This is such weird fan fiction.
Romney got mocked for dumb things he actually said and did.
John Kerry had his war record smeared, and a multi-year racist campaign was run to argue Obama was a secret immigrant. https://t.co/uuwFsHtIt7
— DrunkOnMystery (@DrunkOnMystery) July 27, 2022
Now that the Jan6 Committee has exposed so many Republican ‘stars’ as criminals, enablers, and/or idiots, the GOP is desperate for a figurehead that ‘swing voters’ won’t immediately assume would try to rape their kids, beat up their mixed-race family members, or steal their wallets.
Since Willard Romney could only be suspected of that last crime (and of course he’d do it in the most business-friendly MBA-speak terms!), ever-hopeful Repub mouthpieces are trying to start a cult of St. Mitt, Beloved Centrist Moderate. Even for such experienced liars, that’s quite a lift!
Republican cranks feel that they were treated unfairly in 2012 for the simple fact that they nominated a bizarre plutocrat and then Obama ran on class war against plutocrats against him, which they feel shouldn't be allowed
— your himbo boyfriend (@swolecialism) July 28, 2022
like every other defeat could in some way be handwaved (Clintonites being more moderate, the Iraq War, the recession, etc) but this was an election fought squarely on the differing economic platforms of the two parties and the Right got hammered
— Catboy Ernst Kantorowicz (@OldDreyfusard) July 28, 2022
This is "Robert Bork is what broke SCOTUS confirmation" for the under-50 set. https://t.co/D6tcTlVSt9
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) July 27, 2022
your average Republican would piss himself until he passed out if he had to endure even one day of the kind of media coverage Al Gore got in 2000, or Hillary Clinton in 2016. pic.twitter.com/HZHOSQ5Lv1
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) July 27, 2022
they grudgingly picked the outwardly sane guy and when that didn't work they vindictively went with their heart's desire: the biggest asshole in the entire country
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) July 28, 2022
It's just more "look what you made me do!" abuser shit to rationalize why libs forced them to pick Trump
— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw) July 28, 2022
Also 99% of the people who cry about how Romney was treated…also hate Romney. https://t.co/YA7ABRfoEa
— Jean-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) July 27, 2022
Nobody has ever hated Mitt Romney more than his own party, first, for not beating the black guy despite outperforming the fundamentals, and second, for not excusing a Republican president's betrayal of his country on two occasions. https://t.co/r7VtwuNuDi
— Fred has always been at war with Oceania (@LesserFrederick) July 28, 2022
Also just as a FWIW, when I covered the conservative/GOP Value Voters Summit the month before the 2012 no one except Paul Ryan would say his name on stage, and two people I interviewed said they were praying God would "take him" so Ryan could be POTUS.
— Schrödinger's Sneetch Belly (@RTodKelly) July 27, 2022
the funniest thing about the veneration of the martyred saint mittens is that romney himself isn't afraid of throwing sharp elbows, he's just comically bad at blocking and dodging them, which is why he always ends up looking like soda pop joe in mike tyson's punch out.
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) July 27, 2022
Never forget…
We all know Rick Scott wants to end Social Security; Lindsey Graham wants to raise Full Retirement Age from 67 to 70; Romney and Rubio want to cut benefits. None of them are willing to raise the payroll tax cap on wealthy to save program pic.twitter.com/2soSfz5oCC
— Azaliya Allen (@AllenAzaliya) July 28, 2022
Yutsano
I care about Reek why? Willard can’t even reign in his lying niece who forswore her birthright for power.
EDIT: yeah I’m first but I feel like I’m the only one awake.
SFAW
If any RWMF/Rethug had to endure one-tenth of the attacks that Obama or Hillary or Al Gore or pick-any-Dem-at-random, they’d run screaming to their mommies and then quit politics. And, unfortunately for said RWMFs, most (if not all) of the pushback on them is fact-based, whereas attacks on Dems are almost entirely false.
