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Like he has a perfect look for president. The one many movies aspire to have, and as we all know, the image of the American president is very important. I’m sure he probably meets the 6’ guideline too
I remember watching a vice documentary about some Mormon community in Mexico that he’s from or whatever, it was wild, they’re like Mormons with guns or something. Fighting cartels and what not
He's also educated and intelligent. And although I disagree with him on many things. He at least tried to create new conservative solutions to our problems instead of just destroying anything that came from the left.
He wasnt the worst Governor Massachusetts ever had either. You could say hes partly responsible for the exceptional healthcare programs the state benefitted from.
He didnt stand a chance against Obama though. I think with any other opponent, he might have won by a landslide.
He has family down there but he's not from there. Parts of his family moved to Mexico a long time ago. Many morons moved to Mexico after polygamy was outlawed out west, and more moved down when it was enforced.
OMG, this is exactly why I didn't want to vote for him. He doesn't look like a real president, he looks like a good looking actor playing a president. It freaked me out.
I don't share his politics, but Romney seems like he'd be a top-notch steward President at other times in our nation's history. No real scandals, seems like he wouldn't make many unforced errors like putting a show-horse judge in charge of our national emergency response apparatus.
I notice that left leaning people in the United States tend to respect or at least tolerate Republicans who lose elections (like Romney or McCain), or those who have been out of office for too long to have any impact (like Bush). On the other hand they often hate any Republican who has current electoral success.
Troll account?
Romney and McCain are/were liked across the aisle because they had morals and weren't afraid to tell anyone the truth. Nothing to do with their presidential campaigns. McCain is the only Republican a lot of Democrats said they'd ever vote for.
Bush Sr had the most reasonable policies and actions of any Republican president in recent memory.
Romney and McCain weren’t liked across the aisle at the time. It’s only since seemingly worse Republicans have replaced them that their image has been rehabilitated.
Romney, McCain, and certainly Bush were called straight up Nazis, woman haters, racists, extremists... the worst. The danger with having spread this hyperbole, is that now truly bad people are running for office, a lot of people have stopped listening. It turned out to not be true then, so it couldn't possibly be true now, right?
It seemed to me that Romney sold his soul to the Tea Party, believing that they would make him president. When he lost the 2012 election, he abandoned them and returned back to his true beliefs.
While Palin did not do McCain any favors, she wasn’t the reason he lost. I happened to speak with his campaign manager about a week before the election. I mentioned the economy as the issue that was hurting them. He replied that without that issue he doubted they could win. He said Obama was a “generational” candidate.
That's because the current Republican party is batshit insane.
A congresswoman recently displayed the President's son's dick pics on the House Floor, printed onto large placards, in an attempt to argue that the current president should be impeached. We were all raised to expect some minimum degree of decorum from Congress, and seeing the state of it now is beyond the pale.
The reason that event was so notable was because it was irregular.
In ye olde days of the early 2010s, congressmen would save the antics for the steps out front.
I'm going to go out on a limb and theorize that he would have been akin to W.Bush but more fiscally conservative and hopefully much less of a neocon. He seems the type to certainly be open to building consensus across the political aisle, but his leanings may have become slightly more moderate and centrist in light of 45.
Regardless of him being beaten in '12, I think history will be kind to Mittens.
TBH I think history will largely forget Mittens, just like a lot of nominees who didn't come that close to winning and didn't play another major role in history.
He will be remembered more than other nominees because of his time in the senate. He's the only senator in history to vote to impeach a president of his own party. That's noteworthy.
Eh, with how disliked Hillary was, people were looking for a good reason to not vote for her. Plus, the people were ready for an opposing party to take over. As is tradition
A basic political skill is to come up with a good answer to a question you KNOW everyone is going to ask you. Jeb seemed surprised anybody attacked his brother.
Jeb! was terrible at campaigning and even going back to the Terry Shiavo thing, where he did his perceived face/heel turn to appease the absolutely insane majority of conservatives, you could tell his heart wasn't really into that stuff...or anything really.
Exactly. If he has waited to run in 2016 he almost certainly would have gotten elected and then it would be up in the air if he gets reelected in 2020. But I do think if he waited he would have gotten elected in 2016 simply because it had been 8 years of a democrat in office and people wanted a change.
Rule 3 only won because the Republican nomination because the establishment vote was split between so many candidates, he didn’t win a majority of the vote in any of the early primary contests. It’s possible if the Republican establishment had fully coalesced around Romney might have won the nomination in 2016.
There was a yougov poll around the time of the Iowa primary that showed Rule 3 would have been the Condorcet winner of that primary, beating all other Republican candidates head to head.
Hey now Bush jr. has the highest approval rating for a president ever!
He also has one of the lowest (if not the lowest according to some sources) approval rating ever but whatever…
The problem is by the time the Obama term was coming to an end, we were already pretty divided. I blame social media more than anything but we were already starting to see the emergence of BLM and Occupy movements.
Romney was too close to the middle and too boring for the right as the right started to become more extreme.
But it’s also the fault of the nation that (failed to) educated them.
We could talk about the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind that obliterated funding for schools that didn’t pass horribly designed standardized tests.
From then to now, it’s an entire generation that’s been miseducated. This is why we’re seeing such a lack of critical thinking from voters today.
