[mojito]

I'm not sure I could add much to this. Seems pretty accurate in its assessments.

[dfwgator]

It’s going to take the country hitting rock bottom before people start listening to conservatives again...for now, for all intents and purposes, we are a One-Party State.

[comebacknewt]

We are no longer left of center either.

We took a massive turn left yesterday. And from the looks of it, we are only going to stampede further left in the years to come.

There will be hell to pay. Might as well let it crash now, so we can get started on the reconstruction sooner rather than later.

[The Sons of Liberty]

The Meaning of Yesterday’s Defeat

The "ME generation hit voting age back around '08. Everyone votes, not with respect of what is best for The Country, but "what's in it for me". What better guy than Barry (it's all about ME) Benghazi.

BTW - "0bama gone put gas in mah cah and make mah house payment. And he gave this free phone."

[70times7]

America:

[apillar]

Sadly enough I think Bill O'Reilly was correct last night. He sad that yesterday's election was the most important in a century because it marked a turning point for America. It was the point at which we were given a choice whether we wanted to return to the path that made us great or become just another Western European style welfare state. We chose the later, so from now on 10% unemployment, economic stagnation, and massive deficits are the norm, because that is the price you pay for that type of society. The next thing to go will be the military because it is impossible to pay for a cradle to grave welfare state and a world class military.

The future belongs to countries like India and China, The United States is currently where the British Empire was in 1912....

[5thGenTexan]

The Takers outnumber the Makers, and the Takers are so brainwashed that they cannot be converted.

The attrition that will occur in their ranks when they are cut off in the inevitable collapse is the only way to lower their numbers. We just have to ride out the storm and rise from the ashes.

[brownsfan]

Good article. It immediately occurred to me that America is now a leftist nation. The author brings up some good points. I agree with all of it.

My only question is, is there a conservative nation left on Earth? How could a young person go somewhere and start fresh when the place they go to is just as screwed up.

[DBeers]

What lessons can we draw?

That the left got more people to the polls in key states in key areas. Community Organizing 101....

[Schatze]

The stark question posed by the country’s unmistakable drift to the left is, does America have a future?

Short answer: No. All one can say is, "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they have done."

[justa-hairyape]

This plurality includes a vast number of citizens who describe themselves as moderates, but whose views on the issues are identical or similar to those that have historically been deemed liberal.

Not true. Finally saw some of the Obama ads that ran here in Texas the final week or two before the election. And I have to admit, they kinda sounded good to this conservative. He had killed Osama Bin Laden. He saved the Auto companies. He was trying to solve the budget crisis from Bush. Heck, kinda got me excited a little. So basically, Obama lied like the weasel he is. And we now know that if Palin had been the VP, the election might have been a repeat of Gore/Bush. Obama 60.1 million. McCain Palin 59.9 million. Dead heat with electorial college deciding.

[VanDeKoik]

“So with the economy the dominant issue in the campaign, why did that consensus not assure a Romney victory? Because a great many people live outside the real, competitive economy. Over 100 million receive means tested benefits from the federal government, many more from the states. And, of course, a great many more are public employees. To many millions of Americans, the economy is mostly an abstraction.”

It is because 4 generations of Americans have lived in a nation free of a war of immediate threat, crippling economic depression, and cheap plentiful junk at the store and on TV.

In short, we have millions that think that life as it is in America IS THE DEFAULT SETTINGS FOR LIFE ON EARTH.

So for them, they can play with socialism and redistribution. That they can get free goodies from the government. That they can just pay for stuff with a plastic card or paper because those things are “worth” something.

America is a 60-year old dreamworld that puts the Roman Empire to shame and the dream is about up.

[Dead Dog]

We lost because we countered the Obama Phone with Obama Phone w/ fewer minutes.

Looks at the numbers...Obama got about the same number of voters as GW did in 2004...who was also a weak incumbent.

Conservatives are not in a demographic decline, we simply haven’t had a canidate since 1984.

