Mitt Romney Is Terrible. Still.

[Content Note: Nativism.]

At forum yesterday, Mitt Romney said he’s more rightwing than Trump on immigration: “I’m also more of a hawk on immigration than even the president. My view was these DACA kids shouldn’t all be allowed to stay in the country legally.” https://t.co/9kbtm0T9hL

— Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) March 27, 2018

This is a pretty solid reminder that Trump is not actually an outlier of the Republican Party. He was its inevitable endgame — which is why there is no attempt by his party to check him, and why "moderates" will now try to out-Trump him. https://t.co/83DQnew1E7

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 27, 2018

And just to be clear: It isn't like Mitt Romney is just jumping on a bandwagon whose navigation was programmed by other people. He absolutely had a hand in determining its destination.

Let us never forget that my oft-repeated observation Republicans think people aren't entitled to food emerged from the swamp of despair that was Romney's "47 Percent" video from the 2012 election.

From that video, I teased out what I thought was the most overlooked part of it: That Romney, a U.S. presidential candidate, believed people aren't entitled to food.

At the time, I got the usual pushback: I was being hyperbolic, it was just inelegant wording, surely he didn't actually believe that, etc.

No, he did. And so did his party.

This alarmist spent the next few years collecting receipts under the label: "Republicans Think People Aren't Entitled to Food."

Over the course of the last five years, what's evident in that series is that the Republican Party has become less inclined to hide that this is indeed their position.

Romney helped mainstream a number of once-extreme policies — and, by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, made a considerable contribution to moving the "center" of his party rightward in once huge, heaving lurch.

He likes to pretend to be personally affronted by the likes of Trump, but Romney was laying the pathstones as eagerly as anyone else in his party, and now he's delighted to reap the benefits of what Trump has wrought.