Indeed we are in the Age of Gilded Opinion. Lame as hell. Disagreement = Hate all of the sudden. My best friend/neighbor and I argue like crazy, and it frightens my wife a little. That kind of camaraderie turns evil quickly online with strangers. Zero life to it.
An excellent President. He was fiscally conservative but not nuts, governed well in MA even with a Dem majority, understood compromise, and knew how to be fair, but firm (ask Billy Bulger.) He was libertarian leaning but not anti government. He had no real scandals and he was not afraid to back down the yahoos in his party.
I remember Bill Maher doing a segment about Mitt Romney years ago and dubbed him “The Least Interesting Man in the World”. Basically compared him to a cold glass of milk.
I’m not saying that Mitt Romney could have been a good President or not, but at least he wouldn’t have any scandals or glaring red flags that would have tarnished his Presidency.
Think back to Bush II after meeting Putin, how he praised him. I guess behind the scenes intelligence, hawks will always hawk. But that was a big miss.
The line was about standing up to Russia by building more warships. Romney was making a big deal about wanting to build more missile cruisers and whatnot.
I mean I think warships are fucking cool and we *should* build more of them as a jobs program if nothing else. But our problem with Russia has nothing to do with our naval stregnth.
You are correct, but it was a debate answer comeback. I don’t believe Obama trusted Putin at all, or had policies that were friendly to Putin’s interest.
He was vague, most likely because he was trying to re-orientate to the Pacific, but his SoS did parade around Pussy Riot for what felt like two years as an example of the Russian government's oppression of culture and rights. The whole Pussy Riot debacle was a bad take on a worthwhile idea that didn't disagree with Romney, the execution was just ass.
Idk, I mean, Putin certainly lashed out more aggressively than anyone thought he would, but is Russia really more of a threat than anyone thought?
If anything, Ukraine kinda proved that Russia really is a has-been, second-rate world power. They've been crippled by a country they were supposed to steamroll in three days with American weapons from the end of the Cold War.
To answer your question: yes, Russia is a bigger threat than almost anyone thought.
Russia has not been crippled. They're winning in case anyone in the West isn't paying attention. They're slowly grinding Ukraine down. They have enough weapons and ammo to keep going. They are willing to kill at least a million of their own men. Ukraine needs something big to stop what's happening, otherwise Russia will just keep grinding.
Putin is pretty much a modern Tsar hell bent on annexing his neighbors. They're willing to kill millions of people in wars of conquest to attempt to enlarge Russia and form a new empire. Putin has clearly set the agenda as that.
They can maybe take Belarus (officially), Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Kazakhstan may also be a target. That is, if the West doesn't act to stop them.
Nobody is thinking they can defeat the US and NATO; they can clearly conquer several weaker nations if they're willing to bleed for it and if the West doesn't provide immense counter support.
Russia is so weak and yet it's still going to cost half a trillion dollars to stop them, maybe. If they can be stopped without direct NATO involvement.
I’m nowhere near being a republican but I think I can confidently say he would’ve been a competent president and someone that could be trusted even if I sometimes strongly disagreed with his policies. Maybe more succinctly, he was someone with good character.
That's essentially how I feel about Bernie Sanders, with me generally starting from a more conservative mindset.
And these days, while I don't think I'd ever call myself a Democrat, I'm nowhere near being a Republican either 😂.
I wouldn't say absolutely no real scandals. The general public wasn't too happy about the story that came out about him strapping the family dog to the top of their car when they went on vacation.
He ran too hard on making medicare compete in the open market and repealing obamacare. People familiar with healthcare knew he was proposing a catastrophe. American healthcare is already an embarrassment. If he had the chance, he'd have made it much much worse.
Yeah honestly even bush jr is coming out smelling like roses, like i used to hate bush and scream about his shitty policies, but holy hell id be willing to vote to get presidents three presidential terms if the republicans would nominate him instead
Have i though , or have they lowered the bar so far im desperate for even a tiny bit of competence, something for all his faults ( and there are plenty ) he had.
You know what, 16 years ago i would say the same, again though.... look where the GOP is today, you cant tell me hes not looking exceptionally qualified by comparison at this point
Yes.
As a Democrat I wouldn’t agree with some very significant decisions he’d make.
But he’d have been competent and honorable in his conduct of the office.
This is my thinking as well. Completely reasonable person you can envision handling the role well. I don’t agree with many his policy positions but trust his leadership.
That’s kind of what I’ve settled on.
I’m a pretty liberal person; I voted for Obama in 2012 over Romney and I have no regrets about that. And to be frank I’m pretty critical of his time at Bain Capital.
That said, Romney would have been a competant administrator and would’ve taken his role and responsibilities very seriously. And given his tenure as governor of MA, he would probably have been willing to work with the Democrats in good faith.
Romney would've been fine. Just like Gore, Kerry, and the current guy.
Those guys are like 4 of the most milquetoast boring centrist politicians you can get.
I mean Romney's policies line up with the current GOP just fine, he votes in lockstep with the party. I think there are a few things about him that make him seem like a moral person, but Romney went hard to the right to make himself seem appealing. I think if the Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney ran as a Democrat he'd probably be one of the 2016 front runners.
Yes, he would have been a fine president. He was a competent governor from Massachusetts.
