Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) dismissed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call for a “national divorce” that would separate the blue states from the red ones.
“You know, I think Abraham Lincoln dealt with that kind of insanity,” Romney said on Tuesday, according to Deseret News. “We’re not going to divide the country. It’s united we stand, divided we fall.”
Greene, a conspiracy theorist and close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said under her plan red states could openly discriminate against LGBTQ people and strip Democrats who move to those states of basic voting rights, among other things.
Critics on both sides of the aisle have denounced the plan, with some calling itv “treasonous” and “evil.”
But Greene, who spoke last year at a white nationalist event, isn’t backing down ― she is doubling down, getting a sympathetic ear from Sean Hannity on Fox News over the idea.
Romney dismissed Greene and others on the extremes.
“There are some people in my party and the other party that say things to try and get a headline and get people to send them money. And that happens to be in today’s ‘loony left,’ or I should say ‘loony right,’” Romney said, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
He’s not alone among his state’s GOP contingent in slamming Greene. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox wrote on Twitter:
McCarthy has not commented on Greene’s call for “national divorce,” but has stuck with her consistently.
“I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy reportedly said in a private conversation earlier this year, according to The New York Times. “I will always take care of her.”