An open letter from a Romney alum to Romney voters
Why you should vote for Harris-Walz in 2024
I arrived just a few minutes before the first barricade fell.
My attendance was a simple curiosity—on the way home from a jog, I figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. Over my many years of living in Washington, I’d seen protests and demonstrations of every size and across every political spectrum. From the moment I arrived at the Capitol on January 6, though, it was instinctually clear that this one was going to be different.
When I reached the Hill, Vice President Pence’s would-be gallows had already been constructed and the crowd had been testing the police officers for some time, pushing and prodding points along the preciously delicate 4-foot-high temporary fencing that encircled the east steps of the building.
The crowd began systemically shaking the fencing, using their collective weight to make the weak line of galvanized steel bugle at its seams. A growing intoxication was soon pulsating. It rose and fell but with each new rise, it returned a little stronger.
Suddenly, a gap appeared and a man on a bull horn was urging people forward. “Let’s go! Let’s go! They can’t stop us!” he screamed.
Soon, the fence was gone over entirely and the 30 or so police officers were either pushed aside or chose to retreat to unseen positions, overwhelmed by the crush of bodies.
Trump supporters rushed to the building, like water slurping into a sudden gash in the side of a boat. They instantly filled the steps and climbed on top of cop cars and ambulances ringing the entrance. Some livestreamed the madness, walking back and forth, enraptured with the moment and laughing at themselves and their viewers that somehow, someway, this was really happening.
As I stood there stunned, training my eyes to capture what I knew was an episode of sheer historic lunacy, I spotted a small group of masked men that were not satisfied with just standing on the steps. They began pulling something out of their bags…and then the banging began.
Framed to the right by a dark blue Trump 2020 flag furiously flapping in the wind, one of the front windows of the Capitol reverberated with a sharp smack followed by a dull thud, then again, and again, and again until the sound of breaking glass punctuated their efforts.
That moment, when the window became a sharp, jagged mouth, was the scariest single second of my life—not because I had just witnessed a violent mob break into the Capitol, with all of Congress gathered inside—but because I was utterly convinced that I was about to see someone, maybe several people, get shot at point-blank range.
My body instinctively tensed up, waiting for the sullen buzz of anarchy to be silenced by the crack of a gunshot. But there was nothing.
When no sound came other than the joyous screams of the intruders and then, when their bodies slinked into the darkness of the broken window, I became somehow even more frightened. A distant vacuum of dread began spiraling up inside me, the kind of emotion that only comes when you realize that you’re experiencing something you never thought possible.
I knew from years of living in DC that even jaywalking in front of the Capitol was a minor risk, an act that invited any Capitol police officer within a half block radius to bellow a loud, stern rebuke, the way a teacher yells at a 2nd grader for running a permanent marker across a white wall. When no sound came from beyond that shattered window, I knew something entirely unknown was happening.
From that point on, I was almost in a daze. I walked around the south side of the building. The day prior, I had jogged this same route, vaguely examining the metal scaffolding that been erected to construct the stage and rafters for the Inauguration ceremony that was just two weeks away.
What I saw, turning that soft corner and walking down the small hill, was almost Biblical.
Without hesitation, I thought of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was pure, drunken bliss. There were hundreds of people clad in an assortment of American flag and Trump paraphernalia climbing the scaffolding. Some were struggling and losing their grip, others had been successful and were jubilantly swaying to and from at the top of the edifice.
That’s when the tear gas was deployed. Several pinkish red clouds exploded into existence, the mob choking and coughing. I retreated to some bushes right up against the southwest side of the building.
There, one of the saddest little moments of the day unfurled as I watched a man in a brown work jacket, jeans, and MAGA hat urinate on the side of the Capitol. Not next to the Capitol—on it. He let out a little giggle as he did his business.
As I turned to my left in disgust, a trio of men—all maybe in their mid 50s or so—regular, upstanding, and hardworking looking guys attacked a lone police officer, pushing him down to the ground and screaming.
“Who’s side are you on anyway?! You’re…you’re a fucking disgrace to this country!”
Another simply shouted “Traitor!” over and over while making a stabbing motion with his foot like he was going to kick the officer. The cop scattered back on his hands, like a crab escaping a fisherman’s hand, and turned, stood up and ran away.
Then, there was another scream from behind me, above me.
I turned to see a torso dangling from an open window on one of the Capitol’s higher floors. I thought of a weathered sailor waving hello to the love he left behind, overjoyed to finally be home after months at sea.
They’re inside, I thought. Of course they are, you saw them go in.
As word got out that the building had been breached, the crowd descended into foaming psychosis and I began to worry that the crowd, a single amorphous undulating entity, could turn into a weapon against itself. One horror is all it would take for a stampede to take hold, for fearful feet to take flight and disaster strike, I thought.
It’s then that I decided to go home, slowly stepping back from the monstrosity.
Of course, we all know now how close everything came to truly unraveling that day. How close the mob came to descending upon Vice President Pence. How close the men armed with zip ties and stun guns came to turning down a random hallway and finding their prize in front of them, lips gleaming with righteous pontification, the chance to unsteal an election within arm’s reach.
So, why am I writing this now?
As a lifelong registered Republican and a proud alum of then-Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, it’s one, to remind Romney voters that what happened on that miserable day doesn’t define the GOP, but it should define how we think about the choice ahead of us on Tuesday.
The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 wasn’t about America, or Election Integrity, or Conservative Values.
It was about one man—a man who wants power again.
To the Romney voters who knocked doors, made phone calls, or simply showed up on Election Day those 12 years ago, how did you feel when you woke up on Nov. 7, 2012, the day after the race was called for President Obama?
Sure, you definitely weren’t happy, but were you ashamed?
Now, remember how you felt waking up on Jan. 7, 2021, the morning after one sullen man orchestrated the unthinkable simply because he was too embarrassed to lose.
I hate thinking about that day and when I do, a dense, grotesque mix of fear, anger, shame, and capitulation course through me. Those feelings have kept me from writing down my thoughts from that day for four years, unwilling to truly relive them.
But I’ve decided to keep that memory alive just a little bit longer and I urge you—my fellow Republicans and Romney voters—to do the same.
Hold on to that feeling, those memories from Jan. 6, even if they exist only in shards and splinters, and carry them with you for the next few days.
Carry them with you all the way to your polling place, let them weigh you down, let them make your feet heavy, let the consequence of them move you to action and then, when you awake on Nov. 6, let a new sense of buoyancy carry them far, far away.