BTW, this election was fraud-a-polousa. We need to clean that up first.

[gotribe]

Just send me my ObamaChip. I’m assuming im-plantation is covered by obamacare?

[smokingfrog]

The country as a whole is still center-right, but that doesn’t really matter any more. As long as you can get the majority vote in the large population centers that tend to go liberal, you will win the election.

[Right_Wing_Madman]

The question is, can this vicious cycle ever be broken?

The cycle will be broken only after a crisis.

The next four years will bring unprecedented levels of spending, borrowing and taxation.

Yep. And don't forget unprecedented levels of money printing.

To me, the most telling incident of the campaign season was a poll that found that among young Americans, socialism enjoys a higher favorability rating than free enterprise.

Conservatives have lost the culture war in this country, especially among young people. Conservatism won't gain any ground until after catastrophe.

How can this possibly be, given the catastrophic failure of socialism, and the corresponding success of free enterprise, throughout history?

Human nature. People forget. Empires and civilizations rise and fall. Successful societies eventually lack incentives to produce.

Barack Obama’s budget–the one that was too extreme to garner a single vote in either the House or the Senate–projects that in four years, we will have a $20 trillion debt. That debt will be paid off by a relatively small minority of our young people, the most productive.

The debt is never going to be paid off. America is going to default. The debt is currently $16 trillion. The U.S. would have to run a surplus of $500 billion per year for 32 straight years to get back to zero. That. Will. Not. Happen.

If you were in that category, and had to make a choice between staying in the United States and inheriting a debt that could well be $1 million or more, and starting fresh in another country, what would you do?

At this point, it makes more economic sense for the U.S. to default than to pay back $16 trillion.

And if you were an investor, where would you put your money? In the United States, where hopelessness reigns and where high unemployment and close to zero growth are now accepted as normal, or in a country with limited government and a dynamic, growing economy?

The United States isn't the only game in town. There will be plenty of investment opportunities around the world.

The crisis is coming. In March 2009, there were $800 billion U.S. dollars in world circulation. Today that number $2.8 trillion and, thanks to QE3, will be $3.2 trillion by summer 2013. Double digit inflation is inevitable. And with double digit inflation comes double digit interest rates - which will crush bonds, batter stocks, and make U.S. treasury notes worthless - creating a need for more debt and more money printing (Weimar Republic).

[gotribe]

“The answer is that conservatives have entirely lost control over the culture.”

They never had control over the culture. What the GOP did to its demise was connect cultural/social issues to fiscal/economic issues. And so down the fiscal cliff we go.

[driftless2]

Pretty much nails it. I've said many times that forty years a candidate like Obama would have been slaughtered at the polls. That candidate was George McGovern who was drubbed near the end of a very unpopular war running as an anti-war candidate. And McGovern himself was a war hero.

Now we have Obama who is a born and bred socialist and a rank disaster as a president. And he gets re-elected handily. The truth is a much higher percentage of Americans are now fond of socialism. They want and expect "free" stuff on the backs of producing Americans. We can run a conservative Pubbie in 2016, and see what happens. If we lose again with a genuine conservative, time for a split.

[CSM]

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

-The American Electorate

[Cicero]

I don't disagree with most of what he says. But I do agree with other Freepers about one point.

So yesterday’s defeat was not about a flawed presidential candidate or presidential campaign.

Nonsense. The numbers tell a different story. It's not that we had MORE idiots going out to vote for Obama. It's that we had far fewer conservatives going out to vote for Romney. Because he was a lousy candidate, almost as bad as Obama.

When you have a lousy candidate at the top of the ticket, everyone else suffers all the way down the line. Quite a few potential senators, governors, state politicians, and congressmen lost because Romney failed to bring out the vote. And he failed really badly.

[WashingtonSource]

We also re-elected a strong GOP majority in the House. That’s certainly center-right. So, something else is at work here.