In just 20 minutes, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, eviscerated Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2016 nod. The brief against Trump wasn’t just the series of one-liners Romney leaked Thursday morning. The searing indictment against the billionaire businessman was based on substance. Pity the statesmanship and truth-telling come nine months too late to potentially stop Trump’s march to the GOP nomination.

Right out of the gate, Romney hit Trump on his economic plans.

“If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession.

“A few examples: His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war that would raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses to flee America. His tax plan, in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements and to honestly address spending, would balloon the deficit and the national debt. So even as Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.”

Then Romney hit Trump on his self-proclaimed business prowess.

“His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. And what ever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage? A business genius he is not.”

And then Romney railed against Trump on foreign policy (“Trump’s bombast is already alarming our allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies.”) and went on a lengthy tear about his temperament to be president (“Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.”)

Romney made clear his low opinion of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. “A person so untrustworthy and dishonest as Hillary Clinton must not become president,” Romney said. “But a Trump nomination enables her victory.” He said that if he were voting in the upcoming primaries in Ohio and Florida or had voted in Texas, he would have cast ballots for Gov. John Kasich, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz, respectively.

Romney’s words were tough and clear-eyed. I don’t agree with him on policy. And his decision to make this speech four years after accepting Trump’s endorsement only feeds the cynicism corrupting the political process. But I so appreciated Romney’s unvarnished takedown of a man who has diminished the process of electing the leader of the free world. Whereas most folks in the Republican Party seem to cower in fear of Trump’s Twitter feed or withering personal invective, Romney rose statesman-like to take the rhetorical bullets he knows, we all know, will come his way from the Bully of Fifth Avenue.

Too bad the courage shown by Romney today has not been on display at any point during Trump’s nine-month romp to the top of the GOP field.

Trump got there by stoking the fear and loathing of a long-brooding GOP primary electorate. He hurled insults and invective in a “defining deviancy down” presidential campaign that is an embarrassment for what Republicans constantly carp is an exceptional nation. As Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution wrote in a must-read op-ed last month, “Trump [is] feeding off forces in the party [Republican leaders] had helped nurture and that they hoped to ride into power.”

“Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes,” Romney said. “This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss.” The Republican Party is teetering on the edge of that abyss. That no one can say for certain that it and the United States won’t fall into it is what is truly frightening about Trump for president.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Jonathan Capehart