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GOP Turns Sure Victory into Defeat
Townhall.com ^ | November 8, 2011 | Michael Reagan

Posted on 11/08/2012 7:03:34 AM PST by Kaslin

Wait until next year -- 2016, that is.

That’s what disappointed Republican spinners kept saying Tuesday night as they watched Mitt Romney’s hopes crash and burn in swing state after swing state.

How many times did I hear a Republican talk about how their party’s deep bench of future all-stars will return it to power in Washington in four years?

But all the Ryans, Rubios, Bushes, Haleys and Christies in America can’t put the GOP -- or the country -- back together again.

The GOP is a wreck -- and not just in California, where the party’s registration is now below 30 percent.

Look how easily the Republican Party managed to turn what should have been a sure victory over an incompetent and dangerous incumbent into an embarrassing defeat.

First they tore each other to shreds in a bitter primary, smearing their eventual nominee in debates as a rich, uncaring profiteer who put working people out on the street and shipped their jobs overseas.

Then, while Obama’s ads in the battleground states reinforced the Republican-made caricature of Mitt, the Romney campaign did just about everything wrong.

It squandered the GOP convention and tried to make their candidate into “Mitt the Moderate.” Team Romney also shunned their natural allies in talk radio and didn’t reach out for help from conservatives like me.

I would have been glad to help the Romney campaign in Ohio or Pennsylvania, where I worked for my father in 1980. I offered, but the phone never rang. It didn’t ring for Bill O’Reilly or for the other major radio and TV talk shows, either.

But Team Romney’s biggest mistake was playing prevent defense after his big victory in the first debate. It was a terrible, fatal blunder.

Instead of hammering away at the horror of Obamacare, the cover-up in Benghazi and President Eye-Candy’s four years of failure, Romney ran the last five weeks hoping the clock would run out before Obama could recover.

But you don’t play prevent defense when you are running in second place in Ohio, Virginia, Florida -- and Tuesday’s results proved it.

Hurricane Sandy struck Mitt a final blow, giving Obama the chance to look presidential and making Mitt disappear from the media for four days.

But give credit to Obama’s Chicago Gang. They ran a much better campaign -- on the ground and in the air. They got out the vote and Obama got out his message of class envy and federal entitlements for all, without any trouble from his toadies in the media.

Now bigger deficits, higher taxes and a stagnant economy lie ahead for as far as the eye can see. And socialized medicine -- which my father warned was coming to America 50 years ago -- is going to soon become a reality via Obamacare.

Team Romney blew an easy win because it had a poor game plan. But it also lost because the Republican Party is all talk and no guts when it comes to fighting for real conservatism -- Ronald Reagan conservatism.

GOP bigwigs constantly praise my father. For years they’ve used him to suck true conservatives into the party, but they’ve never really embraced Reaganism or its ideals.

They didn’t in the 1980s and they still don’t today. They only talk about him. The party bosses don’t really think like him.

Most of those Republican candidates who lost Tuesday played the same game of pretend. “I’m like Ronald Reagan!” “No, I’m like Ronald Reagan!”

But most of them aren’t like my father. They weren’t waving the “bold colors” of real conservatism he talked about in 1975. The banners of the losers -- like Mitt’s -- were colored in “pale pastels.”

The GOP needs a new playbook. Unless it starts embracing my father’s conservative ideals instead of just paying lip service to them, the so-called “Party of Ronald Reagan” may never win another national election.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: michaelreagan; romney2012
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To: rbg81
He is the one who basically stopped patrolling our Southern border and granted amnesty to illegals back in 1986.

Utter bull squeeze.

Simpson Mazzoli provided for the boarder to be shut down if Reagan would grant a "one Time" amnesty.

The dems NEVER held their side of the bargain, surprise, surprise.

Same with TEFRA.

Boner will fall for the same on the taxmaggon situation coming up next month.

81 posted on 11/08/2012 11:09:38 AM PST by Las Vegas Ron (Medicine is the keystone in the arch of socialism)
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To: editor-surveyor

but manipulation by the usual thugs obscured his victory to keep the marxist islamist terrorist in office.

