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Romney: finally an old pol retires — 51 Comments

1. This is indeed good news. Utah remains pretty solidly red, but a brutal primary fight is still not something to relish.

   Beyond that, I agree Romney realized he was likely going to follow in Liz Cheney’s footsteps if he sought another term. Best to go out on a sanctimonious high note, especially if he has a book to plug

2. I voted for him in 2012. I think he could have won, if he had not blown the debates.

3. Romney’s a very accomplished man with a full family life. His problem as a politician (from 1994 to 2018) has been the sense that he regarded issues as fungible. (A wag I correspond with called him ‘windsock Romney’). It seemed very odd in 2018 that a 71 year old centimillionaire with 20 grandchildren would want to squander the time he has left in Congress (which is a step down from the previous position he’d held), to the point of establishing a notional residency in Utah to do so. A normal man would have been squiring his wife around elderhostel. After he was elected, we discovered his motive was some combination of restlessness and spite. Not very edifying.
   ==
   He worked so assiduously to burn his bridges to any Republican not part of the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus that I doubt he intended to sit for more than one term. In any case, the Republican voters of Wyoming handing Liz Cheney her ass marked ‘29% of the vote’ might have influenced his thinking as well.

4. because Obama was still quite popular at the time.
   ==
   My recollection is that Obama’s approval ratings in the fall of 2011 were low enough that the smart money was on a Republican victory in 2012. Biden and Obama have had an astonishingly high lower bound (just shy of 40%), but neither has had the kind of congenial public response that Clinton managed now and again and that Carter managed early in his Administration.

5. he apparently is quoted as dissing the GOP in a new biography released to coincide with today’s announcement.
   ==
   If what’s uppermost in the mind of Romney is the blather Coppins offers, Romney is absolute deadweight in our public life.

6. Romney: “Trump is the leader of the greatest portion of the Republican Party. It’s a populist, demagogue portion of the party. I represent a small wing of the party. I call it the wise wing of the Republican Party. I don’t believe we’re going away.”

7. SCOTTtheBADGER (5:23 pm) said: “I voted for him in 2012. I think he [Mitt Romney] could have won, if he had not blown the debates.”

   I firmly believed then and I firmly believe now, that if Romney had gone after Obama (and ilk) as pointedly and as unapologetically as he went after (many) Republicans, he’d have had an excellent chance of unseating Obama in 2012.

8. According to that Axios link, Romney doesn’t like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, or J.D. Vance. I imagine they return the sentiment.

9. “Romney is absolute deadweight in our public life.”

   AD… This… completely this.

   I hope the door hits him in the backside on his way out.

10. I would like to remind everyone that Mitt let us know that Joe Biden is fundamentally a good guy. He deserves to lose for that one.

11. Has there ever been a presidential campaign with more pulled punches than Romney’s? Obama’s economic numbers were terrible and he was beatable if he faced a vigorous campaigner. No matter what vicious lie Obama or his minions threw at Romney, he would just reply (in effect) that he might do a better job of handling the economy. Then he rolled out his 57 point plan for a better economy with the old standby, capital gains tax cuts. He was so out of touch with the average American and especially with his/her patience to review a 57 point economic plan. As Jed Clampett used to say, “pitiful, jes pitiful”. (Actually, McCain was fiery only when banging on his fellow Republicans, e.g. Cruz. Rand Paul, etc. Come to think of it, no wonder Trump, even with his innumerable downsides, was able to energize the voters.)

12. And yet, Romney is younger than Biden, McConnell, Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, and even Donald Trump.

    It’s not uncommon for incumbent presidents to have low approvability ratings in the run-up to an election, and come out winning in November. Was anyone really surprised that Obama won (except for maybe Romney and his advisors)?

13. Mitt could have been elected president in 2012 had he not been such a wimp, refusing to vigorously go at Barack Hussein in the debates. He is a coward, afraid to attack a political opponent because of the color of his skin,
    For that we can thank Mitt for the national decay of the last ten years, and for Slo Joe as POTUS.
    Even though a Mormon, I’m appalled Utah elected him as Senator.Compare him to Mike Lee to see Mitt’s deficiencies.
    Yes, he would have been a poor president, but his election would have prevented the ruinous Obama-Biden era.

