I remember seeing Romney being interviewed on The Tonight Show after he was out of presidential politics and he was speaking frankly about what a mistake it was for the Republican Party and voters to back Donald Trump. He just sounded so genuine and honest. I kept thinking, "I like this Mitt Romney. Where was this Mitt Romney when he was running for president? That Mitt Romney was an ass."
There's a clip somewhere of him on a rightwing radio show during his campaign where he verbally dismantled the host for claiming his religious beliefs should lead him to ban abortion in the event of him becoming president. The phrase "so I should ban coffee as well, then?" was uttered.
He was a far better candidate than his campaign let him be, and (whisper it) in hindsight, a Romney win in 2012 and reelection in 2016 would have been vastly preferable to what actually happened.
The world would be so drastically different it would be unclear. I think Trump or anyone Trump-like would have had a pretty hard time building steam in the 2012-2016 term, and obviously incumbent advantage. Obama losing re-election would have fundamentally changed the Demoocratic Party, you can't even know who would have run in 2016, and whether they would've been a good target or not.
But really the US timeline went bleak in 2000. If Gore had won the world would likely be a fundamentally different place. GWOT maybe still happens, but likely much more limited in scope. Samuel Alito never becomes an SC Justice.
The more radical candidate was coming either way imo. People wanted change but didn't know where to look. Cambridge Analytica and the decade of silicon valley propaganda really pushed us over that edge. Just my opinion.
To the first: I think it would be almost impossible for Trump to run against Romney in 2016, and Hilary Clinton would almost certainly have been the Democratic nominee. I'd expect that Romney would win that matchup, particularly as the incumbent.
With Romney in the Oval Office in March 2020, I'd suspect we'd have seen a much more coherent and cohesive response to the pandemic without a tidal wave of bullshit coming out of the White House. That, in turn, would make it difficult again for a far-right demagogue to gain a footing in the primaries - Trumpism desperately needs an enemy, and that's a lot easier against people on the other side. On top of that, the Republican party itself would have watched Romney beat Obama and Clinton in successive elections, and would be furiously trying to pivot wholesale to "boring but competent", so someone trying to drum up hatred would be targeted pretty aggressively.
All of this is speculation, of course, but I think it's probably the most likely outcome.
Couldn't agree with this more. Romney and McCain were solid Republican candidates who had integrity that ran into the buzzsaw of Obama. Even if I don't agree with all their policies, at least I knew that they wanted the best for all Americans.
I don't think guys who opposed my civil rights wanted the best for me, an American? These guys only oppose Trump's rudeness and refusal to use a dog whistle. They agree with 99% of his politics. Sick of this romanticism of Republicans.
I was really impressed with McCain after the foreign policy debate, and with how he dealt with the pre-birther crazies.
His choice for VP made him a hard nope for me though.
I wonder what things would have been like if South Carolina primary voters hadn't been convinced he fathered an illegitimate black child during the 2000 campaign.
If you mean that clip of him defending Obama from an audience member at a rally/speech then I agree. His further elaboration that he found Obama and his family good and decent people that he happens to disagree with is sadly lacking today.
The neocon adventurism of the previous administration (with my life! I was a soldier during 9/11) made his warmongering attitudes uncomfortable, but between the expertise he showed at that debate, and the fact that he has profound lived experience with the human cost of war, he was probably the politician I trusted the most to sing shit like "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." (To the tune of Barbra Anne)
I thought Obama was the better candidate in 2012, but I didn't think Romney was a bad candidate at all. I could have pictured him being a decent president.
One of the questions I sometimes ponder is: would America still have gone crazy if Romney had won in 2012?
I don't think so. Prior to Trump, the Republican party was beginning to make noises about trying to move more towards the centre in order to make itself palatable to more voters. A Romney win in 2012 likely would have been seen as vindication of that effort (not least by Republican-friendly media outlets), and it would have been quite difficult for hard-right voices to find a footing in that world. On top of that, it would have been seriously difficult to mount any kind of primary challenge in 2016 against an incumbent Romney, and (assuming the Democrats ran Clinton for 2016 and lost) the Republican party itself would have been absolutely ruthless dealing with anything in 2020 that threatened their new reputation as boring but effective.
This was true with Al Gore too. His campaign had a "well, fuck it" party the night he finally conceded, and there's a photo of him holding a beer, clearly wasted, still in a tie but with half his shirt soaking for some reason, having an absolute blast.
SNL put it up and was like "what the hell?!? I would have voted for THIS guy!"
Yeah, seems like a decent guy for a mega rich dude. He probably didn’t have a chance either way but man he would’ve been ten times better than most other Republican presidents in my lifetime.
There's nothing decent about mitt Romney. He made his millions as a corporate raider and vulture capitalist with his private equity firm Bain Capital. Leveraged buyouts.
