Posted on 11/06/2012 10:42:38 PM PST by nathanbedford
The loss of this presidential election under these economic circumstances is so appalling that it raises existential questions about the Republican Party and the future of conservatism in America. With unemployment through the roof, with housing through the floor, with nearly 50,000,000 people on food stamps, with the government hemorrhaging money and the debt soaring, the Republican Party must ask itself, if we cannot win today can we ever win?
It is important to identify the reasons for this epic fail so that the conservative movement can go on. The first item of business is to distinguish between failure which can be blamed on the quality of the candidate or the mechanics of the campaign and a failure which represents a fatal disconnect with the people of America.
We are now in for a season of second-guessing Romney and the strategy of the campaign. This is inevitable and necessary but it is important that we do it constructively, it is important that it be done right.
We will hear many assertions: the acrimonious primary season inflicted wounds on ourselves which gave Obama a head start; Romney tactically left the field open to Obama after he clinched the nomination and Obama simply painted Romney negatively by carpet bombing him with television ads; Romney funneled his campaign strategy too narrowly, both geographically and philosophically-that is, Romney was too late going to Wisconsin, too late going to Pennsylvania, and Romney narrowed the focus of his campaign to economic issues only, thus conceding all other issues to Obama; Obama was thus able, with the support of a complicit media, to raise strawmen issues which were in many respects preposterous yet they forced Romney on the defensive and blunted his message on the economy; Romney picked the wrong vice presidential candidate, he should have picked Marco Rubio and he would have made inroads into the Hispanic vote and the failure to do so cost him the election; the selection of Paul Ryan was the physical embodiment of an abandonment of a campaign addressing the demographic realities of America to concentrate on a campaign of economic issues; the Romney campaign worked at cross purposes in the selection of Paul Ryan of Wisconsin when it coupled that choice with a failure heavily to campaign in Wisconsin-if the decision was to campaign almost exclusively on economic issues with Paul Ryan, that implied an all out campaign in Wisconsin which was never really undertaken until too late; the campaign ignored vulnerabilities and failed to exploit opportunities to wit: it lost the women's vote along with the Hispanic vote over bogus issues of abortion and birth control by failing to fight back and failing to present a credible female spokesperson and it failed to exploit Benghazi; the campaign made these errors of omission because of its fundamental mistake to concentrate on economic issues; Romney performed brilliantly in the first debate, even contriving to offset the advantage Obama had derived from his negative air war, but fatally decided to play it safe in the second and third debates and surrendered the momentum to Obama-and the failure to exploit Benghazi is the principle example of this failure of conception a shift nd execution; hurricane Sandy entered dues ex machine and, coupled with the treachery of Christie, gave the momentum back to Obama who have been cruising toward a loss.
Other second-guessers, probably featuring Rush Limbaugh prominently among them, will focus on the biography of Romney and maintain that the key failure was to nominate a Rino who cannot win but conservatives can win. The difficulty with this analysis is that the Republican Party clearly coalesced behind Romney after the first debate.
Others will avert to Romney's original assessment of the political landscape, that 47% of the population is lost to the Republican cause and the Republican candidate must concentrate on the remaining 53%. This is another way of casting the age-old tension between conservatives and Rinos because the Rinos solution, which was Romney's solution, is to focus exclusively on economic issues and run a white bread campaign. This means that Romney presented himself to be reassuring to independents, to women, as especially single women. The conservative rejoinder, of course, is that a passive stance in which one achieves a neutral nonaggressive posture, nonthreatening to women, is not a winning stance which must come from a more aggressive issue oriented campaign driving home conservatives truths. But wait! We run such a campaign and the Democrats counter with race. The truth which we must face is that we have not found the solution to this demagoguery.
Others will point to the media and say that it is almost impossible for a Republican to win nationally against the Democrat especially when the media will do everything short of committing murder to support a black president. There is a lot of truth in this but to acknowledge the reality is not to provide the solution. Conservatives want an aggressive campaign such as that conducted by Newt Gingrich in the primaries against the media as well as an aggressive campaign against the Democrats. Romney decided to simply absorb much of the media bias and ignore the issue to death, much as he attempted to deal with the gender gap. I observed at the time that as a conservative I want a crusade against Obama and Romney was running a campaign. In the event, we got neither.
