My WAG is that like most GOP moderates, he’ll talk a way better game than he votes. When it comes to voting, he’ll be a McCain-level sort, breaking from the party only very occasionally. Not even Murkowski level, let alone Collins level (which is still pretty wimpy), in terms of frequency of voting against the party majority.
He’ll be your typical Republican. But he has a more charitable nature than most, I don’t think he’ll be willing to destroy Obamneycare without an adequate replacement. He also push for more diplomacy rather than saber-rattling.
I think at this point he’s about the best we can hope for. I suspect he would have voted for the final GOP tax bill. He’ll be on the Sunday talk shows speaking out about how Trump needs to act more presidential, but I doubt he’ll do much of anything about it (not even sure he could if he wanted to).
As a Utah resident, I expect he would be roughly like John McCain too.
I can’t see much independence from him. Even before The Dawn of Trump, when Mitt was seeking the position of Candidate for President, he mouthed the party lines about healthcare, even saying that poor people could go to Emergency Rooms if they had to. Romney had overseen the implementation of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts, so he knew how bogus an argument that was – that sending poor people to emergency rooms to get needed care is an abysmal solution, neither useful to the poor (who really need preventive care, not emergency treatment as a last resort) nor to the rest of us, who end up paying more on their behalf for this option. So the guy will go against what he knows in order to kowtow to the party line.
He opposed Trump when he looked like an absurdly long shot, but came crawling back to him for a post when Trump took the top spot among the candidates. I don’t look to him to rock the boat or challenge PartyThink.
I think Romney’s looking to fill the ‘adult in the room’ role that John McCain tried to stake out but health concerns have prevented. Romney will be a ‘serious’ voice in the discussion making the argument that Trump should calm the hell down. But in general he’ll be one more reliable republican vote. Maybe he won’t be as reliable as Tim Scott in South Carolina, but he’ll be another Collins or Murkowski. Instead of 99%+ he’ll fall at 97%.
Redirecting the discussion a bit -
The current narrative is that the job is his if he wants it, which he seems to be signalling that he does.
Question for the Utah residents on the board - do you see him being successful in an election? Would he be vulnerable to a competitor from the Right - the Tea Party/Trump/Hulk-Smash wing of the party?
Do you see him as a one-term (at most two-term) placeholder? After all, he is 70 years old currently.
Could he be positioning himself to make another run at the Whitehouse, going against Trump as the more moderate Republican of old?
So many questions!
I think it’s a Presidential positioning move. As such, I see him as being more anti-Trump than he might otherwise be. He wants to be seen as the anti-Trump, adult candidate.
The dude turns 71 this year. He’ll be 73 if he runs in 2020, 77 in 2024. I believe his expiry date has passed.
I was thinking about that, but damn if the guy doesn’t look at least 10 years younger than he is! Also, he’s about a year younger than Trump.
It won’t make any difference. The con here is Trump isn’t driving GOP policy. He’s a rubber stamp who doesn’t care about what bills he signs. There’s nothing this GOP congress hasn’t passed that wouldn’t have also been passed under President Rubio or McCain for that matter. If Trump crashes and burns (which is not a forgone conclusion), the GOP will try to cover their ass but the Trump administration is a GOP administration.
That’s clean Mormon living for you.
Utah used to have a rather unique caucus-convention system that made this sort of thing possible (see former Senator Bob Bennett). Moderates pushed to weaken the system and now it seems, to me at least, very implausible that Romney would lose a state-wide election in Utah.
Orrin Hatch originally promised to limit the number of terms he’d serve. He did not. Nowadays, I have no real expectation that Romney or anyone else would ride of into the sunset gracefully after just a term or two. Assuming his health holds, I could easily see Senator Romney serving for three terms.
I doubt it, but there are some murmurings about that.
I think Hatch left after that editorial, and Hatch saw that even if he could win, it wouldnt be a easy fight, and he is too old and tired for a tough fight.
I think even Romney will not have a shoe-in, he will have to raise money (easy for him) and fight. He’ll almost certainly win, sure, but…
Romney is, imho a “Rockefeller Republican” who thinks that whats good for Big Business and the Rich is good for America. This can be argued of course but at least it’s no tea-party or Evangelican nonsense.
So, Romney to me is a decent & mostly honest man, whose politics I dont often agree with, but yeah, it could be much worse. If he had won for President, it would be a recap of Bush Sr. Hardly ideal but not a shitstorm.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Republicans to oppose generic Republican stuff like the recent tax bill just because Trump also supports it. However it is reasonable to expect them to take a tough stand on the rule of law and the Mueller investigation and I think that Romney will do that.
If Mueller discovers criminal wrongdoing on the part of Trump and if the Democrats retake the House, I think impeachment will be a serious possibility in 2019 and I can’t think of anyone better placed than Romney to persuade enough Republican senators that getting rid of Trump is in their long-term interest.
And then Pence could pick Romney as VP, and he at least gets “that close” to the highest office in the land!
That’s what I think is afoot. Romney doesn’t envision himself being like Hatch–in the Senate into his 80s–he envisions himself as either President or VP.
Pence would see Romney as a Diversity pick, given the way evangelicals look at Mormons. Romney as a Senator is more likely to be Pence’s choice for VP, than Romney as private citizen (going by past tradition, limited in examples as it may be).
So I think he’s made the assessment that Trump won’t finish out his first term, that Pence may well choose him…and then that something could happen to Pence. (I’m thinking more in terms of complications of Pence’s actions during 2016 then in terms of health issues for Pence.)
Et voila: President Romney.
Also, per the thread title: My expectation for Mitt is that for all fundraisers going forward, he will hire someone to check the backs of the banquet tables for stray cell phones set to ‘record video.’
For better or worse, I don’t think that matters in politics now. This could mean Hillary, The Never Ending Story. :eek:
What does the OP expect- that we conservative Republicans who regard Trump as an unqualified asshole must become liberal Democrats?
I threw my vote away on Evan McMullin rather than vote for Trump. But if I were a Senator, I wouldn’t automatically vote against every bill favored by the Trump White House, and it would be silly for anyone to expect me to.
I really doubt Mitt (or really anyone aside from you) considers this a reasonable assessment, or even remotely probable.