Rep. Tom Reed (R, NY-23) fiercely criticized at town hall

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Tom Reed was a primary Trump supporter -- trash, basically, who deserves to lose to a Democrat. Very good to see this kind of thing.

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Tom Reed was a primary Trump supporter -- trash, basically, who deserves to lose to a Democrat. Very good to see this kind of thing.

-He primary endorsed Trump because he'd have a much better chance of staying in office with Trump at the helm than Mitt.

Trump and Mitt never ran against each other, so this is kind of a false choice. Reed had a choice between Trump or 15 different at least mildly better Republicans (and Christie, Trump's fellow big-government Republican). He picked Trump; like all others who picked Trump in the primaries, he deserves to lose and be purged from the political system. While it's not a position I hold, I do think a reasonable person could've chosen Trump over Hillary; I don't think a reasonable person, of really any ideological outlook besides "big-government/authoritarian Republican" and "intentional wrecker" could've voted Trump in the primary, and I'd like to see the party cleared of both groups. Really, ideally, the country.

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Tom Reed was a primary Trump supporter -- trash, basically, who deserves to lose to a Democrat. Very good to see this kind of thing.

-He primary endorsed Trump because he'd have a much better chance of staying in office with Trump at the helm than Mitt.

Trump and Mitt never ran against each other, so this is kind of a false choice. Reed had a choice between Trump or 15 different at least mildly better Republicans (and Christie, Trump's fellow big-government Republican). He picked Trump; like all others who picked Trump in the primaries, he deserves to lose and be purged from the political system. While it's not a position I hold, I do think a reasonable person could've chosen Trump over Hillary; I don't think a reasonable person, of really any ideological outlook besides "big-government/authoritarian Republican" and "intentional wrecker" could've voted Trump in the primary, and I'd like to see the party cleared of both groups. Really, ideally, the country.

-You really don't seem to understand much about the 14 million people who voted for Trump. Yes, Trump and Mitt did run against each other, with Mitt taking the form of Liddle Marco Rubio. Cruz was too conservative to win the district; Kasich didn't have the same rural appeal (though he still would have likely won it).

Rubio's support was superficially similar to Romney's in some areas, but not everywhere. He was much weaker in New England, for instance; hypothetical polls released in December showed Romney could've defeated Trump outright in New Hampshire.

What kind of "big government Republican" picks Mulvaney as budget director? Portman is about as big-government as you can get.

A Republican with a stated desire of spending hundreds of billions on massive wasteful infrastructure projects. Portman, who has crafted numerous trade deals with foreign nations that broke down governmental barriers, has actually worked to make the government smaller. (Mulvaney, I'll grant you, is a good guy, but he's going to find himself fundamentally overruled in this administration).

I still have difficulty understanding why Blacks and Hispanics voted HRC in the primary.

Because she has a long record of appealing to and fighting for them on issues they care about? It's clear that black and Hispanic turnout would've really cratered had Sanders been the nominee.

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I'm pretty confident, by the way, that had Mitt actually run, the mixture of being much stronger in New England and the rural West than Rubio, while simultaneously much weaker among religious conservatives (and caucus-goers; remember, Rubio won MN, which Romney lost to Santorum) in the South, would've been pretty terrible for Trump -- Mitt could've more-or-less matched Rubio in Iowa, stolen both NH and NV from Trump, while bleeding hard enough in South Carolina to push the state to Cruz. Trump would've still entered the primaries first-place in the national popular vote, but with much better spread to his opposition, he would've quickly fallen apart, not winning any states until Super Tuesday and only a few Southern ones even then.

The race would probably have narrowed to a Romney v. Cruz fight, which I suspect would've basically become a replay or Romney v. Santorum, with narrow victories in Midwestern states finally culminating in massive triumphs in the Northeast that push Cruz out.

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I'm pretty confident, by the way, that had Mitt actually run, the mixture of being much stronger in New England and the rural West than Rubio, while simultaneously much weaker among religious conservatives (and caucus-goers; remember, Rubio won MN, which Romney lost to Santorum) in the South, would've been pretty terrible for Trump -- Mitt could've more-or-less matched Rubio in Iowa, stolen both NH and NV from Trump, while bleeding hard enough in South Carolina to push the state to Cruz. Trump would've still entered the primaries first-place in the national popular vote, but with much better spread to his opposition, he would've quickly fallen apart, not winning any states until Super Tuesday and only a few Southern ones even then.

The race would probably have narrowed to a Romney v. Cruz fight, which I suspect would've basically become a replay or Romney v. Santorum, with narrow victories in Midwestern states finally culminating in massive triumphs in the Northeast that push Cruz out.

-Why would Mitt win New Hampshire? Kasich and Rubio combined didn't amount to enough votes to beat Trump in New Hampshire. Romney was only strong in the Northeast in the 2012 primaries due to the extremely weak slate of candidates. Romney's South Carolina performance in real life was basically the same as Rubio's.

Polling in December 2016 of Trump v. Mitt had Mitt beating Trump; it's because there was (is, really) a segment of voters who voted in both 2012 and 2016 for "a businessman", who they believed could fix the economy, and so switched from Mitt to Donald. In NH, at least, polling showed Mitt could've won most of them back had he run.

Rubio ran a campaign that leaned more heavily on social conservatism than Mitt's. Mitt won 28% of the vote in SC in 2012, but keep in mind that he had no "establishmentarian" challenger still in the race by that point; virtually all of Kasich and Bush's support in 2016 (16%) would've come from Mitt, with the remainder having gone to Rubio; this leaves about 10% of Rubio's support which was socially conservative, anti-Romney, and anti-Trump. In a race where Romney ran, Rubio would probably never have surged in the first place, and those voters would've leaked to Cruz, who would then have been tied with Trump in the state, 32-32. I presume that in such a scenario it would've been clear that the race in South Carolina was a two-horse one, and enough other anti-Trump votes would've leaked to Cruz to push him over the top.

Rubio and Mitt are superficially similar, but they ran different campaigns that had different (overlapping in some respects, but not in others) bases of support. Compare Romney's 43% in Beaufort County with Rubio's 28% -- barely half. Or Rubio's 18% in Horry to Romney's 30%. Or, alternatively, for a more rural, socially conservative area, compare Romney's 18% in Edgefield County to Rubio's 22%. Different candidates, different campaigns.