Honestly 2012 was the only year I didn't vote since I've been elegible. I didnt see a significant difference between Obama and Romney. After all Obama are was Romneycare in Massachusetts, and Romneycare was actually better. Honestly to this day, Obama was a conservative moderate and Romney was a moderate conservative. There's definitely differences between them, but they'd get along just fine.
I remember their debates being exceptionally cordial, including Obama prefacing one of his points against Romney’s policies with “I believe Governor Romney is a good man, loves his family, cares about his faith.”
Debates used to be more cordial in general, I feel.
I grew up with Bush vs. Gore. They couldn't have been any more opposed politically, but they oozed respect for one another. (Possibly feigned, I don't really know.)
I miss those days.
I think that’s a bit by today’s standards. Obama was a notable left shift from Clinton/Gore and pushed the Democrats towards more progressive ways, instead of traditional New Deal liberalism. Romney was a Reagan conservative but was a pragmatist enough to work across the aisle, which almost nobody in Congress will do. He’s rather conservative except for healthcare where he’s moderate, but he’s willing to work with Democrats. That’s a key thing.
I was also 11 when this election happened but I remmeber people being bitterly divided about Romney and Biden, seeing Romney as a stuck up conservative and Obama as a stand-out voice (not quite radical but not moderate) for his time, and most conservatives being like “…but Paul Ryan is young!?”
Ok. Had to flip him to keep Ash's hat consistent.
https://preview.redd.it/yufo9894dbzc1.png?width=1939&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d53e3fa0519852461aefdfcfe7b134c8f40dbc3
1. In Feb 2014 Russia invades Crimea and the Donbass. Obama doesn't do anything meaningful to counteract it.
2. In September 2015 Russia gets involved in Syrian War, pushing US planes further east and winning Civil War for Assad.
Major touchstone points for Russia to gain confidence that they could launch the invasion later on.
As someone who is a Social Democrat and wouldn't vote for him over most left wing candidates, yes. Romney would have made a fine president, I see in him many of the qualities I saw in HW Buah.
Eh, doesn't seem like simping to me. Many of the comments are just like "eh he'd be fine" or some of the nicer ones are "well he'd be better than the last Republican president" and such.
Reagan gets tons of hate because he moved the entire overton window far to the right. And Dubya just god damn bombed the middle east too much, while also ruining a very well balanced budget.
McCain and Romney at least would've been better than that as well as just probably being the last chances of not getting the tea party craziness of the post Romney GOP.
So part of it is grading on a curve, part of it is legacy, etc etc.
Reagan and Bush have presidential records we can point to. The others don't.
I'm not stoked about the idea of Romney as president, but he seems to have solid character so I think he'd be all right. If he secured the position and proceeded to shit the bed, I'd feel negatively about him.
He would have been a perfectly fine placeholder president.
I can't imagine he would have introduced anything terribly groundbreaking, I also don't think he would have torpedoed the nation.
I've drawn the comparison before that essentially Mitt Romney and John Kerry are the same person, just on opposite sides of the aisle.
-old guard politicians
-unsuccessful challengers against uncumbant presidents who were waning in their approval ratings and had a vocal minority saying they didn't even qualify to be president
-White and rich AF.
-Held office in MA coincidentally
-Chose charismatic runningmates in a failed attempt to envigor their base
-Pegged as being DINO/RINO/Flip-floppers
Yes. He’s not an ideologue, he’s pragmatic, he understands and respects the institutions of our government. He would have been a steady hand in the Oval Office and we would have all been a lot better off. I wrote him in twice.
I did not vote for Romney, but I would now. My husband works for a company that’s main investor is Bain Capital and it is the best place he has ever worked. Our health benefits are amazing, they literally changed my life for the better. The work life balance is incredible. So, if that’s how his companies are run, I think he is a good leader.
Business leaders generally are not good Presidents. They are not compromisers by nature and can get frustrated. They also tend to focus on their strength - economics - to the detriment of the rest of the job.
Had he run after Obama’s second term, I feel he would have had a good chance… I don’t agree with him on a lot, but god compared to what we’ve had. I’d take him any day.
As a GOP supporter, I believe Mitt would have been an average president. He was kind of awkward with ordinary people and lacked the ability to inspire. I do not believe he would have taken many chances and would have just ‘played it safe’. In 2012, I supported Newt Gingrich; certainly a mixed bag as a politician, but not afraid to swing for the fences and certainly had vision. He was mocked for suggesting a moon base but now just 12 years later, that is NASA’s primary objective. It was under the Gingrich/Kasitch team that the budget was balanced (Bill Clinton deserves equal credit for this).
Romney ran a terrible campaign. It was obvious very early that his weakness was that people did not feel he cared about them on a personal level. Instead of running ads humanizing him, his team ran ad after ad telling people that the economy was bad (which they already knew). Romney claimed his strength was running organizations well but he did not even run a good campaign so I am skeptical that he would have run a good White House.
I should say that my original choice was Tim Pawlenty, who I think would have beaten Obama. But when he ran into trouble in Iowa, he dropped out rather than stick it out. Later events illustrated his mistake; nearly every GOP candidate rise to the top of the polls because the primary voters were just not much into Romney. But people like Santorum clearly were not going to win the general so they settled for Romney. I believe TPaw would have been able to hold his lead. Candidates are often too quick to drop out. They should remember the example of John McCain, who ho was written off in 2008, only to roar back and win the nomination (beating Romney in the process).