As the saying goes “The Republicans say they will stop lying about me, if I stop telling the truth about them.”
ETA: Thank FSM that I type s l o w l y, so that Yutsano could beat me out for the dreaded frist comment.
ETA2: And I wish someone had beaten me out for the awful #2 comment. Damn.
Kent
Senator for life from Utah with a half billion dollar personal fortune is not a bad gig. Why are we feeling sorry for Romney?
SFAW
@Kent:
Because he’s a mediocre white guy?
Geoduck
Romney displaying his ace campaigning instincts. (When this picture emerged, even people on Free Republic were saying how bad it looked…)
Citizen Alan
I want to meet Mitt Romney in person some day so I can tell him to his face that I think George Romney would be humiliated by the kind of man his son grew up to be.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
Nay, nay, not so, but far otherwise.
JaySinWA
I’ll put forth my generic advice to Mitt “If you want sympathy, it’s in the dictionary, between shit and syphilis.”
OTOH when the electorate is crazy enough to elect Trump, having Mitt as a least worst alternative instead of the full throated Trumpinistas is better than Cotton, DeSantis or Rubio
ETA and fuck heighten the differences people. We have a republic to save.
And no, never Mitt for me. But if an R wins better him than pretty much anyone else on the R team.
piratedan
in short: fuck that guy.
in general: fuck those guys
Joey Maloney
@Yutsano: In my timezone I could snag first on pretty much every late-night thread, but there’s no challenge to it.
eddie blake
romney lied more than any candidate in history before j.f.k.f.c.
his non-stop gish-gallop baffled obama in the debate he lost. he just couldn’t believe all the lies romney was vomiting out and it really threw him off his game.
Yutsano
@Joey Maloney: There’s always the “because I can” motive. But yeah after a while it gets less entertaining.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
If only he was just a mediocre white guy.
But he’s not, he’s a bog standard republican. Sure he’s seemingly not bat shit crazy, but he’s still be a mediocre, somewhat wealthy, bog standard white guy republican rather than a drooling bog standard super rich republican white asshole. It’s a damn slim marginal difference.
karen marie
@Kent: The people whining that Romney was mistreated don’t care if you feel sorry for him, they tell this story so you understand they’re justified in being open and proud assholes. It’s not their fault it’s your fault. You made them do it.
NotMax
This movie sucked the first time. And now they’re prepping a sequel?
HumboldtBlue
@Yutsano:
Nothing is more revealing than being covered by a thread.
Joe Falco
I originally had a long post about the mostly useless Romney except for a few rare moments, but I got tired midway through and just want to join the efgoldman choir of wishing f-bombs on all these sorry wastes of space.
hueyplong
Until the two committee members came along, Romney was the acknowledged #1 traitor to the party.
If this absurd spin is what reunites them, it will prove that they’ll buy literally any line of bullshit no matter what the previous talking point may have been.
HumboldtBlue
Mondo Duplantis brings a song
sukabi
@Geoduck: good lord….nothing like Dr. Strange, the proctologist….
between the giant Fudge sign and the blue latex gloves and Romney’s creepy AF smile….that’s one unfortunate photo…
Anne Laurie
@sukabi: IIRC, Romney’s unfortunate Fudge! photo was taken in Michigan (upscale tourist/conference spot Mackinac Island).
Tourists in Michigan are referred to by the natives as fudgies (because that’s stereotypically the first, sometimes only, thing they spend money on).
It is so very *not* a compliment.
Baud
Man, I was happy when Romney lost. Didn’t get the same thrill with Biden because it was so drawn out.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Mittens barely won the nomination.
They. Didnt. Want. Him.
It was one wacko Non-Romney after another who became frontrunner for a brief moment until they self destructed in the light of day. They grudgingly settled on Mittens after Bachman, Perry, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Newt, Ron Paul, and Senator Man on Dog all crapped the bed.
