Is Mitt Romney a decent man?

Maybe on some level. He's not MAGA so that's something..

He’s a Mormon. It’s weird, but they do tend to be very kind and pleasant with all kinds of people.

What is with all the shitty threads on here lately?

No..

Yes.

I'm a Catholic, but would vote for Romney over any other Republican.

No decent person would identify as a Republican.

Private equity?

Nope.

There’s something sexy about him. I have daddy issues

Remember when he was scary. Times have changed.

He's a loyal company man who gets a huge amount of credit for not retweeting Nazis.

Not in the slightest. My brother had to work with him many years ago and said he was the most self-involved, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing narcissist he'd ever met, and that's saying something as my brother works in the intersection of politics and business.

Do you many decent people who strap their dogs to the roof of their moving vehicles???

He doesn’t give a shit about the middle class. Fuck him.

Typical Mormon.

[quote]would vote for Romney over any other Republican

Well that's certainly setting the bar low.

I can’t believe he is. Mormons sound as whacked as Scientologists. And as secretive as Freemasons and Skull And Bones. No telling how rich and powerful they are behind the scene.

Mormons are cultists who think calling themselves Christian, which they're not, will deflect attention.

My partner has a large contingent of Mormons in his family, and every one is messed up, controlled, controlling and miserable. Even the ones who've left the cult. The rich ones like the Romneys are the worst because they enforce the system. It's a Ponzi scheme.

He makes me cringe. He looks like my older brother.

It's true that Mormons are by and large very friendly people, but it is mostly a surface-level sort of kindness. They have very strange views of the world by virtue of their religious beliefs, and while they are pleasant and polite in the public sphere, they're also very insular behind closed doors. I have a whole branch of cousins who are LDS and this has always been my observation. Some of them have fallen out of the church and are less connected (if at all), but the ones who have stayed are pretty committed. Still, I'd much rather be in the company of a Mormon than any kind of fanatical Evangelical or Pentecostal holy roller. Mormons may have wacky ideas, but they do have decorum and a level of (conservative) classiness about them.

Sheezent Man.

Obamacare is actually Romneycare. We had in in Massachusetts first.

Mitt gained my respect after a piece of the tunnel ceiling fell after Boston's "The Big Dig" and he put on a hardhat and went down there and yelled at everybody responsible then announced loudly to the rest of us "People shouldn't have to drive through that tunnel WITH THEIR FINGERS CROSSED!" which was kind of awesome.

I'm a Mitt fan.

I lived next to a large Mormon family as a child and they were always nice. They would bake cookies for the whole neighborhood around Christmas. I also went to high school with some decent Mormons. I agree with r20, I'd rather hang out with a Mormon than an evangelical.

Romney is not as corrupt and insane as MAGA, but he is a Repig through and through.

So, no.

r3 And oddly people keep commenting on them (bumping them) instead of ignoring them

Decent compared to what?

No. He was a rich entitled brat who used to dress as a policeman and pull people over. He was in a fatal car crash during his mission in France which may well have been his fault and may also have interfered with his personality. As a b usinessmen he was financed by shady people in El Salvador and generated a business model intended to reduce competition in mature industries by forcing companies to grow through bank debt or die. He was an arrogant Mormon official throughout his time in Massachusetts. As Governor he was prevented from doing much harm by a veto-proof dem majority, but what harm he could do he did such as refusing to okay ANY alcohol licenses as governor. As a candidate he bullied the press, lied constantly, and hired child molesters and abusers on staff. He promised us war with Iran and Russia. He told Michiganders he could teach them how to be better at business but after his defeat he was conspicuously absent during the bankruptcy of his hometown of Detroit, while other richie riches like Gilbert picked up the slack. After losing he r e treated to a giant mansion in California and loafed.

For being a millionaire mormon rethug, sure.

People credited him with the "success" of the Salt Lake Olympics, but here too it was all for show. It depended on generous federal grants and he had plug his own money into it to make i seem like it didn't lost money.

He also blamed his loss on not buying votes by offering money to people, which clearly indicates the last minute hail marys of the campaign were intended to buy voters. (Just like Trump pretending he would get rid of income tax on the first $150K of income. As if!. The only reason he would do that would be to bankrupt the country forever.