14. He’ll stick around just long enough to vote “not guilty” for any impeachment trials.

15. “I represent a small wing of the party. I call it the wise wing of the Republican Party. I don’t believe we’re going away.”

    I don’t believe I’ll notice, one way or the other.

16. I think Romney was never really a conservative, either in his political, his business, and I suspect, also in his personal life. He hasn’t really been a Republican for about 20 years. I also think he’s avoiding the embarrassment of a re-election failure, which would be quite a badge of shame in the Mormon state of Utah. This way, he can at least hold on to his position and standing within the church, which is probably more important to him anyway. Mormons know how to stick together and support each other, even the people they despise.

17. I don’t think this is about Romney’s religious affiliation, although Harry Reid (D) and Romney (R) were neither of them good for the reputation of their church in the Senate. Romney, before he swallowed the TDS pill, was a reputable man.

    I think he looked at the polling numbers and decided to retire not as a loser.

18. Great comments about Romney’s deficiencies as a politician. He is personally morally conservative but his peer group is globalist neocons. Romney learned from a young age to compartmentalize his faith. What he personally believes is not what he publicly advocates! And while he lives to a high standard of decency Romney is perfectly comfortable cutting deals with thieves and scoundrels – money is a powerful drug that allows the “Christian” to make great moral comprises and to forgive themselves because they personally did not hurt anyone.

    And that is Romney’s great flaw. He is utterly blind to the mischief and criminality that is intrinsically tied to the policies he supports. He sees no problem funding war profiteers. He sees no issue defending the Biden family and the den of thieves that is Big Government and its spendthrift, self-dealing ways. Romney sees the cause of globalism as the pure religion that absolves all worshipers of their sin.

    Credit to Romney for bowing out with dignity. Best move of his political career.

19. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

20. I swear he pulled a punch or 20 against Obama in a debate. Yeah, it’s hard to debate in person, on the fly, but Romney looked like he took a 10 count on purpose.

    Yes, I still voted for him, but my mind started to awaken with that. It took a while, till Trump, for me to truly realize what a disgusting political group I voted for since at least W. For what it’s worth, I had an idea of it when I got signatures for Ross Perot to be on the ballot in Texas. I just didn’t realize how bad things were till Trump.

21. I think Obama could have been beaten in 2012, though it would have been tough for any conventional GOP candidate given the media bias (remember Candy Crowley?). I believe he is the only President to stand for re-election since perhaps the Civil War who did worse the second time but still won. Exceptions are FDR’s 3d and 4th terms.

22. Wait a minute. How could Delecto POSSIBLY have won? Wasn’t he a Nazi?**
    (Even if he has become, since then…an angel…which goes to show you: there’s always a second chance in politics…as long as you BASH TRUMP HARD ENOUGH!)

    ** That, and some unfortunate rhetorical flourishes involving percentages…upon which the Democrats POUNCED…Hold on, Democrats don’t POUNCE; they only RESPOND (judiciously, at that)…

23. Of course, his conscience may have kicked in…all of a sudden…
    (Oh come on, I’m joking!)

    In any event, if it has to be said—and it does (and actually, it already has been said many times over)—then Victor D. Hanson is the one to say it…
    “The Frightened Left;
    “An impeachment inquiry looms – and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.”—
    https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-frightened-left/

    …Keeping in mind that Delecto ACTIVELY SUPPORTS the ghastly, ghoulish goon that currently occupies the WH.
    (That’s right, the WH is “Occupied Territory”…)

24. I echo the comments about the winnability of the 2012 election. I’m not sure that a GOP win in that election was ever realistic. The leading GOP primary candidates were a scandal-tarred former House Speaker with foot-in-mouth disease, a very socially-conservative former Senator who had resoundingly lost reelection six years earlier in a swing state, and a blue-state governor who had passed the prototype for the incumbent president’s most unpopular policy.

