WI: Mitt Romney elected in 2012?

Romney would had took more aggressive politics with ISIS so it is possible that whole orghanisation is either defeated totally or weakened with markable way by end of 2016. Not sure how he would deal with Assad. He would be too for continuign full embargo of Cuba and Iran. Might be that Russia not make very much with Ukraine, speciality not take Crimea when there would be more aggressive president.

Domestically bye bye Obamacare. Good thing is that we might avoid rise of Trump. Romney might even win 2016 election altough probably with small marginal.
 
Obama losing in 2012 (a not particularly close election) probably means the country is in worse shape to start with (since otherwise Obama would have won as OTL, since it's hard to unseat a sitting president without a serious recession), which is going to shape his term.

No Iran deal, but I don't think he'd be crazy enough to actually start a war with Iran, which means Iran is much closer to a nuclear weapon, and the hardliners are significantly stronger (and the Syria situation is even more of a mess).

Obamacare is gone (ITTL, the country hasn't had years to encounter the good points of Obamacare, so the Republicans can pull off a straight repeal without replacement without getting pilloried for it), which is a bad thing.

I doubt that Russia and Ukraine goes any different; George W. Bush did nothing to stop the Russian invasion of Georgia. No American president is willing to start a nuclear war over Donetsk, and Putin knows this.

Expect a big push for tax cuts, which probably pass. On the other hand, tackling immigration reform probably fails; there's a large enough division within the Republican base on the issue that it likely goes no where.

Scalia's court vacancy gets filled quickly (since McConnell will have no reason to hold up a Republican nomination as he did with Garland, and every reason to push for a confirmation ASAP rather than risk a Democrat in 2017 filling that seat), and I wouldn't be surprised if Kennedy also resigned (I suspect Kennedy hasn't resigned yet mainly because he's still somewhat uncomfortable with Donald Trump being the one to choose his successor; Romney would be a bog-standard Republican and thus totally acceptable) and was replaced, which tilts the Supreme Court further right.

I agree no Trump in 2016, but the fissures that the Trump movement represents will still be there, and someone like Romney certainly can't fix those.
 
Most of the foreign policy blunders of Obama in his second term - be it the Iran deal, the Cuba deal, letting ISIS overrun Iraq/Syria, or letting Putin have his way with Ukraine either happen differently or don't happen at all. Which I think would be an improvement.

Obamacare is repealed flat out. Though as the last year has shown, even with full control of Congress and a Republican in the White House, they're not the best at getting even basic stuff done.

Hillary likely runs in 2016. She loses badly, even against Mittens. Pantsuit Dukakis is still Pantsuit Dukakis at the end of the day.

We see Democrats whine about how Romney is a raging sexist with "binders full of women", and is Hitler incarnate, who have no freaking idea what a bullet they dodged just a mere four years later.
 
Very likely AHCA would remain with Romney's support. His Romneycare went over well in Massachussets and he was apparently was pleased with it.
 
Do the Republicans have the Senate? If not, domestic policy stagnation, if they do, still probably internal infighting (though not as chaotic as under Trump). Sanders probably clinches the nomination from Clinton in 2016 (it would be a more obviously left-liberal versus right-liberal primary with state liberal Obamaism that Clinton had to absorb aborted) and wins as the "outsider".
 
Obama losing in 2012 (a not particularly close election) probably means the country is in worse shape to start with (since otherwise Obama would have won as OTL, since it's hard to unseat a sitting president without a serious recession), which is going to shape his term.

No Iran deal, but I don't think he'd be crazy enough to actually start a war with Iran, which means Iran is much closer to a nuclear weapon, and the hardliners are significantly stronger (and the Syria situation is even more of a mess).

Obamacare is gone (ITTL, the country hasn't had years to encounter the good points of Obamacare, so the Republicans can pull off a straight repeal without replacement without getting pilloried for it), which is a bad thing.

I doubt that Russia and Ukraine goes any different; George W. Bush did nothing to stop the Russian invasion of Georgia. No American president is willing to start a nuclear war over Donetsk, and Putin knows this.

Expect a big push for tax cuts, which probably pass. On the other hand, tackling immigration reform probably fails; there's a large enough division within the Republican base on the issue that it likely goes no where.