I have met him and sat through two small group meetings with him when he was with Bain Capital. This was 2000-2002. Cordial, and superficially polite. But zero connection with anyone else in the room. It was an obvious arrogance that he was trying to hide, but didn’t.

The Zodiac Killer?

Did he seem intelligent, r31?

Before "Obamacare," it was called "Romneycare," which Mitt Romney introduced in 2006 when he was unfortunately governor of Massachusetts--before Obama became president (in 2008).

Then when Romney ran for president against Obama in 2012 when Obama was running for reelection, Romney disavowed and abandoned "Romneycare," which was nearly identical to "Obamacare." But Romney lied and went along with the Repigs and would not associate himself with his own "Romneycare" plan.

Mitt Romney is a slimy gutless wonder who only found his voice against Trump when his tenure in the Senate was almost over. Yes, Romney's criticism of Trump was the right thing to do and welcomed by the Democrats, but in the Senate, Romney voted with Trump almost all the time. .

Size verificta?

Romney was very strong in his condemnation of Russia. If he had defeated Obama, the US would have had a strong anti Russian foreign policy. And probably Trump never would have run for President. But I don’t think Republicans ever really liked him.

He is a big pussy!

Doing some good deeds doesn't negate a lifetime of hateful political positions, defending liars and racists, and on tape, saying his main constituency is the super rich.

On paper, he's not as odious as other Republicans - but that doesn't mean he's a good or decent man.

The bar is SO low for Republicans, that any Republican that doesn't anything halfway decent is put up on a pedestal as being so great - nobody ever does that for Democrats, who routinely do the right thing every damn day.

R22 One reason the tunnel ceiling fell is because the Big Dig’s designers and contractors had no almost no oversight by the MA DPW’s engineers. Romney’s budgets as Governor hollowed out the state’s engineering staff, thus eliminating independent verification of Bechtel’s specs and construction practices. Then he threw his hand-picked DPW Commissioner, Matt Amoroso, under the bus to deflect from his own failures.

He’s not the answer.

R22. please see R34.

How the fuck did this conservative Mormon get elected Governor of Massachusetts??

PAB. punk ass bitch

R41-The state has a weird affection for Republican governors who voters have occasionally seen as a counterweight to the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature.

Yes, he is.

We'[ve just given you dozens of reasons why he's not R44. I'm guessing you're a Trumper.

Of course he’s not.

He's the one who started the completely fictitious nonsense about Benghazi. He lied every day during the campaign. Not a decent bone in his body. That he sees Trump as a danger only shows how far to fascism the right has gone, but he helped lead it there.

I'm with R34. When that racist, sexist, irresponsible imbecile ran in 2015, Romney slammed him and did everything he could to discredit him. But Romney added that if said imbecile became the GOP's candidate he would support him. Once said imbecile won, Romney courted his favor in hopes of becoming the secretary of state.

Romney may have done the right thing in voting to impeach said imbecile, but I believe his principles are superficial and self-serving.

His wife has a dancing horse and he murdered Toys R Us

Torturred his dog quite deliberately then laughed abou tit.

He said "Let Detroit go bankrupt" during the Great Recession. This from the son of a Michigan governor and former car company executive. Fuck him, total POS.

He’s got a few years on me, but his family home was just a few miles from mine. He comes from a solid family. His father, as governor, marched with MLK.

[quote]What is with all the shitty threads on here lately?

You can blame (among others) the Condi troll

I’ve been to Mitt Romney, but I’ve never been to me

His father was born in Mexico. Mittster would not be in favor of civil rights.

His wife was likely underage when they started doing it

Although 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney wanted us to forget, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney created the model for Obamacare. I’d say that weighs in positively on the side of him being a good man.

All I know is that when he hired me for sex, it was agreed he could come on my tits. But in the moment he deliberately came all over my face and in my hair and rubbed his penis on my mouth.

Not a decent man.

R58=Salt Lake Olympian

R49 …and they got an $80,000 tax deduction for the care and feeding of that dancing “therapy” horse that’s supposed to help her multiple sclerosis.

R58 He didn’t “create the model” - he signed into law a bill the legislature had passed. Had he not signed it, his veto would have been overridden by the same overwhelmingly Democratic legislators. He and his staff worked to shape the legislation but didn’t write the law by a long shot.

