A Slate journalist made the connection, and Romney has confirmed the theory.
Somebody’s gearing up for another presidential run. Mitt Romney, who recently resurrected his political career in the Utah Senate, has a secret Twitter account, complete with a pun-based alias.
The governor-turned-failed-presidential-candidate-turned-senator has put out a meager 10 tweets using the alias “Pierre Delecto” (speculated to be a pun based on the phrase “in pari delicto,” Lating for “in equal fault,” with the “Pierre” because Romney studied in Paris and speaks French). These tweets are mostly replies to other tweets defending Romney’s actions in the senate, as a presidential candidate, et al. For instance, in reply to a tweet blaming the Senate for the executive decision to withdraw from Syria, Romney replied, “Agree on Trump’s awful decision, but what could the Senate do to stop it?”
Slate journalist Ashley Feinberg made the connection between Romney and his alias by drawing on several subtle hints, such as the fact that Romney had given the general number of followers that his private Twitter account had. Feinberg, knowing that Romney would likely follow his family members, searched for family members of his that had relatively few followers and then looked through their lists of followers to find an account with roughly that number of followers. After finding the Delecto account, Feinberg suspected that it was Romney because the account was created shortly before Romney’s 2012 run and because most of the people the account followed early on were staffers for Romney.
After being confronted about the account, Romney simply replied, “C’est moi.”
This alias and Romney’s use of it are a far cry from something like Publius, the pseudonym under which the Federalist Papers were published. Why does everybody care about Mitt Romney’s lurker account? There is absolutely nothing remarkable about this, and there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about Romney. He’s a run-of-the mill sycophant, just like 95 percent of all politicians on the national level; this is probably why he created the account — to secretly express his “true” beliefs, untainted by his tendency to reverse himself if his true position is no longer conducive to winning an election or reelection. It is evident that Romney has always strived to make his mark on history by being an influential figure in U.S. politics, which results in a very “safe” and pandering political style as he attempts to broaden his base of support as much as possible.
Romney was incredibly effective as governor of Massachusetts; not only did he bolster the state’s economy quite substantially, but he managed to implement a universal healthcare policy with bipartisan approval and satisfaction, only to reverse himself on issues such as healthcare and LGBTQ rights once he was nominated to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012. If only he consistently stayed true to his values instead of selling his soul any time his political career was threatened, it would be much easier to recognize him as “one of the good guys” in a political system comprised largely of self-serving yes men.
After fighting tooth and nail to stay relevant by entering the senate and harshly criticizing Trump in 2016 (although he retracted this as soon as Trump was elected as he sought a position on Trump’s cabinet), it seems that Romney is not content with two failed presidential runs. Only time will tell, but conjecture leads me to believe that Romney openly endorsed his alias because he wants to place himself into the minds of voters once more. I believe Romney will run for president in at least one of the next three elections.