    I have nothing against Santorum, who won Iowa, but he’s just not a realistic national candidate. Newt Gingrich actually won South Carolina that year. I just don’t see Newt as a potential president either. Of the lot, Romney was probably the best national candidate, but it was a weak crop for sure. The GOP lost a whole generation of young up-and-comers in 2006 and 2008 and the Mother Hubbard presidential primary of 2012 was the bitter fruit.

    And I’m not at all convinced that Romney could have won if only he had not “pulled punches.” The Obama years were the beginning of the unmasking of the press as purely partisan actors. The “moral” pull of defending the first African-American president was simply too much for them. Romney was what he was and he happened to be running against a gifted politician who had the press acting as his personal campaign publicity outfit. (And if anyone thinks that Trump would have beaten Obama in 2012, or at any time frankly, I have a bridge to sell you.)

    The 2012 election was also the first example that I remember of the GOP over-focusing on the other candidate to believe that victory was inevitable. Well, you can’t beat something with nothing, and I think that was more or less the lesson of Romney in 2012.

    The same thing happened in 2020. How could Biden possibly have won? He’s corrupt old coot who couldn’t tell the truth if it bit him in the rear end? Well, consider the GOP candidate. We’re setting up for the same thing next year. How could Biden possibly win? He has an approval rating in 30’s, the economy is not great, the guy is 82 years old and in visible decline? Well, candidates matter.

    The especially painful thing about 2024 is that the election is very winnable and there are multiple candidates running who could win – at least DeSantis and Haley, and yet here we go again.

25. “…How could Biden possibly have won?…”

    Hmmm. That’s a REAL head scratcher, ain’t it…
    (And with a RECORD number of votes, to boot!!)

    Ye’ know? I think you just answered yer own question…(but yer probably not too happy with the answer…so best to just ignore it…ferget about it…pretend it never happened…)

26. Delusion, thy name is Barry Meislin. There is an answer. I don’t particularly like it either, but at least I accept it.

    Democrats used mail ballots and early voting to get droves of D-leaning low propensity voters to the polls. The GOP candidate’s boorish behavior kissed away huge chunks of the tranditionally GOP vote among college-educated suburbanites and, therefore, didn’t win enough votes to overcome the D’s new low propensity voters.

    With the current political alignment of the country, the GOP probably needs a very high quality candidate to win. Democrats, with the press and big tech at their back, demonstrably do not.

    There it is. The GOP will either learn from it or continue losing.

27. Of course the alternative is to just wait for the inevitable fiscal collapse, allow Democrats to own it, and hope for the best in the accompanying political realignment. That’s more or less where I think we’re headed. And I just don’t see Trumpian populism rising from those ashes.

28. Sounds pretty comprehensive.
    (Aren’t you missing something, though…?)

29. I work here is done, he was basenghi when it came to obama,
    and michigan j frog when it came to trump,

    an election fortified with gleem, unreviewable, because you don’t want your nice courthouse to be firebombed (mostly peaceful of course)

30. Romney lost in 2012 because:

    1. The usual media thumb on the scale to help the Democrat. How much that counts is unknowable, but I’ve read (I forget where) that it’s worth 3-5% in favor of the Democrat in a generic matchup.

    2. Harry Reid telling anyone who’d listen that Romney hadn’t paid his taxes. When it was pointed out to Reid after the election that he’d lied about it, Reid’s response was “well, Romney didn’t win, did he?”.

    3. And IMO the biggest reason: “Oh no. There’ll be trouble if we fire the black guy.”

31. Romney did great in the first debate (10/03/2012) and made Obama look foolish and unprepared, then in the next debate (the VP debate) his talking head VP running mate Paul Ryan blew the momentum of the Republican campaign by droning on about “Dodd-Frank” and putting everyone to sleep. In the next presidential debate Candy Crowley of CNN interfered and covered for Obama by saying he (Obama) was right about something (which he was not) and correcting Romney. Romney did no call her out but he did not have the killer instinct and frankly the country was not looking to throw the first Black president out of office eventhough he was awful and amateurish. He was better than McCain though.

32. Voting has got nothing to do with it. 2012 was fortified. If there are 1000 ways to rig elections the donks know 1101.

