What if Romney had won?

Sadly, I have to agree with this assessment from a commenter at ChicagoBoyz:
I think Romney would have:
1) Failed to repeal Obamacare, instead agreeing to various false compromises to “fix” it, leaving the parts most important to the left intact, because otherwise they wouldn’t agree to any “fix.” The base of the GOP would, of course, feel outraged and betrayed. Result- disaster.
2) Agreed to impose a carbon tax upon the US economy, because he believed in global warming. Conceding that, he would have no real cover when the left resumed shrieking that we need to force Americans to stop using exothermic chemicals reactions, because Gaia. And he’d “compromise,” because that’s just what GOP establishment politicians do, regardless of the consequences. Result--yet more disaster.
3) Fought for another amnesty bill, with no real border security, because that’s what the big money donors want. Of course once again we’d hear all about phony border security provisions, carefully written to mean nothing at all, wrapped up in a giant “guest worker” program, more H1B visas, more immigration, MOAR. And working class Americans, US citizens, would have been thrown into the street by foreigners, including those who have absolutely no interest in the United States other than to send money home. Result- even more disaster, blamed on the Republican president.
4) Continued expensively subsidizing the military requirements of our competitors, such as the EU, Japan, and Israel, while allowing their enemies and ours to pilfer American defense secrets with impunity. As Spengler notes, Israel is doing pretty well. Perhaps we don’t need to give them any more spendy military assistance.
5) Done nothing at all to combat the slow-motion destruction of the Republic by the left, or its relentless subversion of American culture, or the vile hate-America propaganda force-fed to almost every American college student. Nope. I expect he’d come up with another student loan program, to make hate-America propaganda easier to afford.
6) Destroyed the Republican party forever and all time, because the base voters of the GOP have become terribly unwilling to tolerate the endless, mindless, backstabbing failure of the GOP establishment.

14 comments:

Eric Blair said...

Spengler is overwrought.
Always.

We really don't know what Romney would have ended up doing as president.

Anyone who thinks they know what would have happened is a fraud.

Tom said...

Spengler? This was from a commenter called Xennady.

No one, not even Romney, can say what would have happened, but we can all look at a set of historical facts and make educated guesses. That's not fraudulent; it's interesting.

Ymar Sakar said...

And this commenter has the credentials for predicting... what exactly?

If they predicted the Left's strategic assets before 2007, then that's a point in their favor. If they are a Johnny come lately, summer soldier, that's resting on the laurels of better people, then it's a point against them.

Cass said...

All of which leaves out the critical issue: public support. Even presidents can't just decide what fiats they will issue without considering what the public wants and is willing to support.

But somehow on the Internet, that pesky detail seems to get swept under the rug. It's like decisions can be made in a vacuum without considering the big picture.

If we decide to continue what Obama has begun and retreat into isolationism and eventual irrelevance, there will eventually be consequences. I'm starting to believe that that's the only way we learn - by making the same mistakes over and over again and being reminded why they weren't a good idea.

#6 made me laugh. But then that's my reaction every time the "THE END OF...." meme is resurrected.



Anonymous said...

At least #6 would have been a positive accomplishment.

RCL

Texan99 said...

Hear, hear. Time for a successor.

Cass said...

As long as y'all are willing for the criterion for the successor to be, "Can actually get the freakin' job done", I would be fine with that.

Grim keeps trying to tell me that I'm some sort of "defender of the Establishment", but I've been a registered Independent-who-votes-"R" most of my life.

I do believe - quite strongly - that it's too easy to criticize when you're not the one doing the job. Maybe it's my tech background - we're always being asked for our opinions and then they are dismissed as "too pessimistic" (apparently synonymous with 'grounded in real world experience'). And then reality shows up and bites us all in the fanny.

Or maybe it's 30+ years of doing volunteer work associated with the Marines. People who aren't willing to sign up or get involved are always second guessing the folks who volunteer. And experience does count for something.

From where I sit, the Tea Party hasn't put together the kind of infrastructure needed to elect large numbers of candidates. If they ever do this, they will immediately be told they are the "establishment" :p

Happy to have the Tea Party try. But not sold on the notion that the people who have been in the trenches all these years don't know what they're talking about because they don't agree with others who haven't the same track record.

As far as I'm concerned, prove to me you can do the job and you'll earn my support. But you don't get it for talking a big game.

That probably sounds confrontational, and I don't mean it to be at all. I'm not altogether sold on parties anyway. I vote Rethug reliably because the GOP comes closer to my values than Libertarians or Dems. That's all it takes to get my vote.