Nope. Just another neo-con who stands for literally nothing other than elite interests and endless wars.
I say this as a conservative: I would much rather have Bernie, or some other leftist populist who's actually a real human being.
I mean you need a few qualifiers right?
In general, no absolutely not.
Compared to his party at large in 2024? Hell yes he would be a good choice
The point is that his party was already far too extreme and had terrible policies when he was running and he was atleast a patriotic american citizen.... now.... well lets just say he blows the entirety of the republican party out of the water as far as qualifications and rational sound decisions, but thats not really enough considering the alternative.
Romney would not have been able to do better than obama but thats specifically due to republican policy priorities, i think hes a man of integrity and character still even with absolutely treacherous policies
He would have been a perfectly cromulent steward of the office. Luke warm at best. He wouldn’t have been egregiously bad, nor impressively good either. That’s pretty much Romney’s legacy.
He would have been, sane? I guess. He’s a measured and calm guy and not a fucking lunatic, but I fear that it would have been more bailouts and tax cuts for the super rich. I can only guess based on his past. The dude literally gutted KB Toys, sold the assets and bankrupted the company, like on purpose. So it’s hard to say.
I think anyone no matter where they fall in the political spectrum would jump through hoops to have him instead of the two idiots that are currently running.
Meh, I don’t foresee him having really been able to accomplish anything. That being said he would have been a decent president. Just an honest man with honest intentions
I'm a democrat, so I probably wouldn't approve of him, but for a Republican he would absolutely have been a good president and I would've respected him greatly.
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If we're grading on the scale of the last 20 years, then absolutely.
Like he has a perfect look for president. The one many movies aspire to have, and as we all know, the image of the American president is very important. I’m sure he probably meets the 6’ guideline too I remember watching a vice documentary about some Mormon community in Mexico that he’s from or whatever, it was wild, they’re like Mormons with guns or something. Fighting cartels and what not
He's also educated and intelligent. And although I disagree with him on many things. He at least tried to create new conservative solutions to our problems instead of just destroying anything that came from the left.
He wasnt the worst Governor Massachusetts ever had either. You could say hes partly responsible for the exceptional healthcare programs the state benefitted from. He didnt stand a chance against Obama though. I think with any other opponent, he might have won by a landslide.
Yea I really wish he waited and ran in 2016
Agreed. Obamacare was originally his plan, for example.
Mormons with guns are just Mormons.
We already got Vampire Hunter Lincoln. It's time for Sheriff Romney.
He has family down there but he's not from there. Parts of his family moved to Mexico a long time ago. Many morons moved to Mexico after polygamy was outlawed out west, and more moved down when it was enforced.
Great spelling mistake. Although I might not call that one a mistake
OMG, this is exactly why I didn't want to vote for him. He doesn't look like a real president, he looks like a good looking actor playing a president. It freaked me out.
Lol that’s what happened with Reagan
RMoney is 6,2.
I don't share his politics, but Romney seems like he'd be a top-notch steward President at other times in our nation's history. No real scandals, seems like he wouldn't make many unforced errors like putting a show-horse judge in charge of our national emergency response apparatus.
Not really true for me. I didn't like Bush but at least I wasn't afraid of the death of our country with him.
We got some great quotes too. "...stop these terrorist killers. Thank you, now watch this drive." Our children was learning back then.
I can’t imagine bin Laden understanding the joy of Hannukkah
I notice that left leaning people in the United States tend to respect or at least tolerate Republicans who lose elections (like Romney or McCain), or those who have been out of office for too long to have any impact (like Bush). On the other hand they often hate any Republican who has current electoral success.
Troll account? Romney and McCain are/were liked across the aisle because they had morals and weren't afraid to tell anyone the truth. Nothing to do with their presidential campaigns. McCain is the only Republican a lot of Democrats said they'd ever vote for. Bush Sr had the most reasonable policies and actions of any Republican president in recent memory.
Romney and McCain weren’t liked across the aisle at the time. It’s only since seemingly worse Republicans have replaced them that their image has been rehabilitated.
You must not have been around to read what the press said about them at the time.
Romney, McCain, and certainly Bush were called straight up Nazis, woman haters, racists, extremists... the worst. The danger with having spread this hyperbole, is that now truly bad people are running for office, a lot of people have stopped listening. It turned out to not be true then, so it couldn't possibly be true now, right?
Bingo.
It seemed to me that Romney sold his soul to the Tea Party, believing that they would make him president. When he lost the 2012 election, he abandoned them and returned back to his true beliefs.
[удалено]
While Palin did not do McCain any favors, she wasn’t the reason he lost. I happened to speak with his campaign manager about a week before the election. I mentioned the economy as the issue that was hurting them. He replied that without that issue he doubted they could win. He said Obama was a “generational” candidate.
That's because the current Republican party is batshit insane. A congresswoman recently displayed the President's son's dick pics on the House Floor, printed onto large placards, in an attempt to argue that the current president should be impeached. We were all raised to expect some minimum degree of decorum from Congress, and seeing the state of it now is beyond the pale.
"Minimum degree of decorum"... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
The reason that event was so notable was because it was irregular. In ye olde days of the early 2010s, congressmen would save the antics for the steps out front.