This is the gentry gop saying the Dems made us drink racism. The fact is they started drinking it in 1964, which why after 100 years, they stopped marketing themselves as the Party of Lincoln.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Baud
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Yep. The party of personal responsibility is on a hunt to cast blame for their moral failings someplace else.
Cameron
@Citizen Alan: True. George Romney was a Republican I could actually see myself voting for.
Ten Bears
Willard Milquetoast Romney!? LOL. I’m pretty sure the repubescents were throwing the election to Obama as a part of their ongoing effort to distance themselves from the
BushCheney Administration …Another Scott
@Cameron: Ike had his moments, also too.
1955 Penn State Commencement speech:
“Liberal” was not an epithet back then.
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
This. Dems can’t be bothered to hate Mitt because (a) there are so many way more hateful GOP leaders and influencers, and (b) Mitt’s just plain spineless and ridiculous. On our side, who the fuck even cares about Mitt?
But the GOP base hates him. Always have, always will.
gene108
I almost feel sorry for Mitt.
He spent the 00’s positioning himself to be the ultimate centrist candidate. A Republican governor of a Democratic controlled state. He signed into law the first ever serious attempt at universal healthcare, while governor. He should’ve been able to take credit for “Romney Care”, which would’ve outflanked Democrats on the issue.
Then Republicans decided after losing to Obama to hand the party over to radically unhinged right-wing lunatics, which made all the centrist credibility Mitt worked so hard to cultivate useless.
lowtechcyclist
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: That’s from 2012, I assume? I don’t hear much of that anymore, just like you never anymore hear evangelicals going on about how the Pope is the Antichrist. They long since concluded that having them as allies in the culture wars was more important than actual differences in Christian beliefs.
Which of course tells you, if it wasn’t already obvious, that the real belief system of white evangelicals is right-wing nutjobbism.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
“Rein in.” You weren’t that awake.
sdhays
This is a dead thread, but I really can’t let it go by that if conservatives want to claim that the 2012 loss is what “broke” them so that they went full-on open racist, the “treatment” of Mitt Rmoney isn’t what did it.
The country re-elected a black man as President. That’s it. That’s what “broke” them. They could allow for 2008 since W and Republicans had totally shit the bed. It was a “really bad cycle” and “unfortunate” things happened. In 2012, Obama and Democrats were 4 years in on fixing things and Republicans had had a banner year in 2010. They thought they had put the “unpleasantness” of the W years behind them and fundamentally racist voters would see sense.
Yet the Obama Coalition held.
So they shit their pants and started eating it and smearing it over everything they could see.
The end.
twbrandt (formerly tom)
@Cameron: When George Romney was the head of the American Motors Corporation back in the 1950s, he reduced his and other execs salaries by 35% when the company was struggling. Even when the company was doing well, he once gave back some of his salary because he thought it was “excessive”. Can you imagine Mitt (or any other Republican) doing that?
Suzanne
Romney sucks now, he sucked then, and so he lost a fair contest. The media had very little to do with it.
It’s baffling to me that, with the hindsight we have now…. having watched the GOP nominate (and the American people elect) a man who is absolutely the trashiest, lowest-class, unbridled-racist-sexist-id person they could find…. now they want to retcon our memories and pretend they always loved this posh toff like Romney?! STFU.
They barely tolerated him then (because they hoped he could scrape together a win) and they hate him now.
The era of Trump should prove to us all that the presidency is a symbol of social dominance for a lot of people. Who gets to occupy it has to embody the national “mood” and represent whichever social cohort is ascendant. The rich polite country-club Republican types who were okay with Romney will have to console themselves with just being wealthy and powerful, they don’t get to be popular, too.
Mowgli
@sdhays: it’s fascinating that Obama may have been the only Dem that could win in 2012 due to the amazing campaign team, his personal magnetism, his competence and accomplishments (I could go on and on), but it was electing his twice that revealed the GOP for what it was. And it wasn’t just his blackness, IMHO, but he had so many of Clinton’s qualities without the downsides. He was literally the dream Dem pol, and I think they saw the world that was coming if any more like him managed to get elected. Their doom was nigh and they knew it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Mitt Romney likely would have a better chance of being elected president than say De Santis or Trump, since Mittens doesn’t really offend huge groups of people.
