I think the Republican Party would be more or less in the state that the Democratic Party is in right now . I think Trump would have run against Romney in the primaries , and there would have been a split between an establishment wing of the Party and a populist wing emphasizing the kinds of issues Trump campaigned on . I think the Democratic Party would have been able to exploit the split and run a runofthemill generic Democrat who would have won the election . Basically it could have been anyone but Hillary Clinton . The Democrats wouldn ' t be facing the kind of identity crisis they are facing right now . I think it ' s possible that I ' m wrong about this though , because Republicans have a much greater tendency to fall in line than Democrats . I don ' t know why this is , but it seems to be true .