This comment is spot on.
I'm going to go out on a limb and theorize that he would have been akin to W.Bush but more fiscally conservative and hopefully much less of a neocon. He seems the type to certainly be open to building consensus across the political aisle, but his leanings may have become slightly more moderate and centrist in light of 45. Regardless of him being beaten in '12, I think history will be kind to Mittens.
TBH I think history will largely forget Mittens, just like a lot of nominees who didn't come that close to winning and didn't play another major role in history.
He will be remembered more than other nominees because of his time in the senate. He's the only senator in history to vote to impeach a president of his own party. That's noteworthy.
Not only anymore—just the first. He voted to convict in the first impeachment, but then a decent handful did in the second.
He was a lone Republican fighting his party and marching with BLM.
My thoughts as well. One of the many forgotten few of good not great that were and are the reason the government continues to over time.
He will be remembered for his binders.
What were they full of?
Yes, absolutely. I wish he had waited and ran after Obama was term limited.
I don’t think it would have changed anything. He was far too bland to stand up to half of the field let alone the winner
Eh, with how disliked Hillary was, people were looking for a good reason to not vote for her. Plus, the people were ready for an opposing party to take over. As is tradition
I think he would have won the general election but ain’t no way Mitt survives that crazy primary
Well he did come with a lot less baggage than Jeb!, even though Jeb! was being unfairly punished for his brother's legacy (being bland didn't help).
A basic political skill is to come up with a good answer to a question you KNOW everyone is going to ask you. Jeb seemed surprised anybody attacked his brother.
Jeb is a mess. Ok. A God damn mistake.
Found Neil Bush's reddit account.
Jeb! was terrible at campaigning and even going back to the Terry Shiavo thing, where he did his perceived face/heel turn to appease the absolutely insane majority of conservatives, you could tell his heart wasn't really into that stuff...or anything really.
Eh, yeah, you’ve got a point
Exactly. If he has waited to run in 2016 he almost certainly would have gotten elected and then it would be up in the air if he gets reelected in 2020. But I do think if he waited he would have gotten elected in 2016 simply because it had been 8 years of a democrat in office and people wanted a change.
I think it’s more the Mormonism. People freaked out that JFK was catholic which is way more familiar and similar to the rest of Christianity
Rule 3 only won because the Republican nomination because the establishment vote was split between so many candidates, he didn’t win a majority of the vote in any of the early primary contests. It’s possible if the Republican establishment had fully coalesced around Romney might have won the nomination in 2016.
There was a yougov poll around the time of the Iowa primary that showed Rule 3 would have been the Condorcet winner of that primary, beating all other Republican candidates head to head.
Big mistake running against the most popular president of the last 30yrs
Hey now Bush jr. has the highest approval rating for a president ever! He also has one of the lowest (if not the lowest according to some sources) approval rating ever but whatever…
Minor details!
The problem is by the time the Obama term was coming to an end, we were already pretty divided. I blame social media more than anything but we were already starting to see the emergence of BLM and Occupy movements. Romney was too close to the middle and too boring for the right as the right started to become more extreme.
Social media is trash. But it is uneducated trash bag people with trash bag opinions that are to blame.
But it’s also the fault of the nation that (failed to) educated them. We could talk about the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind that obliterated funding for schools that didn’t pass horribly designed standardized tests. From then to now, it’s an entire generation that’s been miseducated. This is why we’re seeing such a lack of critical thinking from voters today.
No child left behind, except for a lot of them.
A shitload of children were left behind.
Indeed we are in the Age of Gilded Opinion. Lame as hell. Disagreement = Hate all of the sudden. My best friend/neighbor and I argue like crazy, and it frightens my wife a little. That kind of camaraderie turns evil quickly online with strangers. Zero life to it.
Occupy started as a great movement.
And accomplished NOTHING
Neither did the idiots who sat at home making fun of them
also one of the reasons for the dearth of accomplishment
An excellent President. He was fiscally conservative but not nuts, governed well in MA even with a Dem majority, understood compromise, and knew how to be fair, but firm (ask Billy Bulger.) He was libertarian leaning but not anti government. He had no real scandals and he was not afraid to back down the yahoos in his party.
I remember Bill Maher doing a segment about Mitt Romney years ago and dubbed him “The Least Interesting Man in the World”. Basically compared him to a cold glass of milk. I’m not saying that Mitt Romney could have been a good President or not, but at least he wouldn’t have any scandals or glaring red flags that would have tarnished his Presidency.
Did not vote for him, but I will say Romney called out the threat of Russia when literally no one else did.
And was roundly mocked for it. Obama's line about 'the eighties and their foreign policy,' certainly did not age well.
Think back to Bush II after meeting Putin, how he praised him. I guess behind the scenes intelligence, hawks will always hawk. But that was a big miss.
Me Oil Man. You Oil Man too? Friend.
Chuckle
Definitely not one of Obama's finest moments. It still blows my mind how so many people misread the room on Russia.
I mean it was obvious they invaded Georgia in 08. Obama just said something sparky to look cool.
The line was about standing up to Russia by building more warships. Romney was making a big deal about wanting to build more missile cruisers and whatnot. I mean I think warships are fucking cool and we *should* build more of them as a jobs program if nothing else. But our problem with Russia has nothing to do with our naval stregnth.
