"Mitt Romney looks like the guy who comes to lay you off" - Mike Huckabee.
A lot of his problems stemmed from that 2009 article about how to handle Detroit. What he described in the article was a structured bankruptcy backed with US gov't money to hold them over. However the headline conveyed the equivalent of DROP DEAD NEW YORK!!! from Gerald Ford's days.
I spent years splitting hairs on this point to defend Romney between 2009 and 2015, but at the end of the day it was a mess he could have easily avoided just by keeping his mouth shut.
Romney also stepped in it with his book, similar to Jeb Bush on immigration, but on health care. What this illustrates is the danger of political books, and the fact they take a few months to get out into circulation and politics moves much faster. Just as Jeb was embarrassed by his book claiming to support only a path to legal status after Rubio had been working the grounds on a 2013 compromise that included a path to citizenship.
Romney contrasted Obamacare from his MA healthcare plan on the basis that Obamacare had a public option, and Romneycare did not. This was the case when the book was composed, but not by the time it hit the shelves. The public option had been dropped making Obamacare hard to differentiate from Romneycare Oops, back to the drawing board. Romney then failed to come up with a consistent narrative after that point. His best bet was a Federalist approach of letting states design their own plans and giving them the money to help facilitate that.
But beyond all of that, it would have been rather difficult for Romney to overcome his Bain Capital days in any case. Too many displaced workers and too many video clips that wrote themselves.
Were it not for social issues, lingering Gay Marriage opposition and the War on Coal narrative, Romney would have done even worse in the Midwest.
Ironcially though in 2008 primaries pundits were calling Mitt the strongest Republican candidate for states like Michigan and the Midwest in general. They believed he would be weaker in the south though(In 2012 it turned out to be the opposite)
Had Romney been the 08 candidate Obama probably wins by a bigger PV margin than Reagan 80.
Doubt it. Romney is a stronger candidate than McCain, he would not have picked Palin as his running mate, and due to his business background, he would have dealt with the aftermath of the financial crisis in a more responsible manner. McCain was totally out of his depth after the Lehman collapse, and it was embarrassing to watch. Even then, Obama won the national PV by 7.2% and 365 electoral votes, which is surprising since given the fundamentals, one would think it should have been a 1980 level landslide.