And how does running away from something he helped to implement - because the Republicans Party was dead set against it and his nomination would be in trouble if he didn’t trash it - make him a good man?

He’s hardly a profile in courage.

I’ll never get past the story of strapping the dog to the roof of his car. Treatment of animals says a lot about a person.

The fact that he bragged about it years later is more bothersome to me. Somewhat like GWB bragging about sabotaging an opponent's boat the night before a sailboat race. That says something about you which isn't good.

Sorry that was GHWB, not GWB

I"m guessing that 1958 car accident damaged his frontal lobe.

Just as we would have been better off if Trump had won in ‘20, we would have been better off if Romney had won in ‘12.

[quote] The Massachusetts health care reform, commonly referred to as Romneycare

No to both R66.

He's no Dump, but still a republican - so not to be trusted.

You know, OP, it's all relative. For a well-known Republican ex-politician in this day and age, I'd say he's holding his own.

[quote] No to both

A Romney win would've created no space for Trump in '16. And a Trump '20 win would've spared us from a vengeful Trump 2.0, along with the planning & implementation of Project 2025. And Trump, not Biden, would've been blamed for the post-Covid inflation.

If you have to ask a question like this the answer is always “no.”

I hope Rafalka is doing well

Other than Trump in 2020, I've never gloated as much over someone losing an election as I did over Mitt Romney's loss to Obama in 2012, especially after Ann Romney smugly stated that "Romney and Ryan are the adults in the room" (implying that Obama and Biden were not). I watched that "Mitt" documentary about his presidential campaign on Netflix a while ago and it didn't change my negative impression of him and his family at all.

I'm forever grateful to that cater waiter who filmed Romney making those infamous comments about the "47%" of Americans "who believe they are victims, entitled to health care, food, housing, you name it."

Wow, Rafalca (b. 1997) is still alive.

No. He's an arch conservative in a wacko religious cult and R74 details his true colors nicely.

These people aren't our friends. Mitt Romney would take away your social security and your marriage in a heartbeat. He's rather see you destitute or dead than happy and successful as an openly gay non-billionaire.

That Trump=Romney, & apparently every pre-Trump republican, in the eyes of so many in the Resistance is in part why so many Americans failed to grasp why Trump was such a uniquely existential threat.

Romney also said he would defund PBS, saying something clever like "I like Big Bird but he has to go".

Romney is an asshole. Yes he opposed Trump for a while when he thought it would benefit him politically but he's still a typical Republican POS.

nightshift/R79, how was voting not once but twice to convict Trump, becoming the first senator in history to vote to convict a president of his party, going to ever help Romney politically? In fact, it was so damaging that he did not run for re-election.

R80 I think he thought the writing was on the wall-Trump was finished, would go to jail, and America would see the error of their ways. It was a miscalculation.

Just my opinion here-I don't know what Romney really believes but his past actions do speak to his character. And I thought similar, that America was a better place than it really is. Now I know that a large swath of Americans are assholes like Trump. It's kind of liberating to know that and NEVER give these people the benefit of the doubt.

But, R79, he - alone among Republicans - also voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial.

R82 - and Hitler built the AutoBahn for the war effort. Just because someone did something decent a few times, it doesn't make them a good person. He has a long terrible track record.

I have no problem with Trump/Hitler comparisons - I'm, in fact, the one who introduced to DL the David Frum quote, "There are a lot of stops on the railroad line to bad before you get to Hitler station" - but your credibility suffers, R82, when a Mitt Romney - Mitt Romney (!!!) - also warrants Hitler comparisons.

R82 I had forgotten that Romney was the lone Republican vote in the Senate the first time. But we don't know his motivation-maybe he was pissed that Trump didn't pick him fo Secretary of State and publicly made a fool of Romney.

Sorry, you can't convince me that he's a good guy. And we haven't even said much here about his vampire capitalist days at Bain Capital, taking over companies and raiding people's pensions so he can build another mansion with a car elevator.

An asshole is still an asshole IMO. Mitt Romney seems like less of one because everyone pales in comparison to Trump.

R84: that wasn't a literal/one-on-one Hitler comparison, just a go-to one, meaning "Even very bad people will do some good every so often." I'm sure the poster didn't mean to say that Romney is literally like Hitler.

Romney's statement in support of his vote for conviction at Trump's first impeachment trial.

He was a sexy man I know that.