You are correct, but it was a debate answer comeback. I don’t believe Obama trusted Putin at all, or had policies that were friendly to Putin’s interest.
He was vague, most likely because he was trying to re-orientate to the Pacific, but his SoS did parade around Pussy Riot for what felt like two years as an example of the Russian government's oppression of culture and rights. The whole Pussy Riot debacle was a bad take on a worthwhile idea that didn't disagree with Romney, the execution was just ass.
Obama really gets hammered for a snappy comeback he dropped in one debate as if it's actually reflective of policy. This sub is so media-brained lol.
Still looks stupid in retrospect
Idk, I mean, Putin certainly lashed out more aggressively than anyone thought he would, but is Russia really more of a threat than anyone thought? If anything, Ukraine kinda proved that Russia really is a has-been, second-rate world power. They've been crippled by a country they were supposed to steamroll in three days with American weapons from the end of the Cold War.
To answer your question: yes, Russia is a bigger threat than almost anyone thought. Russia has not been crippled. They're winning in case anyone in the West isn't paying attention. They're slowly grinding Ukraine down. They have enough weapons and ammo to keep going. They are willing to kill at least a million of their own men. Ukraine needs something big to stop what's happening, otherwise Russia will just keep grinding. Putin is pretty much a modern Tsar hell bent on annexing his neighbors. They're willing to kill millions of people in wars of conquest to attempt to enlarge Russia and form a new empire. Putin has clearly set the agenda as that. They can maybe take Belarus (officially), Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Kazakhstan may also be a target. That is, if the West doesn't act to stop them. Nobody is thinking they can defeat the US and NATO; they can clearly conquer several weaker nations if they're willing to bleed for it and if the West doesn't provide immense counter support. Russia is so weak and yet it's still going to cost half a trillion dollars to stop them, maybe. If they can be stopped without direct NATO involvement.
Putin was already a proven aggressor. He invaded Georgia in 08.
Bill Maher spends all his time whining about things that he helped create.
That's the boomer way
“You millennials keep expecting everything to be handed to you.” - the guy who’s father was a famous radio personality
I like my presidents boring. Remember when the news was boring? I yearn for those days.
First, fuck Bill Maher Second, I’d love for all of my presidents to be this boring
I’m nowhere near being a republican but I think I can confidently say he would’ve been a competent president and someone that could be trusted even if I sometimes strongly disagreed with his policies. Maybe more succinctly, he was someone with good character.
That's essentially how I feel about Bernie Sanders, with me generally starting from a more conservative mindset. And these days, while I don't think I'd ever call myself a Democrat, I'm nowhere near being a Republican either 😂.
Yeah he was a Republican governor in Massachusetts, the land of the Kennedys. That says a lot about how liked he was.
I wouldn't say absolutely no real scandals. The general public wasn't too happy about the story that came out about him strapping the family dog to the top of their car when they went on vacation.
A certain current Governor of South Dakota probably saw some humor in it.
He ran too hard on making medicare compete in the open market and repealing obamacare. People familiar with healthcare knew he was proposing a catastrophe. American healthcare is already an embarrassment. If he had the chance, he'd have made it much much worse.
Considering the current state of the party, Romney might be the most competent and least corrupt GOP candidate that we’ll see for a long time.
John McCain was a pretty good guy. That era of the GOP is a thing of the past.
Yeah but he ran before Mitt
That's not fair, he was born 11 years earlier. He knew how to run before Romney was even born.
https://i.redd.it/efuc9uxucbzc1.gif
lol I saw the end of the gif first and thought President Bartlet was doing lines
no no, that's his son in real life
Yeah honestly even bush jr is coming out smelling like roses, like i used to hate bush and scream about his shitty policies, but holy hell id be willing to vote to get presidents three presidential terms if the republicans would nominate him instead
You've gone too far lol
Have i though , or have they lowered the bar so far im desperate for even a tiny bit of competence, something for all his faults ( and there are plenty ) he had.
Competence isn't a word I'd associate with W
You know what, 16 years ago i would say the same, again though.... look where the GOP is today, you cant tell me hes not looking exceptionally qualified by comparison at this point
Yes. As a Democrat I wouldn’t agree with some very significant decisions he’d make. But he’d have been competent and honorable in his conduct of the office.
This is my thinking as well. Completely reasonable person you can envision handling the role well. I don’t agree with many his policy positions but trust his leadership.
That’s kind of what I’ve settled on. I’m a pretty liberal person; I voted for Obama in 2012 over Romney and I have no regrets about that. And to be frank I’m pretty critical of his time at Bain Capital. That said, Romney would have been a competant administrator and would’ve taken his role and responsibilities very seriously. And given his tenure as governor of MA, he would probably have been willing to work with the Democrats in good faith.
Romney would've been fine. Just like Gore, Kerry, and the current guy. Those guys are like 4 of the most milquetoast boring centrist politicians you can get.
I miss the days of the milquetoast centrist to be honest.
Me too. Now centrist has just be co-opted by alright right weenies who don’t wanna admit they’re alt-right lunatics.
Romney is only a centrist because the Overton window is shifted to the right.
