# What will Romney winning the election mean? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 4, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700 "2012-10-04T15:29:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/41 "2012-10-05T12:29:55Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > I think that’s exactly how Obama is seen by foreign leaders Cite? > [@Sam Stone](#): > > And in some of those states, public opinion is pro-choice, as is the country overall. [False](http://www.gallup.com/poll/154838/Pro-Choice-Americans-Record-Low.aspx). ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/42 "2012-10-05T13:20:22Z")
Certainly nothing “weak and feckless” about GeeDubya, by golly! There’s somewhere north of a hundred thousand Iraqis who can testify to that, or would, if they weren’t hindered by being dead. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/43 "2012-10-05T13:34:26Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I suspect Romney would be similar to Reagan in how he’d choose a justice. He won’t pick a conservative firebrand . . . But, that’s what Reagan **did.** Remember Bork? You mentioned him in your post. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/44 "2012-10-05T13:40:37Z")
My vote has never been in question, but my fear of a Romney administration got worse when he [made his stand against Lyme disease in Virginia](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=667085). Let’s be clear what this is: Romney is throwing the weight of his campaign and promising to throw the weight of the federal government behind complete woo at the behest of a single wealthy donor. (Lyme disease exists, of course, and it does exist in Virginia, but “chronic Lyme disease” and the ridiculous years of IV antibiotics that the donor in question advocates for treating it–and which Romney’s promise about protecting doctors from lawsuits refers to–are utter bullshit.) That scares me in particular because I believe that in the next few years medical costs are going to come to the point that we’re going to have to prioritize what we spend our health care dollars on. And those priorities need to be rooted in science. I know Romney won’t be on the committees that do that sort of thing, but he’ll appoint the people who are, or at least the ones who appoint those people. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/45 "2012-10-05T22:01:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Don’t forget, Romney was governor of a very liberal state, and one of the ways he got anything done was to compromise. Obama’s attitude to Republicans bears a large part of the blame for their obstructionism. Telling them, “I won, you lost, get in the back of the car and shut up and let me do what I want” was guaranteed to prevent the kind of dealing that’s required to pass anything in a bipartisan legislature. Of course, that re-writing of history really does nothing to explain what might happen if Romney were elected. Obama’s “I won” comment was not uttered on January 20, 2009. It was uttered months later after he had listened to multiple senior Republicans publicly announce that they would do everything in their power to stonewall every proposal he made to ensure that he would not be re-elected, and after his second or third attempt to actually meet with the Republicans on specific issues, only to have them tell him to his face that they were only there to explain to him why he could not hope to pass any legislation that was not written to their specifications. Obama was willing to compromise on pretty much everything, (as any reasonable review of the health care act will demonstrate), to the point that he has earned the distrust of the Democratic Left for being a lackey for the corporations. Any claim that Obama was not willing to compromise pretty much substitutes baseless Republican talking points for facts. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/46 "2012-10-05T23:44:52Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Reagan and Tip O’Neil […] had an excellent working relationship and honestly liked each other. That made their relationship more productive. Yeah, and the budgets really came together under those two…😛 > [@](#): > > I think Obama genuinely dislikes most Republicans, and treats them that way. From what I understand, he’s not that well liked even among Democrats. That puts him at a distinct disadvantage when trying to persuade others. I don’t know about Obama disliking most Republicans. I know that _many former Republican voters_ dislike many of the GOP crowd that followed Gingrich into Congress in the 1990’s. Gingrich was a nasty unpleasant person who inspired a lot of people to embrace an ethic of hostile partisanship. So I’m not convinced the source of the hostility is Obama. Some people are very hard to get along with. I agree that many Democrat pols resent Obama’s success and see him as a relatively young guy who jumped ahead of his elders. > [@](#): > > You don’t think IRAN has perhaps something to say about this? My personal belief is that the best way to get a war is to elect someone who is seen as weak and feckless, and I think that’s exactly how Obama is seen by foreign leaders - killing Bin Laden notwithstanding. “Feckless”? Compared to Dubya or Mitt? Obama’s mild-mannered, but those guys exude brashness and incompetence. > [@](#): > > I disagree with your characterization, but that’s okay. I understand why you wouldn’t like this, but I think it would be a great thing. The best way to conserve something is to give someone an ownership stake in it. Buffalo were almost extinct until Buffalo farming came along. Private tree farms go to great lengths to replant and conserve, lest they lose the value of their forests. Farmers go to great lengths to maintain the health of their land, even when that means foregoing crop revenue in favor of a rehabilitating year of summer fallow. > > On the other hand, public spaces often get neglected. Open water fishing often leads to overfishing. Private fisheries maintain their stocks. And so it goes. I