Posted on 11/08/2012 4:53:04 AM PST by Kaslin
We spent billions of dollars and billions of words on an election to switch from President Obama, a Democratic Senate and a Republican House to President Obama, a Democratic Senate and a Republican House.
Every election predictor was wrong, except one: Incumbents usually win.
Republicans have taken out a sitting president only once in the last century, and that was in 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. Sadly, Reagan's record remains secure.
The Democrats ran up against the incumbency problem in 2004. The landslide election for Democrats in 2006 suggests that Americans were not thrilled with Republicans around the middle of the last decade. And yet in 2004, President George W. Bush beat John Kerry more handily than Obama edged past Romney this week.
Democratic candidate John Kerry won 8 million more votes than Al Gore did in 2000, and he still couldn't win. All the Democrats' money, media, Bush Derangement Syndrome and even a demoralized conservative base couldn't trump the power of incumbency in 2004.
After supporting Mitt Romney in 2008, some of you may recall, I ran off with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie midway through Obama's first term for precisely that reason: The near-impossibility of beating an incumbent president. Christie seemed like the kind of once-in-a-lifetime star who could pull a Reagan upset against an incumbent president.
But I was wrong. Romney was the perfect candidate, and he was the president this country needed right now. It's less disheartening that a president who wrecked American health care, quadrupled gas prices, added $6 trillion to the national debt and gave us an 8 percent unemployment rate can squeak out re-election than that America will never have Romney as our president.
Indeed, Romney is one of the best presidential candidates the Republicans have ever fielded. Blaming the candidate may be fun, but it's delusional and won't help us avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
Part of the reason incumbents win is that they aren't forced to spend half the election year being battered in primaries. Obama started running anti-Romney ads in Ohio before the Republican primaries were even over. Noticeably, Romney's negatives were sky-high in Ohio, but not in demographically similar states like Pennsylvania.
One of Obama's first acts in office was to bail out the auto industry to help him in states he'd need in the upper Midwest, such as Michigan and Ohio. He visited Ohio nearly 50 times, while not visiting lots of other states even once. Obama was working Ohio from the moment he became president. Meanwhile, Romney didn't wrap up the primaries until the end of May.
A little less time beating up our candidate in the primaries so that he could have started campaigning earlier would have helped. In this regard, please remember that no mere House member is ever going to be elected president. Most of them harm their political careers by running. (Where's Thaddeus McCotter these days? Michele Bachmann is fighting for her political life.)
Please stop running. You're distracting us from settling on an actual nominee.
No one can be blamed for the hurricane that took the news off the election, abruptly halting Romney's momentum, but Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock can be blamed on two very specific people: Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.
The last two weeks of the campaign were consumed with discussions of women's "reproductive rights," not because of anything Romney did, but because these two idiots decided to come out against abortion in the case of rape and incest.
After all the hard work intelligent pro-lifers have done in changing the public's mind about a subject the public would rather not think about at all, these purist grandstanders came along and announced insane positions with no practical purpose whatsoever, other than showing off.
While pro-lifers in the trenches have been pushing the abortion positions where 90 percent of the country agrees with us -- such as bans on partial birth abortion, and parental and spousal notification laws -- Akin and Mourdock decided to leap straight to the other end of the spectrum and argue for abortion positions that less than 1 percent of the nation agrees with.
In order to be pro-life badasses, they gave up two easy-win Republican Senate seats.
No law is ever going to require a woman to bear the child of her rapist. Yes, it's every bit as much a life as an unborn child that is not the product of rape. But sentient human beings are capable of drawing gradations along a line.
Just because I need iron to live doesn't mean I have to accept 100,000 milligrams, which will kill me. If we give the guy who passed bad checks a prison furlough, that doesn't mean we have to give one to Willie Horton. I like a tablespoon of sugar in my coffee, but not a pound.
The overwhelming majority of people -- including me -- are going to say the law shouldn't force someone who has been raped to carry the child. On the other hand, abortion should be illegal in most other cases.
Is that so hard for Republicans to say?
Purist conservatives are like idiot hipsters who can't like a band that's popular. They believe that a group with any kind of a following can't be a good band, just as show-off social conservatives consider it a mark of integrity that their candidates -- Akin, Mourdock, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell -- take wildly unpopular positions and lose elections.
It was the same thing with purist libertarian Barry Goldwater, who -- as you will read in my book, "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama" -- nearly destroyed the Republican Party with his pointless pursuit of libertarian perfection in his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
I like a band that sells NO albums because it proves they have too much integrity to sell out.
We have a country to save. And just as the laws of elections generally mean the incumbent president wins, they also mean the party out of the White House typically stages a big comeback in midterm elections. BIG. Don't blow it with purist showoffs next time, Republicans.
Because as decent as Romney may be, everything about his career smells "finance guy....Wall Street deal broker".
Take a Mitt Romney and subtract the personal integrity, and you've got the exact type that brought us all the bubbles, Too Big To Fail and the bailouts.
You can be rich and still win Main Street's approval if you are a hands on businessman who delivers products and services. Not a contract wrangler who makes his millions by transaction fees on paper moving around.
And yes, it was Newt who first attacked Romney on the Bain issue, and I'll always think the less of him for that. It was way, way beneath him.
Isn't that the truth? I saw her on TV recently, and my first thought was, "I thought Tammy Wynette was dead."
Gee, I guess somebody’s ears are burnin..... :-)
My mther bore me and raised me despite the reality that she was raped making her pregnant with me. Her virtue is a huge contrast to your progressivist rhetoric. You are exposing yourself as ‘the enemy’, so keep posting your alinskyesque crap, n00b. And wehat’s that TBL screen name?
