Romney wins in 2012...As a Democrat

Yes you heard me right! Your challenge is to come up with a plausible non-ASB scenario with a POD no earlier than 1990 on how Mitt Romney could win the election of 2012, as a Democrat. I already did a Republican Obama TL so now it's time to do one with a Democratic Romney.
 
I can't do it in 1990. I can do it in the 1950s. George Romney asked his family whether he should run for Governor of Michigan as a Democrat or a Republican. Mind you, this was an area when each was a party of factions, Conservative, Liberal and Moderate, united behind an idea or a set of ideas. The Democrats were blue collar, the Republicans were white collar, the Democrats were pro-labor, the Republicans were pro-business, and so on. George Romney chose to run as a Republican. Had he chose to run as a Democrat, then that makes his family an elite political Democratic family alongside the Kennedy's, Long's, Byrd's, etc. And then his son would be a Democrat and would evolve to fit that mold (if the evolution of the times doesn't make him follow the Reagan revolution into the Republican party given economic issues).

Short of that, no clue. His father is a Republican, and a well known one with a run at the nomination in 1968, and his family is a Republican family and he is a businessman. I don't think he could break from that, nor do I believe he would have wanted to.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Assuming he still lived in Massachusetts, ran as a democrat, and had political views within the mainstream of the democratic party and not those he had OTL, his best shot at entering politics would be not the senate (Kerry and Kennedy are anything but vulnerable in a primary) but the governor's mansion - say after Bill Weld, in 1998, because Weld simply isn't losing. Suppose he served two or three terms as governor and took a reformer role similar to Deval Patrick's OTL (because if you tie him to the Massachusetts legislature corruption there's no way in hell he can win) along with a health care reform, and probably Kerry failing to win the nomination, and he might have a chance.

I think Bain would be far more of an Achilles heel in a Democratic primary than a Republican one, however, so even with his money, heritage (and I think George Romney's moderate enough for his name not to hurt him among democrats) and presumably more liberal political views it'd be quite difficult.
 
This is actually a chain of events I considered using in Jesus Walks:

I can't do it in the 90's, but I can do it in the 80's. Over the course of the 1980's, the Republican party comes to embrace full-throated objectivism, alienating the religious right. Jimmy Carter, working as an elder statesman and devout Baptist, works behind the scenes through the 90's to make the Democrats the party of Christianity (a much more natural fit than the Repubs if you know anything at all about Jesus). Mitt Romney, more passionate about his faith ITTL, runs for governor of Massachusetts as a moderate Democrat. Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech is butterflied away, and Romney is selected in 2008 as a compromise candidate between Rodham Clinton and, say, Gore. He wins the election.

4 years early, but I think that meets your criteria.
 
Hmmm, how about this.

Kerrey doesn't win the Democratic nomination, rather Howard Dean is able to avoid having his campaign implode. Dean, after winning Iowa, captures NH and cruises to victory in the primary. However, he is quickly portrayed as a extreme liberal by Karl Rove and the right, and he sees his poll numbers dip badly. In desperation he decides to try and select a conservative democrat to be his running mate. He considers Joe Lieberman, Wesley Clark, and John Edwards before taking a huge gamble: rather than select a conservative democrat he would select a liberal republican (in OTL John McCain considered this strategy when he entertained selecting Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2008).

Dean is unable to find a republican who qualifies from the south, but one governor from New England seems to fit the bill. His advisors feel that this will alienate democrats and will not balance the ticket since both candidates are from New England. But the pick does boost his poll numbers (although Dean-Romney still looses to Bush-Cheney). However, Mitt Romney's acceptance of the VP spot on the Dean ticket ends his political career as a Republican. In 2006 he is defeated in the Republican Primary in Massachusetts despite having a 60% approval rating in the State. He runs (and wins) reelection as an independent (note, I am not sure if MA allows this, but most states do. See Florida). After serving his second term Romney announces he is switching parties to Democrat. His critics call it pure political opportunism but he still remains popular in Massachusetts, particularly since he starts to moderate some of his positions. In 2008 John McCain-Joe Lieberman defeat the ticket of Hillary Clinton- John Edwards when Edwards is revealed to have had an affair with a campaign aid, getting her pregnant in the process. However, McCain's term in office suffers from the blowback over the housing bubble crisis, and after a difficult primary against Rick Santorum in 2012 he agrees to drop Lieberman from the ticket and replace him with the conservative governor from Alaska: Sarah Palin. Palin proves to be a disaster and a huge liability to the campaign, as the McCain - Palin ticket starts to appear considerably more conservative than the McCain - Lieberman ticket that barely won in 2008 against an imploding Clinton - Edwards campaign. He ends up losing to the former republican governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who selected Illinois Senator Barak Obama as his running mate.
 
This is actually a chain of events I considered using in Jesus Walks:

I can't do it in the 90's, but I can do it in the 80's. Over the course of the 1980's, the Republican party comes to embrace full-throated objectivism, alienating the religious right. Jimmy Carter, working as an elder statesman and devout Baptist, works behind the scenes through the 90's to make the Democrats the party of Christianity (a much more natural fit than the Repubs if you know anything at all about Jesus). Mitt Romney, more passionate about his faith ITTL, runs for governor of Massachusetts as a moderate Democrat. Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech is butterflied away, and Romney is selected in 2008 as a compromise candidate between Rodham Clinton and, say, Gore. He wins the election.

4 years early, but I think that meets your criteria.

That's interesting, but I don't know the feasibility of it. The Christian Conservatives are part of the fusionism that made Modern American Conservatism (taking different sects and factions and bringing them together under a united Conservative banner). Those in America who carry the cross with the most vigor and zeal generally seem to be those that carrying with them very Conservative, "Traditionalist" beliefs which they use the Bible to support. The reason those people turned on Carter and went full throttle for Reagan to win 1980 is because Carter refused to void the separation of Church and State to impose Christian based actions on the American people through their government.

Making the Democratic party the Christian party would seem, at least from my perspective, to mean making the Democratic party more Conservative rather that the Evangelists more Liberal. In the fusion you could perhaps have the Evangelists adopt some Liberal positions and moderate on others, but I cannot see anything more than that making the Democrats a (perhaps moderate) conservative party and the Republicans an even further right wing party.
You then have the issue of where the hell to put the rest of America that doesn't fit into that. Perhaps you create a new era of big tent parties, where there may be one faction in power but the moderates and political opposites stay with the party because "look at the alternative" and they can elect people on a local level who are of their particular faction rather than the faction they don't like.
 
Roe v Wade is overturned in the early 90s---if I recall there was a case not too far from then where it came very close to being overturned. With Roe overturned both existing parties have their coalitions fragment and realign as this issue leaves the national scene and quickly resolves itself at the individual state levels. What shakes out eventually is a more populist party on one side and an elitist party on the other. What labels they call themselves is honestly a toss up.
 
Roe v Wade is overturned in the early 90s---if I recall there was a case not too far from then where it came very close to being overturned. With Roe overturned both existing parties have their coalitions fragment and realign as this issue leaves the national scene and quickly resolves itself at the individual state levels. What shakes out eventually is a more populist party on one side and an elitist party on the other. What labels they call themselves is honestly a toss up.

If Romney is to be elected as a Democrat, then the Democrats definitely have to become the more elitist party ITTL. Maybe this can result in Obama becoming a Republican?!
 
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