Mechanics, or "architects" if you prefer, such as Karl Rove will tell us whether we failed on the ground or in the air. When Karl Rove ran the ground campaign in Ohio he prevailed. We were assured this time that our ground game in Ohio was far superior to 2004. We had evidence that our ground game in Wisconsin was superior to what the Democrats could muster in three previous statewide elections. Yet we failed. My problem is that I credit Karl Rove with the ability accurately to diagnose the problem but I am wary of his politics. I am satisfied with Rush Limbaugh's politics, but I am dubious of his ability to understand the nuts and bolts of the mechanical apparatus. This is important because ultimately we must accept that this election is so devastating under these circumstances that we must submit to an agonizing reappraisal of our basic politics and not seek rationalizations in the mechanics. Was this election a perfect storm of minor mistakes, bad weather, poor ground game, and media bias that caused America to cruise toward its own destruction or is there simply no denying the obvious, the Republican Party is not succeeding as a messenger for conservatism and conservatism has not crafted a message which works with the public?
Consider how we were handcuffed in this election. We are in a political world in which Obama could blatantly play the race card without any negative consequences. We can review the entire administration of Attorney General Eric holder or we can simply look at Obama's transparent grab for Hispanic votes with amnesty to see how cynically he has governed and campaigned. Normally every political decision, like YING and Yang, has an upside and a downside but there seems to have been no downside to Obama in playing the race card. Where was the blowback among white voters? How can Elizabeth Warren, for example, be exposed for fraudulently advancing herself by claiming American Indian heritage at the expense of honest white job applicants, and suffer no identifiable loss at the polls? Are we as a society destined to be Balkanized by the Democrat party playing sex against sex and race against race to its selfish electoral advantage but to the destruction of the country? Why were we so ineffective in making the world see the world the way we see it? We see the world hurtling toward a fiscal cliff and the destruction of our prosperity. Obama wins the election not by addressing the massive deficit which is turning America into Greece but by handing out birth control pills like Halloween candy. How did it happen that Obama ran the campaign on his terms and not on reality-at least reality as we see it? Why did small ball win?
Is it that we fail to see the world as it really is? Are we wrong and the people who vote their gender, their color, their tribe, their purse, right? No! Our conservative worldview is the right worldview and the leftist worldview is wrong. That is not up for discussion among conservatives. But it is the way of political folly to blame the electorate for one's failure at the polls no matter how easy the temptation. It is easy to say that women who are voting their vaginas are condemning their children to penury but they did not hear us say so or, if they did, they did not heed us. We spent $1 billion and still could not convince them of our view of the world. We are in a game of politics to gain political power and govern according to our world view. When we fail to win, we fail utterly. The real question is why could we not win against a demonstrably failed president with failed policies who ran a racist campaign, a sexist campaign, and played small ball on every issue when we had $1 billion, a squeaky clean candidate, the House of Representatives, the majority of governorships and state legislatures, and the best economic statistics since Franklin Roosevelt?
Before we take refuge in blaming the electorate we should look in the mirror. Before we look for easy answers by blaming Romney, by blaming the media, by blaming tactical decisions such as the selection of Paul Ryan with which we agreed at the time, we should look long and hard into the mirror.
Perhaps we went wrong last cycle in blaming the loss on John McCain. Perhaps there is a dimension to the electorate that we simply do not understand. I posted long and hard at the time that John McCain would lose the election unless he morally destroyed Barack Obama and depicted him to be the Marxist that he was. Many of us in the beginning of this election season questioned whether Romney was correct in attacking Obama is "incompetent" rather than as a radical leftist. When the campaign appeared to be prevailing, I withdrew the criticism. I think we have to thoroughly examine the issue whether we can ever beat a Democrat candidate without personally destroying him. This is not cynical, this is only to bring a gun to a gunfight. So far, in the last two election cycles our campaigns have failed to take Obama on for his radicalism, probably because of fear of his race.We all know a demographic tsunami is about to engulf conservatism. We must decide how to cope with the threat. Do we cope by destroying our opponent the way attempted to destroy Romney or do we cope by pandering to African-Americans, or do we find a Marco Rubio to ingratiate us with Hispanics? Can we run successfully as conservatives by ignoring race as Romney attempted to do?