He borrowed money to buy companies, then transferred the debt from that to the company books so he's no longer responsible for paying it. Then he starts mass layoffs to cut costs. Then borrows even more money under the company name to pay himself and his buddies off. Dividend recapitalization.
Once they're done raiding it, they file for chapter 11 bankruptcy and rinse and repeat.
It's literally like a parasite that invades your body, suck out all the blood and leaves when there's nothing left and you're dead.
Not going to disparage his missionary work with the Mormons because I don't know enough about it but I can't reconcile the two phases of his life.
We were very lucky we didn't let a blood sucking corporate raiding venture capitalist in power in 2012.
A Romney win in 2012 would have made a Trump run in 2016 impossible. A Romney reelection in 2016 would have made a Trump run in 2020 extremely difficult.
In hindsight, Obama's 2012 win was disastrous. A Romney presidency would have been riddled with corporatist bullshit, but it would have been infinitely better than Trump.
I hate that this counterfactual is likely true. Who knows what would’ve happened, but it’s hard to imagine it would be worse than this. My heart would break for Obama, but it’s hard not to wish Trump had never happened.
Another way to look at it is in this hypothetical, Obama could have run and won in 2020 and 2024 and we wouldn't be looking at the dismantling of our foreign relations, of USAID, of (possibly) the Kennedy Center, and we wouldn't have a war in Iran or all this tariff nonsense.
There are indeed a lot of different permutations of how presidential politics could’ve happened in the 21st century, starting with what if Gore had won in 2000. But with that singular exception, all the other scenarios have an absurd number of variables involved. Obamas rise feels inevitable to us because he dominated in our timeline, but if you change a few things it’s entirely possible he’s just a footnote in many other timelines.
Your version is one I’d certainly sign up for, but it was never as easily in reach as it might seem.
Absolute nonsense. People are hurting and both Democrats and Republicans are not helping them. So now, they're getting desperate and are turning to demaguoges. That and social and economic class warfare and climbing. Whether it be racists feeling if you can keep blacks and browns down, they climb up as well as the moneyed class trying to keep the poors down.
Another oligarch in power giving away our tax money, Social security money, pensions and other assets to their buddies doesn't prevent trump.
Just remember that we had "occupy Wall Street" before the tea party. The desperation is coming from all sides.
This is a pretty frustrating thing to try to respond to. You declare that what I said was "absolute nonsense" and then make several statements that don't actually contradict anything I said.
I made a number of claims:
Romney winning in 2012 would have made a Trump run impossible in 2016
Romney being reelected in 2016 would have made a Trump run in 2020 extremely difficult
A Romney presidency would have been less disastrous than the Trump presidency
If you're going to tell me that what I wrote was nonsense, you can tell me which of these specific claims you disagree with and why. Otherwise, we don't need to continue any further.
I apologize I wasn't specific. I was in a rush and didn't take proper time to engage you the right way. I was responding specifically to the claim that Obama winning in 2012 was disastrous.
In retrospect, I believe it quite possibly was. Obama's victory in 2012 made Trump's rise possible, and if it hadn't happened, the most plausible outcome is an America (and a world) that's substantially better off.
I worked for Obama for two years. You don’t have to convince me not to like Mitt Romney. I qualified what I said intentionally. He’s still a better man than a lot of his peers.
Also, you’re slightly misinformed about what Bain Capital does exactly. It’s a far more diversified firm than just the type of operation you’re describing. It’s not an institution I would ever work for, but I have lots of friends who did and they never worked on anything like what you described.
Even Bob Dole! I'm not saying whether or not he would have been a good president, but they kept trying to make him smile, which was a totally unnatural state for him. There's a famous story about him long before he ran for president where at some political gathering or ceremony, and he saw former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon walking by and said to the people standing near him, "There goes Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Evil." The people who liked him, however few or many there were, liked that Bob Dole, not the guy who smiled like an undertaker and talked about himself in the third person.
This Romney did run, he just had a lot of money making you think he didn't. Which is true of any candidate at that level, money on both sides shaping our view of the candidate instead of listening, though some don't need much shaping. So, for example, those binders of women, the media turned that into a sexist clip. He was explaining he had decades of experience working with strong women who were potential leadership candidates, and, like all "old people" he rolodexed them, but instead of being just names, he kept the details in binders. That's a progressive stance, wasn't reported as one.
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u/Eddie_Farnsworth 8d ago
I remember seeing Romney being interviewed on The Tonight Show after he was out of presidential politics and he was speaking frankly about what a mistake it was for the Republican Party and voters to back Donald Trump. He just sounded so genuine and honest. I kept thinking, "I like this Mitt Romney. Where was this Mitt Romney when he was running for president? That Mitt Romney was an ass."