Posted on 11/07/2012 3:23:45 AM PST by xzins
I knew last week that it was over, and I knew it because of Benghazi, the very issue that had me reluctantly put my check mark next to Romney's name, because I couldn't conceive that a Romney administration would have abandoned the lives of our heroes to the hatred of Al Qaeda.
Benghazi, Budget, BamaCare, Barrios....the 4 B's.
During the debates, conservative commentators liked to talk about Bayonets and Battleships, but four other B's explain Romney's loss and why he was the wrong man to carry the flag.
Benghazi was a window of opportunity presented to Romney that he was too timid to address. Some say that Romney decided after the first debate to just run out the clock. Well, events intervened and Hurricane Sandy made running out the clock impossible. (Give Governor Chris Christi an assist with mother nature's efforts.) In reality, though, discussion of Benghazi by Romney could have continued throughout Sandy, but Romney never again picked up the one issue that was moving the polls at that time. Once Candy Crowley slapped him in debate #2, he backed off. It was an absolute scandal, and no one ever asked Obama where he was at the time the live feed from Libya was playing. Romney lost for lack of sand.
Romney muzzled Ryan and the budget debate never was held. The very reason he was called courageous for his Ryan pick was the very thing they shut Ryan down on. Ryan was reduced to waving his arms at Romney gatherings. Platitudes of balancing budgets were common, but there was no stomach for discussing the real dangers affecting America is the budget was not controlled. Tepid describes the Romney approach to the budget.
As predicted, Romney never addressed the very issue that brought about the Tea Party. ObamaCare was simply not an issue for Romney. He was vulnerable due to his own support of RomneyCare, parent of ObamaCare, so he really couldn't attack the idea of big government health care. When it came to ObamaCare, Romney was simply the wrong guy to carry the message. Romney was AWOL -- as predicted during the primary season -- on ObamaCare.
The barrios of America rejected Romney by a huge margin. Forty-four percent of Hispanics supported George W. Bush. Romney garnered a meager 28%. Sadly, most Hispanic Americans have religious reasons to support a more conservative view of life and should naturally fall into the conservative camp. Anyone who has ever watched a migrant worker picking fruit in a field knows that a huge number of Hispanices do not shy from hard work. Sure there are those who would rather live on the dole, but isn't that the case with every demographic? Romney shot the one messenger who had a message that obviously appealed to Hispanic Americans, the governor of Texas. Like Perry or not, the same as George W. Bush, Perry had to get elected in a highly Hispanic state, Texas, so his sensibilities on the subject of the Hispanic vote should have been heeded.
Conservatives must find the inner resolve to admit that targeting Hispanic illegals makes Hispanic legals worry about their inalienable rights of privacy, search and seizure, and equal treatment. Another bitter pill for conservatives is that Hispanic legals are more compassionate toward Hispanic illegals than is the average conservative. With significant Hispanic populations in most of the swing states, conservatives should have noticed that Perry had found a balance that elevated him to the governor's seat in Texas AND permitted him to apply both economic and social conservatism throughout his state. The bottom line is that inalienable rights SHOULD BE a conservative issue. And while "compassionate conservatism" earned George Bush enmity with many conservatives, it also earned him the White House. Conservatives need to rethink the Hispanic vote and acknowledge that concerns about individual inalienable rights trump immigration purity in their minds.
It was too late for Romney, though. He had already taken a hard line stance to win the primary debate with Perry, attacking him mercilessly along with Michelle Bachman. He launched another barrage against Newt Gingrich on the same subject. Neither Romney nor Bachman was experienced in winning the Hispanic vote. Perry was inexperienced in winning primaries. In this instance, Romney lacked the determination of George W. Bush to push back against the poorly aimed concerns of base conservatives.
Romney's loss was predictable and was predicted. The reasons will open a huge debate. The four B's explain much: Benghazi, Budget, oBamaCare, and Barrios. In each instance, whether due to timidity or misguided policy, Romney proved to be the wrong candidate. Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong message.
There’s not much water in the Red River anyway so perhaps OK can come along as well.
Romney hit the nail on the head with his 47% observation. Running against a conservative is not that hard. Give the store away to the 47% and then run your election focused on picking up another 3% along the way.
Exactly, the American people had the sharp stick of reality poking them in the back toward Mitt. This restult is not with Mitt not running well, or from Obama running well, it is pure and simply a reflection on the state of the American people.
America is now enrolled in advanced courses in the school of hard knocks.
Name one conservative principle or idea Romney embraced. He agreed with Obama’s policies - both domestic and foreign. I couldn’t embrace them and for the first time in life, I skipped voting. I don’t feel particularly terrible this morning. For me, there won’t be any good deal of change in the next four years. I felt that Romney wouldn’t have made my life better.
It can never be proven, of course, but I’m pretty convinced that taking up the Benghazi banner would have won this for Romney. It was delivered to him, and he refused to pick it up.
It was symbolic of everything wrong with the Obama administration. It was the president directly lying time and again to the public. It was cowardice. It was anti-military.
The other 3 policy points would have helped Romney, but despite even them, Benghazi would have exploded a lot of Obama’s and the media’s support.
“Romney ran a superb race but he couldn’t undo the Soros vote rigging machines and the other fraud....”
Gilded angels, pretended virtues and one whitewashed jackass on sale now.
and Paul Ryan is no longer in Congress...
Bull. People don’t change their vote over a single comment.
All you need to do is win the Precinct Captains. Chicago politics. But it only works in Presidential elections. 2014 is the year we crush the Democrats in Congress.