Before we take refuge in disdain for the electorate and find sour grapes satisfaction by saying they deserve to suffer in the implosion which we believe will come, we should figure out how to compete and win. Remember, it is human nature to rationalize failure by blaming others. Remember also that it is human nature to try to cure failed socialism with more socialism. That is the real reason why Obama was reelected. The electorate does not associate the great recession with government action, rather it associates salvation from the recession with government intervention. The electorate does not believe that government insistence on granting mortgages to risky homebuyers helped precipitate the great recession. They have come to believe that the government should step in to protect mortgagors who are underwater. The electorate wants more socialism to fix failed socialism. We lost the argument.
Unless we fix what is wrong we will lose it again and again until there is nothing left in America to save.
We are running out of time, we are running out of money, and we are running out of white people. This election forces conservatism into a race against the forces of Obamaism to fix itself in time to win the next election before we are bankrupted or engulfed. Either way we lose not just our prosperity but our liberty.
Excellent commentary as usual.
As I ponder the issues you’ve raised, I’ve been giving considerable thought to the role government plays in modern life and what forces may be responsible for its increasing power.
The Constitution, designed to limit government and preserve individual liberty, was written for a primarily rural agrarian society in which shared Christian religious beliefs played a critical role in defining social values and acceptable behavior. In that time, a man desiring true independence and freedom could walk into the wilderness, purchase land at little or no cost, and sustain his existence by growing and capturing his own food. Inhabitants of rural areas to this day tend to be more conservative politically and socially, more religious, and more respectful of the Constitution than urban dwellers.
Today self sufficient farmers comprise less than 5% of the population. Most citizens are urban/suburban dwellers and are highly dependent on modern technology as well as other people for survival in densely populated areas. The concept of true independence and self sufficiency, much less the skills required to achieve it, are unknown to the average 21st century urban dwelling American. The interdependence of urban life and the scale achievable in densely populated environments seems to naturally foster the growth of government. Government assumes the role of defining common rules of social behavior formerly the province of religion. Government police power and regulatory control over commerce ensures the safety of citizens and the ongoing flow of life sustaining food and other essentials which urban citizens cannot ensure for themselves acting as individuals.
It may be that for the 21st century urban dweller a government highly involved in managing the interdependencies required to sustain life in densely populated areas reliant on sophisticated modern technology is as important as individual liberty to the rural farmer of the founding era. The choice of living in an urban population center requires the individual to rely on technology and other people for survival. The acceptance of government control, and acceptance of government limitations on freedom naturally follows. Perhaps this is why the urban dweller of today is so accepting of te collectivist mindset in which the desires of the individual are subordinated to the needs or goals of the community. To a man who has no concept of liberty the state’s role in everyday life seems part of the natural order not unlike the weather part of the natural order to the rural farmer.
As I observe the increasingly bitter political division between the densely populated blue counties, and the more rural and less populated red counties, I wonder if the system of government envisioned by the founders is simply incompatible with the requirements of organizing and sustaining a 21st century urban society. If the survival of the urban community requires a collectivist mindset, conservatives will not be successful achieving our goals of limiting the size, influence and power of the a central government dedicated to managing the infrastructure of the urban center. To the urban collectivist, individual liberty equates to chaos which is extremely dangerous in an environment where inhabitants are extremely dependent. If so the only viable alternatives to achieving harmony between the urban dweller and rural dweller are separation or coercive conquest.