Scalia's court vacancy gets filled quickly (since McConnell will have no reason to hold up a Republican nomination as he did with Garland, and every reason to push for a confirmation ASAP rather than risk a Democrat in 2017 filling that seat), and I wouldn't be surprised if Kennedy also resigned (I suspect Kennedy hasn't resigned yet mainly because he's still somewhat uncomfortable with Donald Trump being the one to choose his successor; Romney would be a bog-standard Republican and thus totally acceptable) and was replaced, which tilts the Supreme Court further right.

I agree no Trump in 2016, but the fissures that the Trump movement represents will still be there, and someone like Romney certainly can't fix those.
1. Or Obama proceeds to bomb the second and third debates too.
2. That's assuming the Repubs even have the Senate, which they only won in 2014.
 
1. Or Obama proceeds to bomb the second and third debates too.
2. That's assuming the Repubs even have the Senate, which they only won in 2014.
Bombing debates is much less important than political commentators tend to make it. Trump did abysmally in all three, and still managed to eek out a win, while Kerry's 2004 debate success didn't lead him to victory. Besides, it's really hard to imagine Obama managing to blow all three; the incumbent president usually loses the first debate but comes back to do better in the later ones. In general, people tend to overestimate the effects of campaigns, because it's what gets covered, but most elections are decided by structural factors. Bottom-line: it's really hard to beat an incumbent president (it's happened three times in the past century, and each one required a serious economic crisis).

Likewise, it's really hard to lose the presidential election and not take losses in the House and Senate as well. Coattails are a big thing. Note that the Democrats went into the election with only a 51-49 majority; they picked up 2 seats in the 2012 election (thanks in part to the decision of multiple Republican candidates to discuss "legitimate rape"), but in a situation where Romney wins (which almost certainly means the Republicans do better overall), they almost certainly not only don't make gains, but probably lose at least a seat or two instead, and they can't afford to lose any with a Republican VP to cast tiebreaking votes.
 

Ak-84

Banned
The OTL election was 332-206 Electoral College and 66 million to 61 million in the popular vote. Don't see Romney overturning it.
Hillary's "popular vote win" in 2016 was achieved by running up huge win margins in safe Dem states, she suffered double digit reversals in some of the places which turned. Unlike Trump in 2016, Romney did try and bolster the down ballot races in the safe Democrat States, which means he won more votes percentage wise in those states and that bolstered his total (and reduced Trumps).

I don't think he can win the popular vote. Going on the State by State result, he needs a reversal of 65 Electoral College votes. The closest state was Florida (0.8%, 29 EV). If he can win that and win Penn and Michigan, like Trump would, thats enough. However Obama won Penn by 5.5% and Michigan by 10%.

Cannot see a path to 270.
 
Really depends on Romney's win margin.
I mean, he lost by 4% OTL (and IIRC, unlike this year, Obama was particularly resilient in the swing states, so a "win the electoral college while losing the popular vote" scenario seems unlikely), so a Romney win means a pretty substantial swing to the Republicans. Heidi Heitkamp won ND by less than a percentage point, and while none of the other races were that close, there were several that were close enough to put the Republicans in easy striking distance (especially since they will have less need to play defense with a more unpopular Obama dragging down the ticket).

And with a significantly worse economy (which again, is basically required for Obama to lose), butterflies in the sorts of questions asked mean we probably don't have multiple Republican candidates exposing their ignorance by claiming that women can't get pregnant from "legitimate rape" (which was what allowed the Democrats to win an otherwise heavily R-favored race in Indiana, and helped them hold on in Missouri as well).

Without ND and IN (which the Democrats were both lucky to get OTL), the Republicans just need to win one of the multiple other close races (many of which, like OH, PA, WI or VA, are in states that Romney will have to flip to the Republicans for him to actually win in the first place).

On the other hand, Romney's inevitable stumbles (his foreign policy will almost certainly be way worse than Obama's, and his economic policies would be lousy for the sort of recession needed for Obama to lose in the first place, even leaving aside his lack of natural political talent and charm) and the natural tendency for the President to lose ground in the midterms means 2014 goes better for the Democrats (although the 2014 Senate map is extremely bad for them, so they may be limited to treading water in the Senate)
 
How would the US and the world in general be like today had Mitt Romney won in 2012?

We'd probably see The Resistance emerge four years sooner. Romney defeating Obama would be taken as the final proof of America's racism. I think we'd be seeing a lot of that go on.

Romney was about 700,000 votes in a few states from flipping the election in a "win the electoral college, lose the popular vote" manner, and that would also be very possible.

Think of it this way: Akin loses the MO primary, and the GOP recruits Ken Cuccinelli to run against Kaine.
 
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