Brontoforumus

A bit of a small update on Moore.

538: Nate Silver has some thoughts on Moore (basically the odds are so stacked against democrats in Alabama, it's amazing the race is even close, which, surprise surprise).

A poll this week from Change Research found that only a 42 percent plurality of Alabamians believed Moore’s accusers, compared with 38 percent who disbelieved them. And Trump voters disbelieved them by a 63-9 margin.

Yikes.


And then there's this.



EDIT: And wowwwww

Good on Romney.

(Although, uh, someone should probably gently break it to him that the GOP lost all those things a long time ago)

There are rumors that Hatch is retiring next year and Romney is planning to run for his seat. I think they're plausible.

Everything he's doing is also consistent with mounting a primary challenge against Trump in '20, too; that's a little less certain, but I think he'd do better as the Buyer's Remorse candidate than he did in '12.

As usual with Romney, that all sounds really good until you remember all the shit HE pulled.

Also as usual, his casual obliviousness to the plight of the normal in this country is an improvement over the outright malice we've ended up with.

People rebrand awfully easy these days. 2012 will essentially have been a lifetime ago. And Romney's perfectly positioned to run as an anti-Trump, "return to sanity" candidate in the primary, and if the Democrats trot out more washed-out neoliberal bullshit in the general, he'd clean house.

I think he'd do a lot better than Trump in the general. I don't know about the primary; as always with Trump, we're in uncharted waters, and there's little or no precedent we can point to. Romney mounting a primary challenge against Trump is like a Bizarro version of Buchanan in '92. I have no idea what would happen.

Gotta admit, "Purest Essence of the GOP Establishment" does sort of count as a plus if your only concern is countering Donald Trump.

Of course, that's also the cornerstone of how the GOP Establishment operates.

I remember last year when Trump's course was still sort of a horrifying unknown. A lot of people at the time, including a few here, were quite hopeful for Romney when his name was mentioned as lead candidate for SoS. If nothing else, he was probably the best-qualified (or "least incompetent" if you lean that way), among those listed as actual candidates. So his stock has been rising a bit for a while now. And to his credit, AFAIK, he's pretty notably never endorsed any of Trump's decisions or policies.

I'm fully aware that Romney pulled all kinds of stupid shit in the past, but even though he's still going to be Generic GOP Establishment Guy no matter what, it's also possible that he's actually learned some things in the past five years. Hell, they might even have been positive lessons! It's quite possible that a Romney presidency in 2020 would be a very different affair than what would have been a Romney presidency in 2012. Maybe. But it's enough of a maybe that I'd be prepared to see what he had to say.

Ideally the Democrats will get some actual progressive candidates and run the house on the GOP, but if they screw the pooch and let the GOP have at it again, yeah, Romney would still be a big upgrade over what we have now.

Oh and Romney primarying Trump but losing to a Democrat would also still be an upgrade.

I'm actually kind of worried about a scenario that leaves conservatives feeling that they need to embrace populism in order to get anywhere.

Well, there's a small chance that what the word "populism" entails today and what it will entail in a post-Trump's-boner-pill-tax-plan America is going to be very different.

I mean, he'd hardly be the best guy ever, but you could sure do a hell of a lot worse than to get a president in the mold of, say GHWB.

Romney Romney he's our man, if he can't do it nuclear winter can

Romney personifies the phrase "banality of evil"

This is possibly true, but right now we have some very INTERESTING evil.

"Slavery"

"Families were united"

Oh my god someone please just shoot this fuck.

Because families aren't united now?

Also, what the fuck does the unity of families have to do with the status of America as a nation?

"Pedophile rapist turns out to be an awful human being in addition"

Uhhhhhhhh

Moore also says that maybe Putin is "more kin to me" than Americans, and then proceeds to speak some... surprisingly fluent Russian. Which just happens to be a genuflection to a dictator.

I mean, there's actually a lot of valid reasons Moore might know Russian. But, uh, that's not a good look right now, y'know?

Putin is more kin than Americans? Gaybashers of a feather flock together?

Any idea what he said at the end?

Yeah, it's basically an obsequious greeting.