It seems at this moment in time the primarily rural red county conservatives are engaged in a hopeless effort at persuasion through an electoral process designed over 200 years ago, and no longer embraced by the blue county dwellers. These “blue” urban collectivists seem determined to conquer and completely subjugate conservatives in order to ensure their own survival and well being. If this is the case we should be determining and executing our own strategy for survival instead of continuing to expend energy and resources trying to win national and regional elections where we simply do not have the numbers to prevail because the urban collectivist a will never be receptive to the message or willing to peacefully coexist. To preserve personal liberty it may be necessary to achieve true independence from the urban centers where a strong government role in daily life is deemed essential for survival.
Excellent commentary as usual.
As I ponder the issues you’ve raised, I’ve been giving considerable thought to the role government plays in modern life and what forces may be responsible for its increasing power.
The Constitution, designed to limit government and preserve individual liberty, was written for a primarily rural agrarian society in which shared Christian religious beliefs played a critical role in defining social values and acceptable behavior. In that time, a man desiring true independence and freedom could walk into the wilderness, purchase land at little or no cost, and sustain his existence by growing and capturing his own food. Inhabitants of rural areas to this day tend to be more conservative politically and socially, more religious, and more respectful of the Constitution than urban dwellers.
Today self sufficient farmers comprise less than 5% of the population. Most citizens are urban/suburban dwellers and are highly dependent on modern technology as well as other people for survival in densely populated areas. The concept of true independence and self sufficiency, much less the skills required to achieve it, are unknown to the average 21st century urban dwelling American. The interdependence of urban life and the scale achievable in densely populated environments seems to naturally foster the growth of government. Government assumes the role of defining common rules of social behavior formerly the province of religion. Government police power and regulatory control over commerce ensures the safety of citizens and the ongoing flow of life sustaining food and other essentials which urban citizens cannot ensure for themselves acting as individuals.
It may be that for the 21st century urban dweller a government highly involved in managing the interdependencies required to sustain life in densely populated areas reliant on sophisticated modern technology is as important as individual liberty to the rural farmer of the founding era. The choice of living in an urban population center requires the individual to rely on technology and other people for survival. The acceptance of government control, and acceptance of government limitations on freedom naturally follows. Perhaps this is why the urban dweller of today is so accepting of te collectivist mindset in which the desires of the individual are subordinated to the needs or goals of the community. To a man who has no concept of liberty the state’s role in everyday life seems part of the natural order not unlike the weather part of the natural order to the rural farmer.
As I observe the increasingly bitter political division between the densely populated blue counties, and the more rural and less populated red counties, I wonder if the system of government envisioned by the founders is simply incompatible with the requirements of organizing and sustaining a 21st century urban society. If the survival of the urban community requires a collectivist mindset, conservatives will not be successful achieving our goals of limiting the size, influence and power of the a central government dedicated to managing the infrastructure of the urban center. To the urban collectivist, individual liberty equates to chaos which is extremely dangerous in an environment where inhabitants are extremely dependent. If so the only viable alternatives to achieving harmony between the urban dweller and rural dweller are separation or coercive conquest.
It seems at this moment in time the primarily rural red county conservatives are engaged in a hopeless effort at persuasion through an electoral process designed over 200 years ago, and no longer embraced by the blue county dwellers. These “blue” urban collectivists seem determined to conquer and completely subjugate conservatives in order to ensure their own survival and well being. If this is the case we should be determining and executing our own strategy for survival instead of continuing to expend energy and resources trying to win national and regional elections where we simply do not have the numbers to prevail because the urban collectivist a will never be receptive to the message or willing to peacefully coexist. To preserve personal liberty it may be necessary to achieve true independence from the urban centers where a strong government role in daily life is deemed essential for survival.
Well put.
I think coercive conquest would be the better choice if by that you mean somehow getting the urban collectivists to relocate to more rural setting. If you could disperse the population more evenly then maybe the collectivist model wouldn’t make so much sense for all those people.
But then again it’s going to be impossible to relocate millions of people if large swaths of the country are successful turned into wildlife/nature no-go zones, rewilding etc.