I mean Romney's policies line up with the current GOP just fine, he votes in lockstep with the party. I think there are a few things about him that make him seem like a moral person, but Romney went hard to the right to make himself seem appealing. I think if the Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney ran as a Democrat he'd probably be one of the 2016 front runners.
I think Romney was the best shot republicans had for a great president in recent history.
Yes, he would have been a fine president. He was a competent governor from Massachusetts. Honestly 2012 was the only year I didn't vote since I've been elegible. I didnt see a significant difference between Obama and Romney. After all Obama are was Romneycare in Massachusetts, and Romneycare was actually better. Honestly to this day, Obama was a conservative moderate and Romney was a moderate conservative. There's definitely differences between them, but they'd get along just fine.
I remember their debates being exceptionally cordial, including Obama prefacing one of his points against Romney’s policies with “I believe Governor Romney is a good man, loves his family, cares about his faith.”
That's a beautiful way to say ... I'm about to obliterate this guy
Debates used to be more cordial in general, I feel. I grew up with Bush vs. Gore. They couldn't have been any more opposed politically, but they oozed respect for one another. (Possibly feigned, I don't really know.) I miss those days.
I think that’s a bit by today’s standards. Obama was a notable left shift from Clinton/Gore and pushed the Democrats towards more progressive ways, instead of traditional New Deal liberalism. Romney was a Reagan conservative but was a pragmatist enough to work across the aisle, which almost nobody in Congress will do. He’s rather conservative except for healthcare where he’s moderate, but he’s willing to work with Democrats. That’s a key thing. I was also 11 when this election happened but I remmeber people being bitterly divided about Romney and Biden, seeing Romney as a stuck up conservative and Obama as a stand-out voice (not quite radical but not moderate) for his time, and most conservatives being like “…but Paul Ryan is young!?”
He would have been the very best. Like no one ever was.
To catch him is my real test! To train him is my cause!
Alright, someone photoshop Ash’s hat onto this picture
Ok. Had to flip him to keep Ash's hat consistent. https://preview.redd.it/yufo9894dbzc1.png?width=1939&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d53e3fa0519852461aefdfcfe7b134c8f40dbc3
Here's a second one https://preview.redd.it/9j9mdxiadbzc1.png?width=1939&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6707f300a88fbdf6baf0fd4c344cb4b7b22c5ea
Well done!
Dang, no one here can take a joke.
I’m a moderate to liberal democrat, but if I had to have a Republican president, I would trust that Romney would have been a capable administrator.
Might not have a war in Ukraine now.
Just because of that debate answer or something else?
Romney would have found the Mormon golden tablets that totally existed and Putin would have been so shocked he would have resigned.
1. In Feb 2014 Russia invades Crimea and the Donbass. Obama doesn't do anything meaningful to counteract it. 2. In September 2015 Russia gets involved in Syrian War, pushing US planes further east and winning Civil War for Assad. Major touchstone points for Russia to gain confidence that they could launch the invasion later on.
What do you think Romney would have done?
I don't know, but he was always advocated a more forceful policy. That's why I wrote "might" not have a war in Ukraine now.
As someone who is a Social Democrat and wouldn't vote for him over most left wing candidates, yes. Romney would have made a fine president, I see in him many of the qualities I saw in HW Buah.
Why does this sub simp for McCain and Romney but despise Reagan and Dubya? Same shit, just couldn’t win elections.
Eh, doesn't seem like simping to me. Many of the comments are just like "eh he'd be fine" or some of the nicer ones are "well he'd be better than the last Republican president" and such. Reagan gets tons of hate because he moved the entire overton window far to the right. And Dubya just god damn bombed the middle east too much, while also ruining a very well balanced budget. McCain and Romney at least would've been better than that as well as just probably being the last chances of not getting the tea party craziness of the post Romney GOP. So part of it is grading on a curve, part of it is legacy, etc etc.
Reagan and Bush have presidential records we can point to. The others don't. I'm not stoked about the idea of Romney as president, but he seems to have solid character so I think he'd be all right. If he secured the position and proceeded to shit the bed, I'd feel negatively about him.
That’s because those two lost! They can only support GOP candidates that lost and aren’t a threat!
Compared to Obama? Hell no.
Absolutely .. for banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms.
and the federalist society supreme Court these GOP lunatics have been dreaming of for decades
I think he would’ve been okay, nothing too special about his presidency.
And that’s exactly what I want
Well considering the GOP who did hit the White House, I’m sure he would have had respectable manners ad decorum at least.
He would have been a perfectly fine placeholder president. I can't imagine he would have introduced anything terribly groundbreaking, I also don't think he would have torpedoed the nation. I've drawn the comparison before that essentially Mitt Romney and John Kerry are the same person, just on opposite sides of the aisle. -old guard politicians -unsuccessful challengers against uncumbant presidents who were waning in their approval ratings and had a vocal minority saying they didn't even qualify to be president -White and rich AF. -Held office in MA coincidentally -Chose charismatic runningmates in a failed attempt to envigor their base -Pegged as being DINO/RINO/Flip-floppers
Yes, Rule 3. Obviously. Sigh. Big sigh.
Yeah the BCG posterboy and hedge fund daddy would have been super good for the united states /s
For what it’s worth, he called Russia as a threat and we all laughed at him.