33. Bauxite
    You make good points (as you always do) but the media will run cover for the Democrats and never underestimate the ability of the Stupid Party (Republican) to blow a great opportunity (see the 2022 midterms). People know that Biden is a lemming but they do not want Donald Trump and his perpetual drama either.

34. So, who wears Romney’s mantle now, as head of the Quisling wing of the Republican Party, Lindsey Graham?

35. So, who wears Romney’s mantle now, as head of the Quisling wing of the Republican Party, Lindsey Graham?
    ==
    I sometimes get the impression that Lindsey Graham must have stolen the lunch money of millions of people in all 50 states.

36. his peer group is globalist neocons
    ==
    When someone uses the character string ‘neocon’, you have a signal that the rest of their verbiage can be ignored.

37. It’s not uncommon for incumbent presidents to have low approvability ratings in the run-up to an election, and come out winning in November.
    ==
    Nope. Since the beginning of public opinion research, it’s happened twice, once in 1948 and once in 2012. Ronald Reagan was in trouble with the electorate 24 months before he was returned to office, but not 12 months before.

38. Given the dissappointments of the past few election cycles, I think many Conservatives tend to imagine that the Democrats have near omnipotence when it comes to winning elections. I think that’s perhaps being a bit overly unrealistic and pessimistic though. That’s not to say that the Democrats don’t excel employing various methods, both ambiguously legal and likely illiegal, to fortify close elections when compared to Republicans. The most obvious being ballot harvesting of low propensity voters. The evidence suggests that the Dems excel at the close game. It shouldn’t be ignored.

    That said, it seems to me it’s better to be realistic than pessamistic. As of the moment, the polls all suggest that a Biden v Trump matchup is a statistical dead heat. Which of course means that the Dems would most likely win if the election were held today.

    But the election isn’t today, it’s over 13 months from now. And there’s any number of factors that could (and likely will) dramatically change the landscape in that time period. There’s the Trump legal cases, the Biden impeachment inquiry, the war in Ukraine, Biden’s health, the unstable economy, just to name a few. Plus there’s always the potential for one or more so called “Black Swan” events, currently nigh unpredictable possibilities that basically flip the gameboard.

    And then there’s the actual normal election stuff that needs to happen. At this point it seems pretty much assured that Trump will win the nomination, but things can change quickly. And will Biden indeed be the Dem nominee? Lot’s of people think not, but it’s hard to know. And assuming Trump and Biden are the nominees, what will a debate between those 2 look like? Would there even be a debate? Or would the Democrats be too afraid to put Biden up for it? And how would that look to voters?

    My point is, we shouldn’t be overly pessamistic just yet. There’s just too many possibilities and honestly most of them aren’t particularly advantagious for Democrats.

39. Bush Senior, who wasn’t an incumbent, but whose party held the White House, was trailing by 17 points in July, and came back to wallop Dukakis. Bush Junior also trailed Kerry at various points in the summer before beating him.

    Perhaps I should have said “in the summer,” rather than “in the run-up,” but notice that I was talking about approval ratings, rather than head-to-head polls of candidates. Presidents who have had low approval ratings for long periods, still have come out winners in the general election.

    There have also candidates whose party held the White House, who came back from quite a way behind to within striking range of victory: Humphrey in 1968, Ford in 1976. Voters who complained for years about the administration come to ask themselves if the alternative is really better.

    Romney was actually trailing Obama in the polls for most of the campaign, and only pulled close (and even ahead in some polls) in the last weeks of the campaign. Romney did do well in polls in the spring, but in the summer and through most of the fall, polls showing him in the lead were outliers. It shouldn’t be surprising that he lost. It wouldn’t have taken fraud, just an effective Democrat get the vote effort and Romney’s basic unlikeability.

40. BrooklynBoy said,” People know that Biden is a lemming but they do not want Donald Trump and his perpetual drama either.”

    You and the sheeple NEVER write or talk about Trump’s accomplishments as POTUS, like the Abraham Accords or the rise in median black family incomes. You are stuck on stupid, on his out-of-office perpetual “drama”. You ignore the man’s persecution by our Democratic Dept of “Justice”. I’d like to see you cope on the horns of such “Justice”. So a lemming is your favorite for 2024?