Don't pay attention to the "establishment" b/c frankly they're irrelevant to how I vote.



Cass said...

One more thing about "the base".

"Base" votes don't count any more than my vote does. And the totals are what matters.

Not sure how we lost sight of that, but it's pretty basic. If you're arguing that the "base" are the ones contributing money (and you've done that reliably over the years), then it seems to me that you're arguing the party should hew to whatever line the donors want (regardless of whether it will win enough votes to win the election).

Me, I want to win elections because losing them means a Democrat is representing me and that's not a good thing for me or for the nation. It really is that simple to me.

Texan99 said...

I'm sure you're right. But I'm going to continue supporting primary candidates who aren't running on a platform of "more of the same, only slightly less so." Ideas matter, even if they're hard to implement in the teeth of opposition. Someone should at least be trying. Every now and then, an egregiously stupid piece of legislative nonsense is prevented because enough troublemakers dig in their heels and say "absolutely not."

Of course, it's a little easier for me, given my strong skepticism that government solutions are usually a good idea. I don't at all mind being the "party of no." We need a lot more "no," in my opinion.

douglas said...

It's also easy to poo-poo predictions or 'what-if's' but this seemed like an interesting take on the question, and plausible. I think what makes it less credible is that it doesn't account for any positives, and I'm quite sure there would be some to mention. It would have been better framed as possible downsides to President Romney.

Texan99 said...

It's true that I have no doubt whatever that, with all these downsides, he'd still have done a much better job for us that the present catastrophe in the Oval Office. It's not as though I regret voting for him for one instant.

Cass said...

I'm reminded of that old quote about politics being the art of the possible (which is almost never 'the ideal').

I don't think we want a president so rigid that he comes into office totally unwilling to budge an inch from whatever "the base" expects of him/her.

Isn't that the problem we have with Obama right now?

If the worst thing anyone can think of to say about a candidate who wasn't elected is that he would have had to compromise at some point (AKA, "Represent ALL the voters, toward whom he does have some duty regardless of what 'the base' wants to believe), I'd say that candidate has nothing to be ashamed of :p

#6 strikes me as highly implausible.

#5: Gosh - how is the president supposed to change the culture or take over college curricula to ensure that nothing the base dislikes is taught? This seems more like magical thinking than serious criticism.

#2 just makes no sense to me at all. Doesn't logically follow, and anyway the President doesn't unilaterally impose taxes. He can veto, and the success of such a veto would depend on whether he had the votes in Congress. If not, the veto would be overridden.

#1. The President can't repeal anything. That task falls to Congress. He can lead an effort to rally support for repeal, but the notion that the president can repeal legislation ought to alarm conservatives.

Most of this list of things Romney would have "failed" to do are things the President can't do in the first place, and has no business doing.

Texan99 said...

I don't disagree with you on many of these points. Certainly I'm frustrated when a politician can't or won't take into account how much power he has, and what kind of compromise is realistically available. If aiming at better-than-nothing compromise were all the current national Republican leadership was doing, I wound't fault them. What I fault them for is confusing "rigid" with "principled." Few of them seem able to make a case for a conservative position that might have a chance of connecting with voters. Instead, they run from polls and try to figure out how to win voters with the same programs that voters look to Democrats to provide for them. It's as if they thought the point was to stay in power, not to enact policies that will work better than the current ones.

The only curative I know to that kind of thinking is to make them understand that they won't survive primaries with that strategy. If they're going to think exclusively about what will lose them votes, let them worry about losing mine for a change.

In the main election, of course, I go on voting for Rs over Ds. In the meantime, I hope that they occasionally block something wildly stupid, while we work on getting someone in office who can not only block stupid new things but clean up some old messes.

Tom said...

A charitable reading would be to assume the commenter meant that Romney wouldn't have tried to accomplish these things by, e.g., not pushing Congress to repeal Obamacare.

In any case, since the Senate remained in Dem hands, #1 is moot.

#2 is simply unlikely. Even when the Dems controlled House, Senate, and Presidency, this didn't happen.

#3 might well have happened. Big business likes cheap labor.

#4 ... I'm for this, though I think we should start charging the Chinese usage fees for any technology secrets they steal.

#5 ... Like Cass, I'm not sure what a president can do about this. Reagan, Bush, and Bush didn't do anything. Maybe give some patriotic speeches?

#6 is silly.

Still, an interesting list to think about.