Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the ’90s NBC drama “West Wing,” suggested on Sunday that the Democratic Party nominate a Republican, Senator Mitt Romney, to stop former President Donald Trump. Back in 2012, Sorkin lobbied Obama to repeatedly call Romney a liar at debates.
“Nominating Mr. Romney would be putting our money where our mouth is: a clear and powerful demonstration that this election isn’t about what our elections are usually about, but about stopping a deranged man from taking power,” Sorkin touted in an op-ed for the New York Times, before noting other Democrats weren’t polling well against Trump either.
President Biden is facing mounting calls to drop out of the race following a rocky debate performance. A recent poll also found that 65% of Democrats want Biden to drop out.
“The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats,” he wrote.
Aaron Sorkin, the creator of “West Wing,” suggested the Democrats nominate Mitt Romney to run against Donald Trump. (William B. Plowman/NBC via Getty Images | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images )
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Sorkin suggested that “Democrats nominating a Republican” could be the “healing event” everyone wanted after the assassination attempt against Trump.
He also imagined former President Obama “full-throatedly endorsing his old rival” at the Democratic convention.
“And Mr. Romney could make the case that the Democrats are putting country before party in ways that the MAGA movement will not, and announce his bipartisan cabinet picks at the convention as well,” he wrote.
“The writing staff would tell me I was about to jump the shark, that this is a ‘West Wing’ fantasy that would never, ever happen. But as Bradley Whitford used to say, ‘Isn’t the biggest fantasy on television a mafia boss in therapy?’ The Democrats need to break the glass and this is a break-glass plan, but it’s more than that. It’s a grand gesture. A sacrifice. It would put a lump in our throats,” he continued.
Comparing the fictional opponent to his own TV president, “Jed Bartlet” in “West Wing,” played by Martin Sheen, Sorkin wondered, “What if Bartlet’s opponent had been a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder who related to his supporters on a fourth-grade level and treated the law as something for suckers and poor people? And was a hero to white supremacists?”
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Sorkin, in 2012, authored a kind of fan fiction, via NYT opinion columnist Maureen Dowd, that imagined the fictional “West Wing” president, Jed Bartlet, coaching then-President Obama on his debate performance against Romney. Speaking of the man he now wants Democrats to nominate, Sorkin lobbied Obama to say to Romney: “You’re lying, Governor.”
Conservatives took issue with the idea on X, with some pointing out how the Democratic Party treated Romney when he ran in 2012.
One pointed out that Biden, who was vice president at the time, told a crowd at a rally in Virginia that Romney would “put y’all back in chains.”
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Romney, a strong critic of the former president, has not thrown his support behind him.
“With President Trump, it’s a matter of personal character,” he said in June. “I draw a line and say when someone has been actually found to have been sexually assaulted, that’s something I just won’t cross over in the person I wouldn’t want to have as President of the United States.”