Now that he’s retired and worth more than 300 million he can put on the decent man hat but got there by ripping off others-nice.

Decent? Hope ‘’Mitt’’ and ‘’dump’’ are dead soon.

Mittens is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome.

Not a fav since he campaigned as a Weld-style moderate to win as Governor in MA and then pulled a bait and switch and became a Repug asshole.

I still have no idea how he ended up in MA to start with.

HBS, R92.

He’s garbage.

I just remembered he was the binders full of women guy. I think these types just look better now that we’ve dealt Trump and co

Yeah. Decorum is the word. Otherwise they’d get much more negative attention. Plus, they probably own a lot of media.

He called his so Tagg. So, not a decent man.

[quote] He called his son Tagg.

I see nothing wrong with that.

Doesn’t Sarah palin have a grandson named Trogg? Did I dream that?

Sarah has Trig, Track, and Tripp.

Trash Palin

You can be a slightly more palatable person than Trump and still be a horrible person.

All of you citing his impeachment vote as evidence that he's really a nice person and a super-swell fella -- you know he voted FOR Trump in every election, right? The votes that actually mattered?

He's a ruthless venture capitalist. America in general does not have an ethical issue with such people, however. So hard to take a position on OP's question.

[quote] you know he voted FOR Trump in every election, right? The votes that actually mattered?

In Utah?! And his alleged vote as a voter in Utah mattered more than his two impeachment votes, including the one in which he stood alone among his party?!

Even Obama once said words to the effect that, in contrast to a Trump presidency, he would have rested in relative ease with Romney as president.

I would take him, in a second, over Trump. And, some Democrats too.

In comparison to Dump, anyone would be better. OP's question was "Is Mitt Romney a decent person?" IMO, he's an asshole.

R107 understands the thread. R107 read the headline and used his brain.

It's shocking how many of you will bend over backwards to defend someone who would nullify your rights at the first chance without a second thought.

Well, maybe not YOUR rights. But mine.

Are we defining “decent” to embrace only those who political views completely align with ours? I know of those who embrace my politics, but I don’t necessarily find them to be otherwise “decent” human beings.

I define decent as not being a venture capitalist or someone who seeks to limit the rights of people who are different from themselves. Seems like a pretty low bar.

R10 came here to say that….

[quote] Seems like a pretty low bar.

My bar is also pretty low. But mine lands on where you stand on Trump, the greatest existential threat this country has faced in my long life.

He was against illegal immigration but while he was governor, the undocumented, but not un-lawnmowered, were found cutting the grass at his Belmont Hill estate.

When the Massachusetts Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in 2004, Romney ran to DC looking for help (with what?) from Bush. Order out the National Guard?

He’s a rich, weird, Mormon Republican who somehow parlayed a one-term governorship of Massachusetts by pretending to be someone he wasn’t into running for President by pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He would never get elected to any office otherwise.

He had to leave California in case the authorities were able to identify him as the zodiac killer

He's not repulsive.

Yes he is. His business model was fraud from first to last, using the deficiencies of capitalist pricing to achieve anti-competitive results. He would target successful companies in mature industries, force them to buy competitors with new bank debt; and then demand cuts and a payoff to be sent away. Typically, they bribed a few insiders with golden parachutes to bring it all about, but Romney didn't care if he loaded them down with so much high interest debt they went bankrupt. That was the point: with less competition the others could raise prices and have more chance of long-term survival. And because share pricies were typically 15 times earnings, and you could leverage your investment, he could buy a controlling interest in a mature company for very little. The best way to rob a company, they say, is to own it, so that's what Romney did over and over. True, he defrauded banks over and over, but they didn't seem to mind.

But he opposed Trump that one time! We must ignore every other thing about him and just focus on that. He's a solid dude despite all the bad stuff because he makes me feel good about that one thing.

Two times, R117. The only republican senator to twice vote to convict Trump. If only more republican senators had followed his lead, we wouldn’t be facing the atrocity of Trump 2.0. But for the purists here, good is always the enemy of the perfect.

The point is he's corrupt and it is the corruption of the American people which led to Trump. If Trump had been prevented, there would be someone equally bad.

When did that happen? I don't know but at some ponit the undeserved prominence of the billionaires means that everyone is confident about stealing and destroying others to get ahead. This is no longer the country I grew up in.