My mther bore me and raised me despite the reality that she was raped making her pregnant with me. Her virtue is a huge contrast to your progressivist rhetoric. You are exposing yourself as ‘the enemy’, so keep posting your alinskyesque crap, n00b. And what’s that TBL screen name? ... I’ll look you up next time I’m over there.
My mother bore me and raised me despite the reality that she was raped making her pregnant with me. Her virtue is a huge contrast to your progressivist rhetoric. You are exposing yourself as ‘the enemy’, so keep posting your alinskyesque crap, n00b. And what’s that TBL screen name? ... I’ll look you up next time I’m over there.
Actually, I’m a lot more comfy at FR now than I was back in May and June. Thanks for asking.
Actually, I’m a lot more comfy at FR now than I was back in May and June. Thanks for asking.
But it's sheer fantasy to think that a candidate who runs on a platform of "no abortion even for rape or incest" will ever win a national or statewide race in this country.
Not without 20-30 years of retail level hearts-and-minds changing by the pro-life movement to set the stage.
Are you doing that, are you working every day to make the pro-life case with those who disagree, and are you OK with waiting that long??
That’s a little better. You really didn’t need to insult freepers, but you just couldn’t resist. Try reading my profile page next time.
But if someone takes that belief and says "If you, Eric, don't make that belief 100% non-negotiable for yourself as well, you are not a conservative, you're not my ally, and please close the door on your way out" - yeah, I have a pretty hard time staying chill with that.
As a writer, I follow the technological advancements in the field of prenatal advancements. [I wrote a little book on stem cells, cloning, and abortion more than ten years ago, which was a layman's guide to the issues, without a morl declaration, merely a warning to my fellow human beings. That little book has been downloaded tens of thousands of times for free. Hopefully, as many people have come to realize the truth about the alive unborn. I invite you to download it too, and read it. It's free and will always be free, for reasons which I cite at the blogpage site.]
I am absolutely certain that within less than ten years complete artificial gestation can be achieved. Twelve years ago Japanese researchers were already keeping goat fetuses alive n artificial amniotic sacs for fourteen weeks, to birth age.
When that complete artificial gestation support arrives, what will be the excuse to slaughter the alive little ones who could be transferred to life support outside of the female body? ... And of course you realize there is now no mandate to identify the little ones as human Americans so the question is already moot! Evil has taken over the entire field of questions. If Molech were real he would be so proud of our abortion supporters in America. One of them was just re-appointed to captain this america-titanic. How telling of our internal rot!
Sitting in an echo chamber bemoaning the status quo to fellow pro-lifers accomplishes nothing. Nothing!
Any my anger at some Freepers posted up-thread comes directly from my reading of their posts. It is inconceivable to me that many of them could ever discuss the issue with the opposition in a calm and convincing way, and to me that makes them nothing but roadblocks.
After those millions of conversations have taken place, it will be possible to end all legal abortions. Not before. And in the meantime, if I can work for an electable candidate who will reduce the abortion rate by 90 percent, I will do so happily, and sleep soundly after having done so.
On one side will be the tea-party...on the other will be the GOP-E...and in the middle will be all of those who believe in tea-party values but want to win at any cost and will support the GOP-E.
She supported Christie...then Romney. said he was the only one who could win. I beg to differ.
Until the GOP takes off the gloves and fights lies with outspoken truth...and treats the voting public like the idiots they are...who need a shepherd and a guide...instead of thinking they ae smart enough to get it...WE are done.
Sorry Anne candidates have one job and one job only: lure voters. If a candidate can’t out perform somebody as bad as McCain that candidate failed and deserves ALL the blame. Obie lost over 10% of his votes, he was beatable, just not by a Massachusetts liberal with an R after his name. Had he given conservatives an actual choice, instead of being another socialist dink in the wrong party, he’d have won. He didn’t, conservative opted out, he lost. Yup, I blame him for being a candidate that didn’t deserve my, and apparently millions of others’, vote.
I’d like the tea party, (to the extent that it even thinks as a group) to start understanding why conservatives like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson win, while conservatives like Akin and O’Donnell get slaughtered. There is a real difference in personality and presentation to be taken into account.
Perhaps you have better stated it than I do, but political leaders in Utah relaxed liquor laws for the Olympics, were willing to settle for civil unions as a compromise on gay marriage, wanted more exceptions than rape and incest in proposed abortion laws.
I don’t think Romney as a “leader” wanted to leave his faith with a bad reputation after this election, among other things.
As for what the average Joe “in the pew” thinks, you probably got it right.
Thanks for setting me straight.
I don’t blame Romney, but it’s hard to say that he was “perfect” or “one of the best candidates the Republicans have ever fielded.” He was definitely a flawed candidate. But nobody else proved to be better. Maybe some ideal supercandidate could have defeated Obama, but there wasn’t such a person in the race, so Romney did what he could with what he had.
I think Romney campaigned according to his faith and values.
Mormons are conciliatory and compromising, respecting of others.
I don’t hate them for that. They are decent people who don’t want to start fights with other people since their forefathers were attacked violently in the Midwest back in the 1830s and 40’s.
But the campaign should have involved stronger attacks.
The kind of attacks that would have driven Obama’s support down like all negative attacks do when they are properly executed in a political campaign.
I do have a slight disagreement in that there were a lot of purist conservatives and evangelicals that would have met the McCain standard of votes (thereby winning), but stayed home. I was pleased when JR and most of FR changed and became ABO voters. There was a purist faction that stayed the anti-Romney course, sizeable, who sat out, voted third party, or deliberately didn't vote because Romney was a Mormon. I gather from the numbers there were enough of them to throw Bambi out.
I blame them as much as some of the mistakes Romney made. I still don't believe anyone else who ran (or Palin who did not run)could have done better or come closer to winning. They all were as deeply flawed as Romney in different ways, without some of his strengths.
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