Mitt Romney is not a conservative...

Trump is not a conservative. He is an entertainer. Mitt Romney took to denouncing the current GOP front runner today.

Trump may indeed merit many of the charges thrown at him by Romney, but, in politics, it is always smart to consider the motivations of anyone who goes after a successful candidate. While it is impossible to determine from Romney’s speech what his motivations may be, we must consider that Trump, despite his faults, has challenged the Republican Party’s establishment. We must ask if Romney’s condemnation of Trump was made of his own volition, or if he is serving the interests of the GOP establishment.

While he wisely avoided endorsing anyone else, and even included Cruz, another supposed anti-establishmentarian, among his suggestions as an acceptable alternative to Trump, might Romney’s real purpose be to weaken Trump just enough to produce a brokered convention that might turn to Romney as the GOP’s savior? It may be impossible to answer this question at the present time, but it must be considered.

But there is something Romney said in his speech that must be challenged. It is this:

Ronald Reagan used to quote a Scottish philosopher who predicted that democracies and civilizations couldn’t last more than about 200 years. John Adams wrote this: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” I believe that America has proven these dire predictions wrong for two reasons.

First, we have been blessed with great presidents, with giants among us. Men of character, integrity and selflessness have led our nation from its very beginning. None were perfect: each surely made mistakes. But in every case, they acted out of the desire to do what was right for America and for freedom.

The second reason is because we are blessed with a great people, people who at every critical moment of choosing have put the interests of the country above their own.

The Adams quote has long been a favorite among constitutionalists. However, Adams was not expressing pessimism concerning an American “democracy,” because, as a Founding Father, he was well aware that he and his contemporaries had not established a democracy, but a constitutional republic.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when asked as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?” Benjamin Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The word “democracy” never appears in the Constitution — however, Article IV, Section 4 of the document reads: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

Therefore, Romney’s explanations for why our nation has not “committed suicide” are wrong. Although we have had great presidents, we have also had some who were not only not great, but bad presidents. Likewise, we have had many great people among our populace who have chosen the interests of the country above their own, but we have also had majorities of voters on many occasions who — whether by being misinformed or through self interest — have elected demagogues and socialists who would feed them from the public trough.

It has only been the restraints imposed by our Constitution that have prevented our nation from “committing suicide,” and by definition, a country governed by constitutional laws is not a democracy, but a republic. If Romney were a true constitutional conservative, he would know that.