Look at the numbers: Obama dropped from 69 million votes to 60 million votes. McCain had 59 million votes in 2008. With Romney being a more attractive candidate, much better financed, good in the debates, supposedly popular with independents and running against an incumbent who had screwed up the economy and made a number of foreign policy errors, it should have been very easy for Romney to garner an additional million votes to put him over the top. So why did he come in 2 million votes below what the pathetic McCain was able to garner in 2008?
This was the poll number that most of us - and pundits like Rush and Dick Morris - couldn’t understand: why were polls showing a significant advantage for the Dems over Republicans in the polling samples? How was it possible that the Republicans would still have a significant turnout disparity over the poor results of 2008? Simple. Romney turned off the base of the Republican Party. I firmly believe that most conservative political activists showed up to vote for Romney, even if they had to hold their collective noses, because they wanted to defeat Obama. Unfortunately. the same cannot be said of the average conservative voter who showed up in droves in 2010 to “throw the bums out”.
I firmly believe that there were several millions of usually apathetic voters who were energized by the Tea Party in 2010 to get off the couch and vote, but who stayed home in 2012. Not because the Tea Party sat on its hands, but because they did not believe that Romney would do anything to reverse Obama on Obamacare or spending. Romney didn’t connect with these marginal conservative voters, even though the core of Tea Party activists ended up actively supporting Romney in the campaign. And I suspect a certain segment of Ron Paul’s libertarian support also stayed home.
Obama had a massive drop in turnout and support from his base. All Romney had to do was keep McCain support and grow that support by about 3% and he would have won. The fact that he was unable to do that with all of his resources shows just how much he failed to connect with many of the average voters who showed up to the polls in a rage in 2010. Still think that marginalizing the Tea Party was a great idea?
It’s hard to believe that any republican could exist that would purposefully stay home on election day and not do their part to get rid of the imcompetent communist in chief.
You mean the votes Palin was able to garner in 2008. She was and is a rock star with a huge following, particularly in that election. If someone like Pawlenty had been the VP nominee in 2008 I'd bet anything that McCain/Moderate would have way less votes than Romey/Ryan. But McCain/PALIN beat Romney/Ryan because the base didn't turn out in 2012 like they did in 2008. There it is.
Well, those tea partiers and evangelicals really showed us! Glad to know they will keep their principles while losing their bank accounts. They must feel so proud.
Because, after holding their noses for McCain, they realized that Romney, a liberal, signaled that the Republican party would only preserve the [Obama] Status Quo.
IOW, they weren't fooled by his rhetoric, by his waking up one day and deciding to be conservative [because he wanted to run for president] -- the GOP got exactly what it deserved for anointing him [long before the primaries] and pushing him on us through unsavory means: remember the VA delegate bus incident? remember the three states where Romney was declared primary winner with a later 'whoops'? remember the Ron Paul supporters winning their primaries [or at least portions thereof] through some shrewd rule-using only to be denied due retroactively placed rule changes?
The GOP got exactly what it deserved.