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Posted on 11/08/2012 5:35:01 AM PST by expat1000
Now that we have lost the election of 2012, where our champion, a third-rate imitation of Ronald Reagan, without either his charm or his principles, who believed in absolutely nothing except being the best salesman he could be; let's pause to reflect on all the things we lost out on through his defeat.
When we lose something, a relationship or a job, the grief comes from what we thought we had and what we imagined it was, not from what it truly was. Perspective means getting a true sense of what we had and what we never had to begin with.
So let's look at what we might have had with President Mitt Romney.
We lost the chance to have universal health care, with the mandate, become a principle that every conservative was duty-bound to defend.
Oh I know. Mitt Romney was going to repeal ObamaCare. And he was. And by "repeal", I mean he would have tinkered with it a bit and turned it into RomneyCare. And for the next four to eight years, it would have been heresy to ever suggest that we opposed universal health care with a mandate. Once Romney did that, it would have turned out that we only opposed universal health care with a mandate when it was badly enacted, without regard for businesses, by a Democrat.
We lost the chance to have a Republican president deliver weapons to Syrian Jihadists. Not to mention apply more sanctions to Iran in order to force it to the negotiating table. We could have been so privileged as to have a Republican president execute these two items of Obama's agenda. Instead we're stuck with a Democrat doing it.
Of course President Mitt Romney would not have done these things out of a deep abiding hatred for America and a sympathy for terrorists. But he would have still done them anyway. He wouldn't have understood what he was doing, but his foreign policy would still have been sixty percent of Obama's foreign policy, without the conscious malice. It would have been an improvement in that regard and only in that regard.
Those of you pro-Israeli types who imagine that a President Romney would have taken the boot off Israel's neck, would have been shocked when a month after taking office, his Secretary of State would have commenced condemning Israeli "settlements" in Jerusalem. Just like it was in the days of the Bush Administration.
But, Romney would have been different, you say. He had a great rapport with Netanyahu. And Bush had a great rapport with Sharon. He had an even better one with Saudi Arabia. The same would have been true of Romney.
Still Romney would have appointed conservatives to the Supreme Court. And there you may even be right. I wouldn't place any bets on it though. Oh we probably wouldn't have gotten any Wise Latinas on his watch, but then again we might have, but I wouldn't count on too many members of the Federalist Society ending up on the bench either.
Romney would at least have been pro-business. So was George W. Bush. And how well did he deal with the problems of government overreach? It's all well and good to be pro-business, but even a former businessman who becomes a president, sees problems from the government's end, not from the standpoint of a businessman.
And, for that matter, if you doubt any of this, do look back on the Bush years and consider that Romney would have been worse in every area than Bush. It's human nature not to believe that, but it's so. And if the election had gone another way, in a few months you would have seen it for yourselves.
The 2012 election was of course a disaster. A complete and thorough disaster. But it was a disaster because Obama and his cronies won. Not because Mitt Romney lost. Mitt Romney filled a void. He stepped into a spot that we needed, became a symbol and then he failed, because he was only a man, and worse still he was a blue state politician who was light on principles and heavy on being a people person.
What we lost in this election was not a chance for better leadership, but a chance to remove a bad leader. But what we gained was an end to complicity in the actions and policies of this administration. What we gained was a chance to use this defeat to launch a movement that can actually win an election by confronting the issues.
I would have never called for people to stay away during the election. Another four years of Obama would have been too high a price to pay for that. But now that we have that four years, it helps to remember that we never had a shot at making a complete break with the policies of Barack Obama. What we were really trying to do was replace Obama with a man who would carry out many of the same policies, but without a hidden agenda or destructive urges.
What we were trying to do was elect a man who destroy America with the best of intentions, with an open heart and enough practical experience to avoid overreaching and destroying the country too quickly. And that is no bad thing, from one perspective, certainly if we have to choose between high speed destruction and medium speed destruction, it's best to take the foot off the pedal, but it's not a solution of any kind to anything. At most it might have amounted to breathing room that would have corrupted us by making us complicit in those same policies.
So here we are again, right back where we were in 2008. The establishment blew another election. The base is angry and frustrated. The country is divided. And a growing number of people reject the policies of the administration. The establishment rejected the Tea Party as a bunch of crazies, but the Tea Party is more relevant than ever.
A day before the election, I wrote, "Even if we lose this election, it will have been worthwhile to make it as close as possible, to bring out massive rallies of people who are waking up out of the daze and realizing that they don't have to take the occupation and that there are tens of millions of people out there who feel as they do.
"Mitt Romney is a symbol, a convenient shorthand for freedom of expression, enterprise and faith. Whether or not he embodies these values is a secondary concern. As Obama became a vehicle for the left to express its identity, Romney has become a vehicle for traditional Americans to express theirs. If Romney wins, then he will become a politician and if he loses, then the symbolic identity, which transcends him, will go on, because it is an expression, not of one man, but of the values of a country."
So Mitt Romney has fallen and I will waste no great amount of time either condemning him or mourning him. I have never met him and cannot speak for his character. I believe that he was genuinely motivated by public service, in the old-fashioned sense, but I also believe that, like his father, his instincts tilted to the left. Faced with a new left, his old-fashioned liberalism would have given them a foothold, while destroying him anyway.
Romney ran an effective enough campaign, but it was the campaign that he needed to run, not the one that the country needed. And now that it's over, we are back where we need to be, fighting the good fight. We have the opportunity to organize and radicalize, to bring together growing numbers of people around opposition to everything that the Democratic Party has come to stand for. That is something we could not have done under a President Romney. It is something that we can only do while in the opposition.