America woke up this morning and said “Something isn’t right”. You can feel it. Even my Democrat friends are a little uneasy. They are tired of defending Obama. It’s a hard job. How did a President with a Trillion and a half dollar deficit, 8% unemployment, unpopular war and scandals galore win re-election?
America re-elected a President they don’t want. We need to remind them of that every day until 2014.
Santorum would have lost by an bigger margin.
This country has changed and the Democrats and and Obama have created a coalition that will rule this country for a long time.
He is as transformative a President as FDR. And its possible for Republicans to still win but it will be only when people get tired of Democratic excesses.
We are becoming a minority in this country and like it or not there is no easy path back to power. If we give up on principles, we become like them.
Some good insight. Thank.
The current level of vote fraud is now the permanent minimum.
I see a train wreck of politics and finance.
Did Ryan lose his congressional seat?
I heard he hadn’t left the race just a few days ago. It surprised me.
It was the same with McCain ...he played both ends against the middle, so he had a back up plan that probably made him not fight as hard as he should have.
But Ryan lost, huh? Didn’t know that.
In any case, we had four home states that rejected their favorite son: Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. I think the first 3 are all considered “home” for Romney at some point or another.
I don’t know if Ryan is a native Badger or an immigrant.
Your explanation for Romney's loss is spot on: Those of us who blame voter fraud, the MSM, George Soros, or changing demographics are in denial. The reason we lost is because we allowed the GOP elite to shove an unpopular, moderate-liberal candidate down our throats. Obama received about the same number of votes as Kerry did in 2004 -- that's about 10,000,000 fewer votes than Obama received in 2008. The problem is that Romney received about three million fewer votes than McCain in 2008 and about 4,000,000 fewer votes than Bush in 2004.
This is not a case of shifting demographics from right to left, because the votes that Romney lost from 2008 and 2004 did not end up in Obama's pocket; rather, beginning on November 3, 2008, the GOP elites threw their support to the candidate who lost to the candidate who lost to Obama and then viciously attacked the Tea Party and anyone else who suggested that Romney was too liberal to galvanize the base. And that's exactly what happened: The base stayed home because they decided not to compromise their values and vote for a liberal Republican over a liberal Democrat. It's that simple and don't let the Rove's, Will's, and Coulter's convince us differently or we will end up with Jeb Bush or Chris Christie losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“Evamgelicals, it seems, would rather have a left wing president who supports abortion and gay marriage, than vote for a morman. Self proclaimed tru conservative,like many onFR, would rather have Obama than vote for that RINO Romney.”
Look at the map.
Against their consciences, many evangelicals voted for the “severe conservative” “Mitt” Romney. This fake carried the states which are overwhelmingly evangelical. He lost in the festered, rotted, leftist blue states, despite the fact that he is one of their own.
The only thing evangelicals should be ashamed of is looking to this fraudulent and weak candidate of a fraudulent and weak party and expecting any better of it.
Brit Hume said it last night.
The 40% of the moderates - whom every one went after - are liberals.
We live in a center-left country and if we continue to write off New York and California, we will never win a national election. And that’s true regardless of whom the GOP might nominate in the future.
I agree with you on all your points about Romney (whom I voted for, too, although I was certainly not happy when he was selected as the candidate).
Someone made the point on Breitbart that the determining factor was a cultural one, that is, that the majority of Americans are now fine with an internationalist, government-dominated moral and economic life. I think that’s true to some extent, but I also think that there are many who are very unhappy about it and unfortunately Romney didn’t give them a rallying point for expressing this. He and the GOP strategists obviously decided that the way to win was to cater to the culture rather than oppose it, and they really never called Obama and the Dems on anything they have said or even done.
I think Perry or Gingrich would have been real opposition candidates and we might have won with either of them, because they would have provided that cultural rallying point. (And both of them, btw, would have been brave enough to address the concerns of Hispanic voters, who are fundamentally conservative but feel unwelcome in the GOP).
Ryan kept his seat with 54.9 percent.
I'm guessing I won't get flamed anymore saying the fix was in. The GOP wasn't going to have any other candidate but him since '08 or before. They meant to lose both these elections. Don't think for a moment it was the RATs who whittled down the conservative candidates and caused them to drop out of the primary race. No, the GOP did that. We haven't had a two party system since at least the middle of W's time and probably since BJ. They're all in bed together.
We need a "like" button so I can like your post. It really IS that simple. DEMOGRAPHICS, MEDIA and MOOCHERS. PERIOD. DMM.
Demographics - Obama made inroads to a growing hispanic population via his fake dream act. He made inroads to women by crying and scaring. The GOP NEVER put together a defense...but acted like talking the truth was the third rail. There are now a lot of single moms. They are driven by emotions, by and large. He manufactured a war on women and the GOP never once stood up...looked them in the eye...and told them they were full of BS.
Media - Enough said. The GOP has to figure out HOW to use the media...like the dems. Listen, I couldn't open youtube without seeing an Obama add. The GOP...and I said it in 2008...doesn't understand we are a changing landscape. They still don't get it. The GOP has to learn how to put together a hard-hitting truthful 15 second soundbite.
Moochers - Obama has created an underclass of peasants. They want bread and circuses from the empire. That underclass will grow.
Also...we have to find good candidates. Sorry...but people are not ready to vote for a mormon. I am a minister...and even though I did vote for Romney...that is a factor that prevented people from abandoning Obama. But Romney couldn't go negative on certain areas (Obamacare) because he was guilty of the same. The GOP has to FORCE the media to do their jobs. You do this by being the loudest person in the room.
Finally...Romney should have picked Rubio. I said it at the time...that he HAD to pick him. BUT...he picked a guy the right lies from a state with 10 EV's. WRONG.
So yes...prep, pray and get right with the Lord. You are gonna need it.
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