Between his election and now, I have been able to find commonality with him on a few items. For example, financial responsibility, health care, and defense. He has made (maybe rash) but right moves to prevent excess Federal debt and excessive spending. Affordable Care Act was a mistake on many levels, and he has shown commitment on working to get out (and stay out) of foreign wars. These are aspects of his career that I support.
There are many aspects of Mr. Lee that give me pause. In addressing my concerns, I guess I should start with the small stuff and build to the items that raise my blood pressure.
Back when he was elected in 2010, I was annoyed with the primary-less ousting of Senator Bennett. To be fair, this issue alone is more to blame on the Utah GOPs control over the state than Mike Lee. He said the things that the Tea Partiers at the time wanted to hear and beat an incumbent in convention. In a GOP state, that was a sure path to victory.
I believe his campaign promise to pursue term limits was a wholly disingenuous that was clearly going to popular at the convention that would have tossed Senator Hatch if he had been on the ballot at that time. From what I can see, his legal capabilities are not as stellar as he would have people believe. He only lasted a few years in each firm or in various judicial clerkships, and his most notable case was a failed attempt to use the commerce clause to get EnergySolutions around the contract they signed with the state of Utah regarding the storage of foreign nuclear waste. He had to short sale a home in the financial collapse of 2008-2009. He needed a long-term stable career move, and what can be more long term and stable than a US Senator in what has often been the most Republican state in the union. The path was reasonably sure – he could ride the coattails of his former BYU president and US Solicitor General father, and (largely on account of his father’s credibility) he styled himself as a “constitutional scholar”.
His early rhetoric regarding immigration was at times offensive. He was fond of the term anchor babies – meaning babies who are born to noncitizens that “anchor” a family in the US with a citizen baby. Ironically, for a “constitutional originalist scholar”, the fact that this is a specifically legal provision of the constitution seems to have troubled him. I get that he was trying to express an issue he saw as a problem, but the term “anchor babies” seemed more like an attempt to demonize immigrants and their children. Should people come legally? Yes, but the demonization of immigrant families was ugly and hateful.
Under the Trump White House, he often showed no integrity in politically difficult situations. In the beginning of Trump’s candidacy, he (like many in the party) would express his discomfort “as a father” at Trump’s p@$$y comment – but that was as far as he dared to go. During the presidency he seems to have backed Trump either whole heartedly, or quietly refused to speak out when things were dicey. There is one exception: he did vote to prevent military action against Iran after Trump killed a Iranian general under circumstances of questionable legality.
During the 2020 campaign, he crossed the Rubicon and descended into full blown sycophancy. In an AZ rally he made the inappropriate comparison of Book of Mormon warrior hero Captain Moroni as an archetype of Donald Trump. The many ways the comparison falls flat on its face are numerous and do not need full attention here. To summarize the biggest issue with this comparison, Moroni was said to have been a man “that if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever”. A better comparison would be King Noah (the indolent, petty, Nephite provincial king) or Moroni’s archnemesis Amalikiah (a wannabe autocrat who raised an insurrection to overthrow a popularly elected government, that led to 14+ years of war). Although this gaffe was foolish, he compounded his apparent sycophancy after the election.
After the election and to this day, he embraced the conspiracy theories and lies. As shown by text messages, he brought John Eastman and Sidney Powell into the White House orbit (https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/read-mark-meadows-texts-mike-lee-chip-roy/index.html) he worked “13-14” hour days evaluating paths to overthrow the election and trying to pursue alternate slates of electors from states that were being challenged, and seems to have only relented after the president made a comment that seems to have wounded his pride. However, even after experiencing the events of 1/6 he still voted no on conviction, and as of a few months ago touted merits of the 2000 Mules documentary as evidence that the election was stolen. Last week he joined other GOPers in questioning the legitimacy of the FBI search warrant on Mar-a-Lago.
I believe Mike Lee to be an average attorney from a Utah family with dignitas. His initial election was fueled by Tea Party disdain for lifetime politicians under the false banner of championing term limits, he has chosen to appeal to the more racist inclinations of the party from his election until today in regards to immigration (he could have focused solely on drug smuggling as more legitimate border concern) and he willing participated and tried to lend a veneer of constitutional legitimacy to the effort to overturn the constitution he claims to adore. These are my biggest issues with Mr. Lee.
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