Take a moment with me and think back, back to a year that may feel like a whole lifetime ago. For many, it was. Kim and Kanye had just started dating. "Gangnam Style," selfies, and the Benghazi attacks were sweeping the nation. Snapchat didn't even have filters yet. Think back to this simpler age. Think way, way back to a time when Governor Willard Mitt "Mitt" Romney becoming president sounded like the scariest outcome imaginable from the 2012 election.
Little did we know...
Remember ol' Mitt? The Mormon millionaire with the dopey name and punchable face who liberals and conservatives alike found so intensely unlikable. He was racist and xenophobic in that classic down-the-ticket Republican way (immigrants stealing our jobs &etc.), and openly classist to a point that seemed extreme coming from a presidential nominee at the time. His infamous comments on the supposed 47 percent of the nation that paid no income tax and saw themselves as victims are considered by many to be the biggest reason why Romney lost the 2012 election (the second biggest being the Mormon thing, which was just too weird for America).
Man, remember when this guy seemed like the worst thing that could happen to the country?
Shaking it like he just don't care.
Don't get me wrong, Romney would no doubt have made a terrible president. The man's head is full of cotton and he looks like a fleshy muppet, which would be true even if his politics and platform hadn't been centered around scapegoating Mexicans, undocumented immigrants, and poor people. But these days, with an even worse cotton-headed flesh muppet with obscene wealth stirring up noise and anger against vulnerable groups, don't you almost miss that 2012-era Romney fear?
"Ow. Ow." - real Mitt Romney quote
And there was real fear. Polls consistently indicated a close race, with President Obama only narrowly ahead for most of it. A man who ironed the tuxedo on his body (see above) came so frighteningly close to being president of the United States, and we were sweating. That sweat seems like a luxury now, with the 2016 election giving us the runs instead.
Yes, this election is s***ting itself.
It could be argued that the current Republican presidential nominee has come as far as he has for the very same reasons Romney lost. It was 2012's "47 percent" comments that sunk ol' Mitt, but those same comments have been coming out of the mouth of You Know Who seemingly every day in 2016—which makes Romney's 2016 speech against Donald Trump so ironic and bittersweet.
And with that, this article ends as abruptly as the public's interest in Romney did. See you never, Mitt. We hardly knew you.