And equally importantly, we once again have the opportunity to mobilize and transform the party. That opportunity may be more than the answer to winning the next election. It may be the means of saving this country. Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Good read!
It wouldn’t have made any difference who we ran against 0bama. The moochers and looters outnumber the producers and you can’t beat Santa Claus. The country we once knew is gone forever. Who knew that the movies “Idiocracy” would be so prophetic.
Its time for TEA Party Patriots to lead the GOP.
Look at the facts, we are outnumbered, pure and simple. Lincoln could not have won this election. Why is this so hard for people to grasp? Obama should have been HATED for what he has done, and what he plans to do. Instead he got about 53% of the vote.
Until we accept the simple cold truth, and re-adjust we are going to fail every time.
The takers outnumber the makers and we cannot win until this is reversed!
Wrong - Mitt is a RINO socialist. He is the grandfather of Obamacare. That is why we lost.
I cannot understand why you cannot understand it.
The blame lies 100% on the shoulders of Mitt Romney who is such a rotten politician, who ran such a smelly campaign, that even a discredited, disliked, failure beat him.
This post by Roger Magnuson on Powerline explains it 1000X better than I can:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/roger-magnuson-thoughts-on-the-debacle.php
John,
For what it’s worth, a few thoughts on the debacle.
As I mentioned in our intermittent club pub conversations on the subject of Moderate Mitt, I never thought he would have any real chance of beating the worst president imaginable. I never thought otherwise at any stage of the campaign.
While I respected your always incredibly informed political acumen, the simple truth for me is that wets never win. Never. Or as I mentioned to Herman Cain in LA a few months back, you never beat a demagogic vision with no vision.
Put another way, if I tried high profile cases using consultants like Stuart Stevens, I would spend boatloads of my clients’ money, and end up lamenting that it seemed impossible to lose because we had such great arguments, and ultimately blame the stupid fact finders and the demographics of the jury and their “baggage.” We’ve both seen our share of big firm litigators in that mode, haven’t we, thankfully usually on the other side.
I only know one way to win these arguments: by putting overwhelming intellectual, moral and affective pressure on the other side until my metaphors imprison and prevail. Get the theory and attack and define relentlessly, albeit of course with charm. :)
My almost visceral reaction to a relatively smart and decent guy was his manifest propensity to lose the unlosable.
Demographics? They haven’t changed much since the 2010 shellacking of the Democrats, ditto the so-called tipping point or 47 per cent.
What happened is in my view less complicated.
1) Romney let himself get defined early in the same brutal way we would define a litigation adversary early and often. The definition largely stuck and there was no early response, and no aggressive defining of an opponent who was a walking, talking incredibly rich target.
2) Romney organized a colorless and utterly insipid convention the point of which was to establish that he wasn’t as bad as the other side made him out to be and he really loved and some of his best friends were women.
3) Romney’s campaign then stumbled forward on a benign, six basic metrics referendum on the economy tack, leaving a treasure trove laden rich armory of munitions undeployed. Obamacare, the explosive issue of 2010 ignored. Social issues tied to huge avenues of attack on Obama viewed as too controversial, foreign policy neutered, Dukakis competence thought able to carry the day, all from the conventional Tory playbook, without sharp edges or ideological vision.
4) When he finally showed a pulse in the first debate and acted like he could almost be a decent trial lawyer, he got an immediate bump in the polls, and, immediately, lapsed back into a play it safe, sit on a lead, be nice and bipartisan mode. He couldn’t even do the Benghazi battle.
5) His everybody loves this country, reach across the aisle close was the final insipid wetness.
I hated to be Nate Silver but Mittens never had a chance against a terrible President with the silliest of demagogic campaigns.
So John, if we’re ever on opposite sides of major litigation again, please retain consultants like Stevens. It might be my only chance…
Love that Power Line!
It's hope - not a lot - but hope. If Romney had won we'd be stuck with 'LiberalLite' and we'd be hard pressed not to go along with it... Greenfield's right on this...
There is only 3 1/2 short years until the next RINO is nominated with the predictable associated abandonment of principles by 90% of Freepers.
In the meantime, let's just all gather and pretend conservatives have a voice.
12M jobs
And people think Obama's constantly blaming Bush is wrong. We all gotta have a scapegoat don't we?
If people who think that is why we lost the last election are in charge of the 2016 campaign ... be prepared to lose again.
Maybe, once your Mitt Romney Derangement Syndrome MRDS© subsides a bit, you can look at the facts and see what the real cause is.
Just because YOU hate him does not mean everyone does.
You jack asses are the ones looking for scape goats. We don’t need a scape goat. Romney turned out to be a failure. End of story.
But from "Boehner and Crew" we'll hear "resist we much"!!
What we lost in this election was not a chance for better leadership, but a chance to remove a bad leader. But what we gained was an end to complicity in the actions and policies of this administration. What we gained was a chance to use this defeat to launch a movement that can actually win an election by confronting the issues.
Nails it, as usual. However, he is more optimistic than I am about the future.
You started the name calling pal.
We are now the Secular Socialist States of America.
I agree. I do not have the answers, but I do know that, barring a total economic collapse, it will continue for decades to come. Eventually the party will end, but unless something major happens before that, this country will be in so much debt that we will collapse.
It's coming and we sit here bickering about whether Romney was conservative enough instead of facing the facts. Rush said it best, these people are NOT going to vote Santa Clause out of office as long as we, the elves, continue to make free toys.
I don't care if Lincoln, Reagan, and Jefferson got all rolled into one candidate, he will not win in this "entitlement" culture.
The socialists are winning.
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