41. Art Deco -W’s approval rating was underwater starting in early 2004. He didn’t go positive again until around the time of the conventions.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W._Bush#/media/File:George_W_Bush_approval_ratings.svg

    So W was a president who had low approval in the run up to his reelection, yet won anyway. Even if that is historically rare, it has been the path of he last two presidents to win reelection.

42. So I would use a broader description –
    —
    Thanks for the backing-and-filling. We’re all educated.

43. Cicero – You’re shooting the messenger. It has been made abundently clear over the past two election cycles that, outside of deep red states, the electorate will favor a lukewarm corpse over Trump and Trumpy candidates. Pointing that out is not favoring the lemming (although, I would personnally us a little stronger word to describe Biden).

44. Art Deco – I misread your initial comment. I didn’t realize that you had added the part about “12 months before the election.” Abraxas said “in the runup to the election.” The spring of election year is clearly “in the runup to the election.” That is why I edited my comment. (Until the conventions, and ever after, it certainly felt like W was on the way to losing.)

    Do you have any reason why “in the runup to the election” should include candidates who were underwater 12 months before the election, but not candidates who were underwater during the election year?

    FWIW, I don’t know why Bush had a big approval bump in the fall of 2003. The initial phase of Iraq War had ended the previous spring. Maybe the capture of Saddam Hussein in December?

45. The electorate makes its choice. Destruction of the country vs. someone that brings drama but competence. Elections have mostly been about feelings, except during times of economic downturn. Then pockets rule. Now….we have a clash between feelings and the pocket. Who will win? I suspect feelings in this most unserious of countries.

46. Cicero
    Trump had many accomplishments but you are totally delusional if you think that Trump is a popular ex president who has a chance in Hell of ever being returned to the White House. He is completely unelectable because people (not of course his fan boy base who just adores him) are sick of his fat mouth and boorish behavior. If Obama could run for a third term and his opponent was Donald Trump, he (BHO) would slaughter him.

47. Don’t let the door…,

48. The problem with Romney and McCain is that an awful lots of people went to bat for them when they were being slimmed by the left. But neither seemed to have any appreciation or loyalty to those same people.

49. The problem with Romney and McCain is that an awful lots of people went to bat for them when they were being slimmed by the left. But neither seemed to have any appreciation or loyalty to those same people.
    ==
    You’re describing George W. Bush. During the period running from 1960 to 2012, the Republican Party almost invariably nominated The-Guy-Whose-Turn-It-Is. My guess would be that the constituency for The-Guy-Whose-Turn-It-Is amounted to about 1/3 of the Republican electorate and that proved too much of a hurdle for competitors to clear. These deadweight voters were McCain’s principal constituency. Issues Republicans were always leery of him because his shtick after 1998 was antagonism to immigration enforcement and sticking a stiletto into the Republican caucus, even though the American Conservative Union coded his voting record as starboard. Romney was not only The-Guy-Whose-Turn-It-Is, he was facing opponents who were interesting but didn’t ignite any constituency. Issues Republicans were leery of him too.
    ==
    That McCain and Romney proved to be treacherous isn’t much of a surprise, though particular features of it have been. (Cindy McCain, quite gratuitously, using her husband’s signature stamp to issue a public insult to Sarah Palin).

50. Welll … maybe Romney is getting the feeling that the Scalding Eye Of Public Attention is about to turn to the offspring of the politically powerful.

    Don’t I recall that his son, and Pelosi’s son, and maybe John Kerry’s kid/step-kid, have been reported as having pretty-much the same sort of well-paid “work” arrangements as Hunter Biden? (Oh and don’t forget Chelsea Clinton – she had some position “doing mostly nothing” that paid $600K, IIRC.)

    Perhaps he feels that if he bows out now, he and his family will cease being targets for any upcoming political scrutiny of nepotism?

51. If Obama could run for a third term and his opponent was Donald Trump, he (BHO) would slaughter him.
    ==
    Some years ago, I saw a study which compared the prognostications of professional pundits (like the crew on Capital Gang) with future events. Their record was worse than you’d expect if they’d made random choices. It should occur to amateur pundits that self-confident people are often Dunning-Kruger exemplars.

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