# The treatment of Romney gave us Trump **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 20, 2017, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197 "2017-08-20T17:40:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2017, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/61 "2017-08-24T03:31:28Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > It is amazing how the Framers in 1787 could not only predict that blacks could vote in 2017, but also predicted that they would consolidate in precisely the manner to make their votes “count less” under the system they designed. > > Seriously, though, this new talking point of the EC being racist is absurd. The founders designed this exact system when no state even allowed blacks to vote. To say that they set up a system so that black votes would count less is ridiculous. They believed black votes would not count _at all_. Why design a deviously evil system to supposedly underhandedly suppress black votes when they openly disallowed all black votes? So your argument is that a system that was designed to be racist isn’t racist. That’s a pretty weak argument. According to your theory, in what year did blacks get equal voting rights with whites? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/62 "2017-08-25T03:36:27Z")
To be fair for Romney, some of the things he got slammed for were actually reasonable in context. When he said “I like firing people”, what he actually meant was that he liked having the option of firing people. And when he said “Corporations are people, my friend”, he was referring to all of the human individuals who make up a corporation. But the fact is, nobody who was in the least politically competent would ever express either of those thoughts in that way, because anyone competent would know that they’d get horribly misinterpreted, both deliberately and accidentally, and so would know to phrase them in ways not so easily misinterpreted. So Romney was still demonstrating his incompetence by saying those quotes. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/63 "2017-08-25T05:01:13Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > To be fair for Romney, some of the things he got slammed for were actually reasonable in context. When he said “I like firing people”, what he actually meant was that he liked having the option of firing people. And when he said “Corporations are people, my friend”, he was referring to all of the human individuals who make up a corporation. I think both of those interpretations are extremely charitable. Buying companies and then slashing the workforce was one of his key moneymaking strategies, so it was more than an option, it was a habit. And I interpreted “corporations are people” as reflecting Supreme Court decisions allowing companies to have rights of religious expression and political contributions that IMO were intended only for individuals. On the other hand, he got a lot of flak for saying Russia was our primary enemy, and that doesn’t seem so funny now. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/64 "2017-08-25T05:11:34Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So your argument is that a system that was designed to be racist isn’t racist. That’s a pretty weak argument. > > According to your theory, in what year did blacks get equal voting rights with whites? The part of the system designed to be racist had nothing to do with the EC. The fact that blacks were not voting at all when the EC was designed means that no attention was paid to how the EC would affect racial voting strength. Okay. Let’s do it this way. Baseball outlawed the spitball in 1920. There were zero blacks playing baseball at the time. The spitball rule has been in effect ever since. Let’s suppose that in 2017, we analyze the numbers and determine that if the spitball were allowed, then black pitchers would be more successful. Is there any way at all to claim that the decision to outlaw the spitball in 1920 was motivated by racism? ---
**Author:** ![Edible\_Hat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@Edible\_Hat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edible_Hat)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/65 "2017-08-25T05:26:03Z")
A voting system that systematically gives more power to white voters than to black voters is, effectively, racist. Being pedantic about the word “designed” is a pointless distraction. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/66 "2017-08-25T05:28:58Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > The part of the system designed to be racist had nothing to do with the EC. The fact that blacks were not voting at all when the EC was designed means that no attention was paid to how the EC would affect racial voting strength. > > Okay. Let’s do it this way. Baseball outlawed the spitball in 1920. There were zero blacks playing baseball at the time. The spitball rule has been in effect ever since. > > Let’s suppose that in 2017, we analyze the numbers and determine that if the spitball were allowed, then black pitchers would be more successful. > > Is there any way at all to claim that the decision to outlaw the spitball in 1920 was motivated by racism? Let me repeat the question: > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > According to your theory, in what year did blacks get equal voting rights with whites? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/67 "2017-08-25T08:26:07Z")
**“The treatment of Romney gave us Trump”** > [@drewder](#): > > So I doubt much of anyone would disagree that Romney would be preferable as president over Trump. Yet the treatment of Romney in 2012 showed to many that no Republican would get a fair chance from the media. > > Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk I see that Dopers have approached this debate in several ways. But the main point has been overlooked — The OP has it backwards: _ **The treatment of Obama gave us Trump** _ Whatever faulty impressions of Romney OP thinks were advanced by media, add fifty, multiply by 100 and then add another 1000 deliberate untruths to see how the “media” _watched by Republicans_ treated President Obama. In this era of Fake News, where current Republican leaders make little effort to make their lies even plausible, where the present President babbled for years about Obama’s birth certificate, it is hard to imagine what perverse style of cognition led OP to the conclusion in thread title. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/68 "2017-08-25T08:48:09Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > And I interpreted “corporations are people” as reflecting Supreme Court decisions allowing companies to have rights of religious expression and political contributions that IMO were intended only for individuals. IIRC he meant that money that redounds to corporations ultimately redounds to people. That wasn’t really relevant to the point the heckler was making, but it’s literally true. (Everybody, including the heckler, agrees that corporations exist to benefit people.) ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197/69 "2017-08-25T11:16:12Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > **“The treatment of Romney gave us Trump”** > > I see that Dopers have approached this debate in several ways. But the main point has been overlooked — The OP has it backwards: > _ **The treatment of Obama gave us Trump** _ > Whatever faulty impressions of Romney OP thinks were advanced by media, add fifty, multiply by 100 and then add another 1000 deliberate untruths to see how the “media” _watched by Republicans_ treated President Obama. > > In this era of Fake News, where current Republican leaders make little effort to make their lies even plausible, where the present President babbled for years about Obama’s birth certificate, it is hard to imagine what perverse style of cognition led OP to the conclusion in thread title. This is closer to the truth than the OP. I think that the election of Trump has to be seen as a reaction to the election of Obama. It’s not a coincidence that Trump is pretty much the anti-Obama. I don’t think everyone who voted for Trump necessarily had Obama in mind. Maybe it was more like a vote against changing demography and changing dynamics of political power in this country, a phenomenon that the campaigns of Obama _and_ Hillary Clinton represented. We had 8 years of an entirely different kind of president, and we had 8 years in which the country continued to be ruled, or in the eyes of conservatives ‘misruled’ by progressives. They saw 2016 as a call to arms and Donald Trump was their William Wallace. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-treatment-of-romney-gave-us-trump/794197.md?page=3)