DBWI: Mitt Romney Elected Governor of Massachusetts in 2002

Ten years ago, Shannon O'Brien became the first woman elected Governor of Massachusetts defeating her Republican opponent Willard M. "Mitt" Romney.

Many pundits thought that Romney was the best chance to keep the Massachusetts Governor's mansion in Republican hands in the wake of political and ethical missteps surrounding the administration of Governor Jane Swift. That is until Romney began campaigning.

The endless political ads in which Romney said that he liked to fire people, the photo op of a smiling Romney driving a tractor on a dairy farm in Worcester while waving to onlookers, and journalist Rachel Maddow's expose on Romney's record as the head of Bain Capital (especially the heartbreaking story of the former employees of a factory in Indiana closed down by Bain after profiting nearly $20 million) drove the final nail into Romney's coffin.

Coupled with his loss to Ted Kennedy in the 1994 US Senate race, Romney was a double loser and his political career came to an end.

The highlights of O'Brien's first term were the passage of health insurance reform that included a public option and the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts. O'Brien won reelection in 2006 with 66 percent of the vote.

In 2008, Barack Obama selected Governor O'Brien as his running mate. Obama scored a comfortable victory over John McCain that November and O'Brien became the first female Vice President of the United States.

But suppose Romney was able to get elected Governor in 2002. How successful would his first term in office be? Would he be govern like a New England moderate? And would a Governor Romney have been a serious contender for the White House?
 
(Probably) no Governor Christy Mihos (And due to that Richard Tisei never acedes to the Governorship after Mihos' self-destruction and resignation less than a year into his term), for one; Assuming Romney won reelection I'm not sure he would try for a third term or that a different Republican would win. On the other hand 2010 was a Republican year and Chris Gabrieli was perhaps not the strongest candidate.

We'd still be in the same place with regards to healthcare in Massachusetts; a much weaker public option would be passed if anything instead of it being weakened in 2011. The healthcare industry is just too important in the state and O'Brien's plan pissed off a lot of people in high place, which helped the Republicans. Of course, the optics of running a healthcare CEO against Gabrieli just looked too self-serving so the stronger candidate, Charlie Baker, chose not to run and we got the self-destruction that were the domestic abuse and "Prostitute addiction" claims against Mihos.

I think Romney would indeed have governed as an old school New England Republican, which by all indication he is, and because of that he would be too liberal for national Republican politics. On a related note, without Governor Tisei, who has been an eloquent spokesman for them over the past year he's been in office, are the Log Cabin Republicans or the libertarian movement any different? Certainly Tisei's brand of libertarianism is quite different than Ron Paul's Christian conservative paleolibertarianism...
 
(Probably) no Governor Christy Mihos (And due to that Richard Tisei never acedes to the Governorship after Mihos' self-destruction and resignation less than a year into his term), for one; Assuming Romney won reelection I'm not sure he would try for a third term or that a different Republican would win. On the other hand 2010 was a Republican year and Chris Gabrieli was perhaps not the strongest candidate.

We'd still be in the same place with regards to healthcare in Massachusetts; a much weaker public option would be passed if anything instead of it being weakened in 2011. The healthcare industry is just too important in the state and O'Brien's plan pissed off a lot of people in high place, which helped the Republicans. Of course, the optics of running a healthcare CEO against Gabrieli just looked too self-serving so the stronger candidate, Charlie Baker, chose not to run and we got the self-destruction that were the domestic abuse and "Prostitute addiction" claims against Mihos.

I think Romney would indeed have governed as an old school New England Republican, which by all indication he is, and because of that he would be too liberal for national Republican politics. On a related note, without Governor Tisei, who has been an eloquent spokesman for them over the past year he's been in office, are the Log Cabin Republicans or the libertarian movement any different? Certainly Tisei's brand of libertarianism is quite different than Ron Paul's Christian conservative paleolibertarianism...

Old school Republican? I guess you haven't seen how he operated while at Bain Capital.....or all the other stuff he's been up to since 2002.

Unfortunately, Obama's had a hard time beating back Romney as of these latest polls. Some have said that Romney, if he had won the '02 governor's race, would have done a lot of damage to the state of Mass., and that might have been a plentiful source of ammo for the Democrats. I wonder.....perhaps if that had happened, The Dems might not be in such trouble.....

OOC: TBH Romney was never an old school Republican to begin with. And his record really is that awful if you know where to look.
 
Romney never amounted to much in politics, but he did play a pretty key role in saving Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis. It is quite possible that were he elected in 2002, he would have been reelected in 2006, running for President in 2008, and therefore not involved with Lehman. A couple of people I know who know about the credit default swap market have told me they thought it possible that a Lehman failure could have tanked a few of the big banks who were counterparties to some Lehman CDSs. That could have made a nasty situation far worse -- perhaps a Depression-level worse.
 
Old school Republican? I guess you haven't seen how he operated while at Bain Capital.....or all the other stuff he's been up to since 2002.

Unfortunately, Obama's had a hard time beating back Romney as of these latest polls. Some have said that Romney, if he had won the '02 governor's race, would have done a lot of damage to the state of Mass., and that might have been a plentiful source of ammo for the Democrats. I wonder.....perhaps if that had happened, The Dems might not be in such trouble.....

OOC: TBH Romney was never an old school Republican to begin with. And his record really is that awful if you know where to look.

OOC: Didn't they say his political career came to an end?
 
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