All I can say is this: at this point I say, “let the electorate get what they have been asking for, honestly, a crashed, ruined nation will be there, and there will be plenty of people willing to help that just won’t be like them and won’t have to. Charity is there, and the word of God too. Politics has never been the great bastion for the word of God, never will be.
Mitt Romney, the anti-Reagan.
“I think Bill Weld comes as close as anyone,” Romney said when asked whom in his party he aligned with.
“I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush,”
“I’m not a partisan politician. My hope is that, after this election, it will be the moderates of both parties who will control the Senate, not the Jesse Helmses.”
“RINO’s believe in trying to manipulate and out-smart the voters rather than talking to them honestly, answering their questions and concerns, and persuading them. “
They can’t explain and defend principles that they don’t really believe in.
To win, you play to win. Ronald Reagan explained it best. " We win, you loose. "
We can pass the blame all day long but in the end it is nobody except the people and i think they will pay dearly for getting what they wanted.
Yea, I’ve seen a lot of football games and boxing matches.
Romney had him on the ropes after the first debate, and they panicked. They were scared to death of a “sympathy factor” if Romney kept on him, especially in the last debate.
...so they attempted to coast to victory.
If Romney had played up the "who am I" family guy stuff and he still lost, you'd say he lost because that stuff distracted from his message on the issues. Voters would say, "So he's a nice guy, but why should I vote for him?"
Romney's business background cut both ways, helping and hurting him. He could have gotten deeper into how a business background would help him with the economy, but people who didn't grasp that already probably wouldn't be swayed by hammering away at that theme.
The results, though, are pretty clear. A Reaganesque "message" campaign this year wouldn't have done any better. The country's changed too much. Even if it would have worked, none of the candidates this year were Ronald Reagan.
Republicans figured that all they had to do to win was to avoid making any major mistakes, and as such Dewey did not take any risks. He spoke in platitudes, trying to transcend politics. Speech after speech was filled with empty statements of the obvious, such as the famous quote: "You know that your future is still ahead of you." An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal summed it up:
No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.[17]
Part of the reason Dewey ran such a cautious, vague campaign was his experience as a presidential candidate in 1944. In that election Dewey felt that he had allowed Roosevelt to draw him into a partisan, verbal "mudslinging" match, and he believed that this had cost him votes. As such, Dewey was convinced in 1948 to appear as non-partisan as possible, and to emphasize the positive aspects of his campaign while ignoring his opponent. This strategy proved to be a major mistake, as it allowed Truman to repeatedly criticize and ridicule Dewey, while Dewey never answered any of Truman's criticisms.[18] Perhaps alone among all of Dewey's advisers, his 1944 campaign chairman, Edwin Jaeckle, admonished him to be aggressive on the campaign trail, advice Dewey rejected.
Most infuriating - the same consultants point fingers immediately (usually at conservatives) and never at themselves.
As Rush once put it, we can never stop educating.
But we seem to have a genius for nominating people who can’t educate because they themselves lack a conservative education.