's smart, well- spoken, part of the MAGA movement.

TAPPER: You said something pretty harsh about him a few months ago, though. You're -- you could not have less respect for somebody than J.D. Vance.

ROMNEY: Long ago. I'm not going to rehash history. And we've worked together in the Senate since then. But I -- you know, that is what the Republican Party is. And will the party need to change? Look, the Republican Party has become the party of the working-class, middle-class voter. And you've got to give Donald Trump credit for having done that, taken that away from the Democrats. Democrats pushed them out, all right? The Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren faction of the Democrat Party, with some of this, you know, defund the police and transgenders in -- or -- excuse me -- biological males in women's sports, these things had a lot of people in the middle class just flee the Democratic Party. They're now Republicans. 

Now, one of the challenges in my party is that our policies do not necessarily line up with the interests of our voters. And so there'll be some -- you know, some reorientation that's going to be necessary in my party. The Democrat Party is the one in trouble. I mean, I don't know how they recover. And, you know, I'm not going to tell them what to do, because I wouldn't begin to have the capacity to do so. But they've lost their base. I mean, union guys and gals have left the Democratic Party and are voting Republican. And the Democratic Party is seen not as rich people, but as college professors and woke scolds. And that's not an attractive feature....

TAPPER: You've talked about your family a lot. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about Ann, who's -- how long have you been together, since you were 19 or something?

ROMNEY: Yes, we started dating when she was 15 and I was a senior. She was a sophomore in high school. We've been going steady ever since. And...

TAPPER: And you have 25 grandchildren?

ROMNEY: Twenty-five, yes.

TAPPER: Five kids and 10 -- five spouses of those kids. It's a 35- person brood.

ROMNEY: Yes.... Yes, Ann's my best counselor and adviser. So, any policy decision, any life decision I make is shared with Ann. She has, if you will, diverted me from a course I might otherwise have taken. So, for instance, when I was at Bain Capital and was really getting into the financial success that has now been developed there by a stronger team than I represented, I was asked to go off and run the Olympics in Utah. And I said, absolutely not. And she said: "You've got to do it." And I said: "No, I don't." And then she began to describe why this was something I needed to do... I mean, I hadn't lived in Utah. It was my -- place of my family's heritage, my mom and dad. But I hadn't lived there. My faith was based in Utah, but I had never run a big event. And the Olympics is a big event.... I was not a -- I was not a great athlete. So there was not an obvious connection. I said: "Well, no, why would I do that?" And she said: "The Olympics is one of the few places where people in the world get to see the great qualities of humanity, teamwork, determination, sacrifice. These are things that are extolled in the Olympics. We can't have the Games just removed and eliminated because of what's happened in Utah. You've got to go fix it." And she said: "You know, that's your background, is trying to fix troubled things." And so Ann helps me makes critical decisions. She keeps me from making bad ones, usually, and is very honest in her occasional criticisms.

TAPPER: In 2016, you wrote in Ann's name for president. Did you write her in again in 2024?

ROMNEY: You know, there's a wonderful thing we have in this country, which is the secret ballot. So I'm not telling you I voted for in 2024.... 

TAPPER: Four years ago next month, you were running for your life from the mob on January 6. And now the person that you said was responsible for that day is about to return to the White House. He says he's going to pardon a lot of the people that have been convicted for the crimes committed on that day. What do you think the legacy of January 6 will be in the history books, given the fact that, as they say, history is written by the winners, Donald Trump won, and there's been this attempt to whitewash the whole thing?

ROMNEY: I'm not sure history is written by winners in this case. Politics is written by -- by winners. But the history books are typically written by scholars of one kind or another....

One kind or another! We'll see if Trump's impact is so great that he wins not merely the voters but the historians. He could. The trick is to do great good for the people of the United States. He needs to do more than any other President. But he is aiming high. And who is rooting for him to fail?