And one should remember the Mormons see Romney is the second coming of one of their prophets and the whole “White Horse” thing. That movie they of Romney in the 2012 election it was really clear Romney didn’t want to be president but was doing it because so many of his friends were pushing him too run.
Matt McIrvin
I guess they moved on from claiming Robert Bork was somehow mugged by feral leftists?
Mitt Romney got elected Massachusetts governor as a cultural moderate and proceeded to spend a lot of energy trying to find SOME way to keep marriage equality from happening on his watch so it wouldn’t damage his attempts to be President. He got on my shit list from that moment. Being better than 98% of Republicans is not a high bar.
Emmyelle
I watched Mitt’s documentary several years ago and found it fascinating. The first half focuses on the 2008 primary where he was literally the only sane, statesmanlike person on the stage. One almost feels the tragedy, for Mitt and for the country, that it was decided that it was John McCain’s turn. mittens would not have plucked the Wasilla Whackjob out of Juneau. He would have lost to Obama (yay!), but the dog whistle would not have become a bullhorn. Anyway, the first half ends with Mittens gracefully accepting his defeat and exiting quietly.
We then jump to the 2012 general, and all the mean things Obama said about him. There is even a touching scene where Mittens and his brood of strapping funny named progeny anticipate that Obama will say something about the garage elevator, and then can say “It’s for my mom’s MS”, and of course, Obama never says anything but that is somehow glossed over.
But what is also glossed over is the 2012 GOP primary where Mittens won by being the only person to come in consistently second , while the GOP fragile men and MSM tongue-bathed every single flavor of the month for approximately two weeks before moving on. Yes, Mittens was behind Herman Cain at one point. And Mittens strategy was to scream right wing ranting points on the stump to try to prove his worthiness to these cretins. Yes, this part is glossed over in the documentary, so that anyone not paying attention, or pretending, can connect the sane rational guy of 2008 to the poor victim of the mean black guy’s colonial rage.
Mowgli
@Emmyelle: Great summary! It appears to be lost to history that 2012 was the GOP electorate searching for their Trump and finding each candidate unworthy, until they essentially ran out of time and alternatives, and the spotlight happened to be on Mitt as the mediocre white male of the moment.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mowgli:
Excellent alliterative observation.
Cacti
It’s sort of like the zombie myth that Robert Bork was some beloved legal scholar, rather than a fringe crank and the only member of the Nixon DOJ immoral enough to obey his order to fire the special prosecutor.
brantl
@Yutsano: That’s rein, like the reins of a horse, not a sovereign’s reign.
brantl
@Cameron: Bottom line, George Romney wasn’t an asshole. As every GOP presidential nominee, post-Eisenhower, has been.
ArchTeryx
Pendant: That’s ‘Glass Joe’ the first opponent you face in Punch Out!! and sure enough, he can’t block worth crap, so only the greenest newbies can’t KO him first round.
They mixed him up with Soda Popinski, a much harder opponent; you have to learn his patterns before you can properly KO him. (Funnier: His original arcade incarnation was Vodka Drunkenski, but that was deemed too offensive to Russians).
OT: Mitt Romney as Glass Joe is perfect. That’s exactly what he is, and Obama beat him like a rented drum.
Cacti
@ArchTeryx: Actually, Vodka Drunkenski didn’t appear until Super Punch-Out!! lol
The original Punch-Out!! lineup was Glass Joe, Piston Hurricane, Bald Bull, Kid Quick, Pizza Pasta, and Mr. Sandman. ;-)
Another Scott
@Emmyelle: Did the documentary talk about Seamus??
That was from 1983.