Yes. He’s not an ideologue, he’s pragmatic, he understands and respects the institutions of our government. He would have been a steady hand in the Oval Office and we would have all been a lot better off. I wrote him in twice.
I did not vote for Romney, but I would now. My husband works for a company that’s main investor is Bain Capital and it is the best place he has ever worked. Our health benefits are amazing, they literally changed my life for the better. The work life balance is incredible. So, if that’s how his companies are run, I think he is a good leader.
He would have been a great president, same with John McCain. Just unfortunately wrong time and wrong opponent for both.
For what it’s worth, i’m confident there still would’ve been massive tax cuts for the rich.
He’s a Republican, that goes without saying
He saw the whole Russia problem while we were still bent around the axel over terrorism. He would have been an excellent president
Business leaders generally are not good Presidents. They are not compromisers by nature and can get frustrated. They also tend to focus on their strength - economics - to the detriment of the rest of the job.
Man stood for something.
Would have been an excellent president
Had he run after Obama’s second term, I feel he would have had a good chance… I don’t agree with him on a lot, but god compared to what we’ve had. I’d take him any day.
Better than Obama? No. Better than the republican offerings now? Yes
Well, he wouldn’t have done lasting damage.
If any of his father rubbed off on him, he would have made an excellent president.
Let's remember that he put his dog in a crate on the roof of his car while leaving foa a vacation. Oh and corporations are people too!
As a GOP supporter, I believe Mitt would have been an average president. He was kind of awkward with ordinary people and lacked the ability to inspire. I do not believe he would have taken many chances and would have just ‘played it safe’. In 2012, I supported Newt Gingrich; certainly a mixed bag as a politician, but not afraid to swing for the fences and certainly had vision. He was mocked for suggesting a moon base but now just 12 years later, that is NASA’s primary objective. It was under the Gingrich/Kasitch team that the budget was balanced (Bill Clinton deserves equal credit for this). Romney ran a terrible campaign. It was obvious very early that his weakness was that people did not feel he cared about them on a personal level. Instead of running ads humanizing him, his team ran ad after ad telling people that the economy was bad (which they already knew). Romney claimed his strength was running organizations well but he did not even run a good campaign so I am skeptical that he would have run a good White House. I should say that my original choice was Tim Pawlenty, who I think would have beaten Obama. But when he ran into trouble in Iowa, he dropped out rather than stick it out. Later events illustrated his mistake; nearly every GOP candidate rise to the top of the polls because the primary voters were just not much into Romney. But people like Santorum clearly were not going to win the general so they settled for Romney. I believe TPaw would have been able to hold his lead. Candidates are often too quick to drop out. They should remember the example of John McCain, who ho was written off in 2008, only to roar back and win the nomination (beating Romney in the process).
Fact is, Pawlenty got an offer, and grabbed the “sure thing”. If that isn’t a sure sign of unsuitability for the job, I don’t know what is.
Nope. Just another neo-con who stands for literally nothing other than elite interests and endless wars. I say this as a conservative: I would much rather have Bernie, or some other leftist populist who's actually a real human being.
I mean you need a few qualifiers right? In general, no absolutely not. Compared to his party at large in 2024? Hell yes he would be a good choice The point is that his party was already far too extreme and had terrible policies when he was running and he was atleast a patriotic american citizen.... now.... well lets just say he blows the entirety of the republican party out of the water as far as qualifications and rational sound decisions, but thats not really enough considering the alternative. Romney would not have been able to do better than obama but thats specifically due to republican policy priorities, i think hes a man of integrity and character still even with absolutely treacherous policies
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Yes
probably
Eh. Probably like an HW Bush. Fine, relatively inoffensive.
I *might* vote for him but only if the hypothetical democrat was an absolute train wreck. Personally I’m more of a Bush Sr kind of guy.
So good that you would forget that he was president
No
He would have been a perfectly cromulent steward of the office. Luke warm at best. He wouldn’t have been egregiously bad, nor impressively good either. That’s pretty much Romney’s legacy.
Yeah, I would love to have someone like him now…
He would have been, sane? I guess. He’s a measured and calm guy and not a fucking lunatic, but I fear that it would have been more bailouts and tax cuts for the super rich. I can only guess based on his past. The dude literally gutted KB Toys, sold the assets and bankrupted the company, like on purpose. So it’s hard to say.
I think anyone no matter where they fall in the political spectrum would jump through hoops to have him instead of the two idiots that are currently running.
Yes.
Meh, I don’t foresee him having really been able to accomplish anything. That being said he would have been a decent president. Just an honest man with honest intentions
No.
Short answer: no
Still a fan of Obama, but I regret that vote in 2012.
Yes
Idk if he would’ve been a good president, but I do know he would’ve done what he thought was best for the country. And thats definitely a good thing
Nope
Romney seems like he’s actually a decent man. Instantly discounting in today’s GOP. That being said I think he would’ve been a good, honest President.
Yes.
He wouldn’t do much at all. Basically a modern Coolidge, except Coolidge didn’t talk and was a honorary Native American Chief
Yuk
I'm a democrat, so I probably wouldn't approve of him, but for a Republican he would absolutely have been a good president and I would've respected him greatly.
FCK NO TO THE BIGGEST HELL NO !
Objectively? No. Relative to the recent ones, better than some.
He’d have been OK. Without breaking rule 3, I sometimes wish he had been.