As our agrarian way of life was exchanged for the city and the suburbs and the frontier was no longer available as an escape valve, the pressure for more government inexorably grew. Today, the Democrats keep the pressure up by flooding us with a flood of immigrants, legal and illegal, digestible and culturally indigestible.
Since they also control the institutions which should digest immigrants such as our educational establishment, they control the temperature of the pressure cooker.
Really! I keep asking myself, “Where is our Alamo?”
The simple truth is, I do not know and that is precisely why I did not make an assertion but set forth matters to be considered. There are many posters on this thread who think they do know but I am skeptical that they have read the raw data and even if they read them, I am skeptical that they are sophisticated enough properly to analyze them.
We are keen to assert blame and advance our philosophical predisposition: Romney could not have one because he was a Rino; Romney lost because he lost Hispanics and women and got pushed into an extremist corner. Romney should have run farther to the right or he should have run further to the left.
My point is that we have to be careful about what conclusions we draw and why and, equally important, we have to ask the right questions. Was this a mechanical failure or is it simply an unpalatable truth that conservatism does not sell? Somebody's opinion on these issues is of absolutely no value even if written on this thread in bold capital letters and italicized.
Where is the data?
As I observe the increasingly bitter political division between the densely populated blue counties, and the more rural and less populated red counties, I wonder if the system of government envisioned by the founders is simply incompatible with the requirements of organizing and sustaining a 21st century urban society.
I would suggest that it is not merely the 21st century that presents the dilemma: an incompatibility seems to have existed as long as civilization has been able to maintain what would be considered an "urban" area at any given time, and Jefferson's comments about the value of cities show that he was at least aware of it.
In any event, I have long said that the fault lines in the US are urban vs rural (and small town), and the blue areas will use any means to subjugate the red, including systematic ethnic cleansing via third-world immigration.
Mr. niteowl77
As usual, you have written an insightful essay on the problem.
Your observations on race are spot on. Indeed, it appears that we are running out of white people and there is nothing in the demographics that suggest a way out of that and its implications. I cannot recall the author but someone once wrote “Demographics is destiny.”
It is plain as can be to me that the majority of the Mexicans and other Latin American immigrants (legal and otherwise) are here only to derive wealth from this country and have very little to no interest in our political institutions.
Freedom and prosperity may be just a “moment” that we were lucky to experience.
Why did you bury the lead?
That is how most people vote. Always have been. Which is why democracy is not a stable form of government. Most people do not have the ability or the time to think about the issues. They worship the god in their belly.
Demographically, we also have to acknowledge what is going on. The West is over. We in North America are in a better position that those in Europe, as most of our immigrants are at least familiar with Western Civilization.
The real question is what do we do now? Where do we go from here? People don't want fiscal or social conservatism right now, because that means a check on the appetite. Self denial is the only mortal sin the culture recognizes today.
People want a boss. It makes them feel safe.
I'm as anti-amnesty as you are, so don't get me wrong.
However a Romney election was the last chance we had to stop or reverse the tide of illegals.
One of the crucial factors in Romney's loss was that we have already reached the tipping point whereby non-assimilated immigrants have taken away political control from traditional American citizens.
Now, with Obama safely entrenched, we will see an even greater expansion in our population of non-assimilated immigrants. And they will vote, legally or not.
If this analysis is correct, then no GOP standard-bearer who holds our opinion will be able to win, ever again. Which of course is a dreadful calamity for our nation.
Agreed, and *this has to be a pubric skrewl thing, where the girls grow up with the Amish kid and so they perceive he has two strikes starting out. They see Bobo floundering like that same Amish kid they knew in school, they one that no one would ever give a second chance to (perhaps rightfully so), and this is the way to make up for it.
Short of putting anti-estrogens in the water supply, there is no way to combat that female mindset. None.
Pity, if you had read further you would have encountered:
there simply no denying the obvious, the Republican Party is not succeeding as a messenger for conservatism and conservatism has not crafted a message which works with the public?
“Moderate to liberal GOP candidates for President don’t win.”
Explain the conservative, fire-breathing Alan West loss.