IMO, it doesn’t matter if the dog “loved fresh air”. My dog loves finding and eating old banana peels on walks. Driving 12 hours and 650 miles with your dog on top of your car is nutso.
Cheers,
Scott.
Emmyelle
@Another Scott: I don’t remember for sure but I don’t think so, as that whole incident puts Romney in a less than positive light. Obama owned him on that one. Or, more accurately, Romney owned himself on that one.
Mai Naem mobile
I don’t think the GOP will ever get over the fact that a black guy beat them in 2 elections but especially 2012. ’08 would have been won even by post COVID scandal plagued Andrew Cuomo because Dubbya was leaving such a shitshow. 2012, though, they thought they had in the bag. Remember the sad stories from the Mittens’ election party with the volunteers and staff shocked and crying…wahhh cry some more. Mittens was so freaking disrespectful to Obama. McCain the guy who wasn’t supposed to be the classy guy was classier than Mittens.
Mai Naem mobile
@Emmyelle: Rmoney was a shit candidate. Everything from the dressage horse for the wife to the bullying prep school frat boy to the 40 percent moochers comment. Oh, and how could I forget the Bain and Co PE buyouts of companies laying off people and leaving unfunded pensions. Telling the yard guy ‘dontcha know I am running for President!’ Just a regular Mr Potter.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
“Being better than 98% of Republicans is not a high bar.”
That bar is so low that it only clears the subway tracks by, let’s see, that’s 0-75ft-reality = the depth of the grand canyon subtracted from the distance between the earth and the sun, which means that bar is below the other side of the earth. IOW quite a low bar.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
A damn good summary.
Another Scott
@Mai Naem mobile: +1
The way he spit “ENTITLED!” at that fundraiser/dinner party showed his true reincarnated Leona Helmsley self, I think.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kropacetic
Sorry, no. Mitt pioneered the “lie about literally everything” strategy Trump rode to the White House. Fuck him.
Tazj
As many here have already said, this is another instance of Republicans refusing to take responsibility for their failures. We tried with Romney but he was treated badly by the press and lost so we had to run a monster.
It’s all just garbage excuses for Trump’s election. Why didn’t members of the GOP drop out in 2016 so the vote wouldn’t be split in the primary?
Romney is better than Trump but he isn’t great. He vowed to repeal Obamacare and make poorer people pay their fair share of taxes. Plenty of other actually good politicians and good people have lost presidential elections. Republicans aren’t owed the presidency.
These Republicans talking about Romney now are the same ones who kept saying the Democrats had Trump derangement syndrome. Of course Trump was vulgar but his work as president wasn’t that bad. Now that it turns out he was that bad they want to bring up Romney and blame everyone else.
emmyelle
@Mai Naem mobile: Yep, absolutely.
The other day I was cleaning out old emails and I found one that I wrote to a friend in the summer of 2016, when HRC was leading in the polls by double digits, where I said “the thing that scares me, though, is that Romney was such a shitty candidate that only establishment Repubs turned out to vote for him. I’m afraid that Trump will inspire turnout of all the bitter losers who could not be bothered to get off their fat white asses and vote for Romney”
yeah.
Miss Bee
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
This was back in 2011–and as an Iowan, I will add that just about anything that happens in Des Moines is a secret to most of the world.
SFAW
@emmyelle: It’s unfortunate you didn’t say that here in 2016. Because the 2016 jackaltariat was ever-so-accepting of comments that were not some version of “no way in hell is Hillary going to lose the election.”
ETA: /s in case it wasn’t obvious
emmyelle
@SFAW: Yeah, I was mostly on the “No way in hell…” train. But my 2AM cold sweat moments were reflected in that email.
Paul in KY
@Anne Laurie: I have been to Mackinac Island. Ate a wonderful buffet lunch at the Grand Hotel. Then bought some fudge…and got drunk in a few bars. Also biked around entire island.
It does sorta smell of horse crap.
Paul in KY
@brantl: Not sure that Pres Ford was an asshole.