The Conservatives’ Obama Delusion

Commentary Magazine ^ | 11.07.2012 | Jonathan S. Tobin

[GeronL]

Historic figure?

He won by lies, media on his side and give aways

[Unam Sanctam]

2016? I can’t help but feel gloomy given what the American electorate has become. We’re doomed!

[Little Pig]

The problem was none of that. The prez didn’t have an “efficient campaign organization”. His turnout was 9 MILLION lower than in 2008. The problem is that somehow, despite the disaster his incumbency has been, the “Republican” voter base didn’t turn out in enough numbers to kick him out. Somewhere along the line, several million Republican voters disappeared too.

[ari-freedom]

I honestly thought that after pickups like McDonnell and Brown, 2010 election and the Walker recall victory that Americans changed back to center right.

Thought they just gave Obama a fair chance because he was young and appealing, historic and in the middle of a crazy crisis. I didn’t think they really wanted a real leftist.

[scooby321]

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville

[bigbob]

I’ve got to read this in more detail but it looks right on. Obama managed to get 2% more non-white voters to the polls in an election when “we” thought they’d sit it out. Dumb us. And we thought Republicans would flock to the polls to get rid of him, and Romney ended up getting fewer votes than McCain.

Pissing and moaning and talking crap is permitted for a while, but in the end we will have to learn from this election and move forward in a way that will produce better results.

Any questions - watch this 17 second video and realize there is no room for self-pity. Now it’s our turn to take the hit and keep on fighting even harder.

[Jeff Winston]

The main obstacle to a Republican victory was that they were seeking to defeat the first African-American president aided by a supportive mainstream media, buttressed by the power of incumbency and what turned out to be a tremendously efficient campaign organization. Contrary to the delusion that Obama was a loser waiting to be knocked off, beating him was always going to be a long shot. Though the GOP will spend much of the coming weeks, months and years beating each other up as they assign blame for the defeat, the fact is, Romney did well to come as close as he did.

This man speaks the truth.

[ari-freedom]

But Walker won WI by 6% points and that’s a birthplace of the progressive movement. The unions went crazy over that campaign. Before that, Prosser. So I had good reason to expect to extrapolate that to the rest of the country.

[Kevmo]

Same here. Romney was right about the 47%, and now the scales might be tipped.

[firebrand]

Not a bad commentary. But we’d better not have 15 greedy grabby Republicans in the primary season, all thinking they have a chance because there’s no incumbent. This time they all jumped in because they thought that with Obama’s abysmal lack of respect for America, one of them would surely win.

Let the lesser candidates debate on Al Jazeera and Russian TV but let’s not have them all killing one another like we did this year, especially with one multi-billionaire blowing all the others to smithereens.

[RIghtwardHo]

If we don’t crawl out of this echo chamber (and based on some of the comments it seems we may not) this is going to happen to us again, and again, and again, and again ...

[dfwgator]

Josef Goebbels would envy our mainstream media.

[BerryDingle]

He won by lies, media on his side and give aways

And massive voter fraud.

[beckysueb]

Yep. Best commentary I’ve read all day. That along with some vote fraud put him right back in the WH. Durring this whole campaign, I would watch Obamas’ cocky self assurance and think, he acts like he is going to actually win! I was so sure he was going to be beat like a rented mule.

[LongWayHome]

Yup....Ras & Gallup screwed around with their polls while Nate Silver was dead-on. Check out Freeper Jackmercer who NAILED this election last week out here using science & data. And this guy makes some good points. People were not ready to throw out the first black president.

[FlipWilson]

Those who create reality master it.

The media was, is and will be our problem. The so called “entertainment arm” bombards our society with the constant message that conservatives are un-caring racist, homophobic, red neck imbiciles. They do so in almost every movie Hollywood produces and in almost TV show. The so caled “news arm” of the media is no more than a ministry of propaganda a this point. It covers for and buries everything that could be harmful to those who they ideologically agree with.

The media has such a hold over the public that it was able to convince them that, regardless of the worst economy in memory, the republicans were the root of all evil. It was Bush’s fault, it was Big Bird, it was contraception and some war on women (republicans hate women don’t ya know).

Until and unless we get serious about destroying the media by ANY MEANS NECESSARY we are losers. We need to attack the media with a ferocity never before seen. We need to expose them, follow them, find their secrets, get into their personal lives, do whatever it takes to put them to the same scrutiny that they put our candidates and our voters.

[Kevmo]

The media was, is and will be our problem.
***I agree. You need a candidate who is telegenic and creates their own free press. For instance, the media constantly harangued about Reagan and gave him free press, basically with middle americans asking, “what’s the problem with that?” when they watched the media go into leg-tingling frenzies. The only politician like that today is Palin. She drives the media into a frenzy, generating her own free press and accessing middle americans who see her as one of themselves, so “what’s the problem”?

[rfp1234]

One of their blunders was abandoning the highly effective term “socialized medicine” in favor of “Obamacare”. The other was failing to label him as a “liberal”. With a dumbed-down electorate, simple words have a greater impact than wonky speeches on the debt or deficit.

[FlipWilson]

No, you misunderstand my point entirely. The media of today is different than any other we have seen. They have reached the final destination. It is no longer “bias” that is their problem. Now it is far more. It is activism, it is influence. They are ruling the country de facto.

Trying to find a candidate or person who fits their paradigm is impossible. There is NO Republican who can survive within their world. They must be destroyed, killed, pulverized by any and all means necessary. They have betrayed this country. I am really considering forming a PAC that does nothing but advertise against the MSM and is in permanent campaign mode. Kill the media and the democrats lose 5% of the vote, easily.