Well,
1. This graphic of the exit polls compared to 2008 is very instructive:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-exit-polls/
Romney improved compared to McCain as you would expect with all segments of the populations except hispanics and Asian Americans. Romney improved with women, with men, with the youth, with blacks, with moderates, with independents, Jews, Catholics, etc.
The problem as I see it is two fold. Romney improved with those groups but not quite enough in FL, NH, OH, and VA. Both hispanics and Asian Americans moved against him pretty dramatically.
2. I guess with hispanics Americans the key issue is immigration. But with Asian Americans what is it. Is it respect for authority and the power of incumbency? I have seen little mention of this this year, not nearly as much as mentioned when other incumbent presidents have been running.
Still the party of self-reliance and hard work and God lost two immigrant groups who are known for hard work. This is particularly true of Asian Americans. Also hispanic American typically have values much closer to the GOP than the Democrats. The GOP and its presidential candidates must find a way to get its fair share of these voters. The GOP has with Roman Catholic voters, with Italian voters, with Irish voters, with various groups that in the past have been Democrat groups, so it can be done.
2. Traditionally weak campaigns pick VP candidates who have never won a statewide office. Statewide office holders smell a loser and do not sign up for VP with Goldwater, Mondale, ect. I do not think that was the case this time, but picking Ryan still could be viewed by some voters as a sign Romney was not a good candidate. Ultimately, Ryan brought nothing to the ticket. Romney appears plenty enough of a policy wonk that he did not need to add policy wonk cred to his ticket. Whether Rubio would have brought in Florida or Santorum Pennsylvania we can never know for sure, but Romney should have tried to make the VP choice count.
3. Romney’s ground game may not have been up to snuff. Since I posted last night he has at least surpassed McCain’s 2008 vote in VA. So maybe the early view on turnout is wrong, but what happened to the energy of 2010? Why wasn’t that tapped?
Sure thing.
Can you say "vote fraud"?
Systematic, calculated, nation-wide, most likely run right out of the WH through the Spanish company hired to "count" all the votes last year and with their pimp media's full knowledge and support. If there's been estimates that Romney turned out 14,000,000 FEWER votes than McCain, I'd bet that there's that exact same number of folks got themselves disenfranchised last night.
We just got royally screwed, gyrene.
Very well thought-out article, thank you.
I might add one other failure that I cringed about was Romney’s insistence in the debates that “we have to crack down on China for cheating and manipulating their currency.”
That just lost him most of the Asian vote here in America. And besides, isn’t the US “manipulating their currency???” Duh! And it will create a trade war, which fiscal conservatives are fundamentally against.
Given the huge MSM headwinds against him, Romney was amazingly close. The idealists (Freepers and libertarians) who are delusional enough about modern American culture to think that running a more conservative candidate than Romney – and win – are in for a big disappointment.
This country is now too stupid/brainwashed, so the reversal CAN ONLY be done incrementally. Romney would have been a stepping stone back to full conservatism. Rome wasn’t rebuilt in a day.
So, I was indeed enjoying your article until I got to this last sentence:
“Unless we fix what is wrong we will lose it again and again until there is nothing left in America to save. We are running out of time, we are running out of money, and we are running out of white people.”
What does conservatism have to do with skin color???
Why did you write a very thoughtful analysis of Romney strategic missteps - which I agree with - and then end on this note?
If at all possible, I encourage you to rewrite that last sentence with something to the effect of: “We are running out of CONSERVATIVES” lest you come across as the White Supremacist that you probably are.
Please don’t continue to give the left any ammo against those of us fiscal conservatives who strive for a colorblind society (e.g. no affirmative action, no government racism).
It’s comments like that and the use of a nathanbedford handle that give conservatives a bad name. And yes I read your profile rationale of your moniker. Doesn’t fly with me at all and your last paragraph shows your true self.
Exactly!
When we let the other side control media and education, we are fighting with a profound handicap. Conservatives must start pushing into those areas for the long haul. It will take a generation or two, as it did for liberals.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.