don’t think we disagree much in these cases. It’s the extrapolation to national policy regarding mineral reserves and public services that I take issue with. A risk is that private sector interests will get a cheap deal on public lands and mineral rights, and not take the cost seriously because they take it for granted. And of course privatized transportation and medicine systems are less efficient for the end consumer because of the additional for-profit cost centers. > [@](#): > > I was no fan of Bush’s economic policies, but you should recognize that he was doing exactly what Obama advocates - tax cuts for the middle class, deficit spending, […] a fed that held interest rates artificially low, yada yada. The difference is that Bush was dealing with a period of general economic expansion and created deficits for no good reason; Obama is trying to mitigate a depression. That said, I still think Obama should have raised marginal tax rates on entering office and done FDR-style stimulus through hiring, not tax cuts and feckless wishes for private spending. > [@](#): > > unrealistic expectations for economic growth used to create pie-in-the-sky budgets, That would be Romney’s “grow the pie” fallacy. No, to the extent you’re right about Obama following this, he’s wrong as the Republicans are. There are limited resources, and the 1% want more growth for themselves than there is available to the whole economy. We have to redistribute wealth at this point, or condemn a nation to bankruptcy and peonage. > [@](#): > > In my experience, the more you get to know most Mormons, the more you like them. I have yet to meet a Mormon who didn’t turn out to be a genuinely nice person. I don’t know much about their faith, but I do know there’s a strong emphasis on living a moral life, taking care of your body, treating your neighbors as family, being self-reliant, keeping your word, caring about the community, etc. And they really mean it, unless many other Christians who seem to go through the motions but don’t act like they’re supposed to. Yeah, one of my best friends is a Mormon. It’s still a young religion, and not immune to hero-worship. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2012, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/47 "2012-10-05T23:49:44Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > You should hope so. Your major trading partners have all made large cuts to their capital gains taxes, making the U.S. less competitive in global markets. Canada’s capital gains rate is about half of what yours is. Less competitive in what sense? The USA is an extraordinarily rich country, and we don’t require foreign investment. We need rather more to claw back some of the wealth unspent by our own multi-billionaires. And pointing to Canadian and British budgets as a model doesn’t work that well anymore. How many budgets has Harper balanced? And the UK is doing quite badly in this depression. Maybe they should have tried stimulus spending over tax cuts and austerity. ---
**Author:** ![Enkel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/df705f/32.png) [@Enkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enkel)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/48 "2012-10-06T13:17:17Z")
Unions, minimum wage and child labor laws will be struck down. Immigration enforcement will be ramped up against low paying wages so that Halliburton’s prisoners can displace them at $0.23/hr (of course, Halliburton will be contracted for such labor at minimum wage and pocket the difference) The tax code will be gutted so that Wall Street and investors pay nothing while the middle and lower class pick up the cost of new military actions throughout the globe to ‘protect’ (force?) US business interests. The military will suddenly find all sorts of new fighting grounds (how else will Xe, CSC, and the like make back their campaign investments?) A National ID will finally be forced through, then the ID will be used (free of charge) by banks, retailers and anyone else who donates to the right campaign, for their loyalty cards, debit cards, etc. That way, the federal government will take on the expense of managing the programs while businesses get a free ride. The Koch brothers will rule our energy policy. Drilling for what ever, where ever will be patriotic. Self-reliant forms of energy (solar, wind, home-made biodiesel, etc) will be taxed into oblivion in order to hand more ‘incentives’ to the Koch brothers for our ‘energy independence’. All forms of social assistance to the sick, poor and elderly will be dumped onto the states who won’t be able to afford it and will dump it onto the Churches who will suddenly become King of their local fiefdoms and the benevolent rulers the lower class population. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/49 "2012-10-06T13:40:54Z")
As someone that certainly won’t be voting for Romney, I don’t see much, if anything, in **Enkel** ’s post that I think is very likely to happen. Perhaps the tax code stuff, depending on what you mean by “gutted” - I actually don’t think the cap on deductions is that terrible an idea (although coupled with huge rate cuts it is). ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2012, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700/50 "2012-10-06T14:10:23Z")
> [@A\_nice\_guy\_with\_an\_opinion](#): > > One simple change…Nobody would be called a racist for simply disagreeing with the president if Romney won. Related changes: we’re unlikely to hear widespread conspiracy theories that the President is a foreigner, a secret Muslim, a former “radical activist” whose church supports racism\*, a pawn of foreign potentates, etc., nor will we likely see many caricatures of Romney as a monkey, a turban-wearing terrorist, or an African native with a bone in his nose, and I’m willing to bet we won’t see a single bumper sticker advising that we not “RE-NIG IN 2016.” - despite the fact that it did until recently, if not still does. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-romney-winning-the-election-mean/636700.md?page=2)