You are so delusional. What so some guy looks at you funny and you vote for Obama. What a weak guy you are. Seriously you live in this land of crazy. No. Mitt sucked BADLY and that is why he was kicked to the curb. Go cry somewhere else. I am sick and tired of hearing about Mitt the loser!!!!


82 posted on 11/08/2012 11:13:27 AM PST by napscoordinator (GOP Candidate 2020 - "Bloomberg 2020 - We vote for whatever crap the GOP puts in front of us.")
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To: TigerClaws

Mega Dittos and fully agree with Michael. I served under Ronaldus Magnus for 8 great years in the Navy.
We need to run on Conservative PRINCIPLES, and dump the Rove, Bush wing of the party.


83 posted on 11/08/2012 11:14:06 AM PST by kgrif_Salinas
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To: Kaslin

Romney didn’t lose. The Republican voters who voted for Juan in 2008, and who stayed home this year lost it for him, and the nation!


84 posted on 11/08/2012 11:14:35 AM PST by Revolting cat! (Bad things are wrong! Ice cream is delicious!)
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To: babble-on

“As long as our party is anti-immigrant...]

Anti-immigrant? No, I love immigrants, particularly legal immigrants. It’s the other immigrants that I have a problem with.

Either you believe in law and order or you do not.


85 posted on 11/08/2012 11:19:26 AM PST by Bshaw (A nefarious deceit is upon us all!)
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To: TigerClaws

You are right, TIgerClaws. We have a Democrat majority. We have declining religious voters, because the people are no longer religious.

There is one group that is culturally conservative and that is Latinos. Republicans best get their act together regarding Latinos or forget about it.

Like it or not, that is reality. Europeans who would come here or Asians are not religious in the Judeo Christian traditions: Latinos are. So, figure it out.

But the White Boys at the top aint got it goin on, that is reality. V’s wife
PS Karl Rove must go.


86 posted on 11/08/2012 11:31:00 AM PST by ventana
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To: babble-on

Yes!!!
V’s wife.


87 posted on 11/08/2012 11:33:00 AM PST by ventana
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To: babble-on
As long as our party is anti-immigrant we will lose national elections by increasing margins.

That's all in the language.

STOP TALKING ABOUT ILLEGALS!

It isn't that hard to do. Democrats have, for decades, modified language. "Quantitative Easing" anyone? Short-hand for money-printing. "Affordable Care Act" which does the opposite.

Its time to stop being blunt and start being subtle.

88 posted on 11/08/2012 11:47:51 AM PST by superloser
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To: CedarDave

Thanks Cedar Dave

Really appreciate your posts.

Looking the State’s vote break down, you can sure see where the “Takers” vs the “Makers” live.

Regards
BoL


89 posted on 11/08/2012 11:52:28 AM PST by BlessingsofLiberty (Remember Brian Terry...)
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To: TigerClaws

In 1984 Reagan won 64% of the white vote.

Your point about demographics is certainly true, but had Romney been able to win a few more percentage points of the white vote (like Reagan’s 64%) then he would have won.


90 posted on 11/08/2012 12:04:37 PM PST by Aetius
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To: babble-on

You are totally missing the point. You have no idea what hell illegals reek in communities.

I live in a border state so don’t oversimplify the problem.

Illegal aliens are criminals. If you think that isn’t a politically correct description rewrite the law and call them something else.

By the way, most countries will detain you and prosecute you if you try crawling over their borders.

An illegal alien is a felon. Amnesty, Dream Act and any other bogus feel good descriptor involves forgiving criminal activity and rewarding the criminals.


91 posted on 11/08/2012 12:08:46 PM PST by BlessingsofLiberty (Remember Brian Terry...)
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To: kabumpo

Thanks for the laugh!

Do they speak the same language? Are you saying Mexicans will NEVER vote for a Republicans?

Give us a breakdown of all the Latino sub-groups in the order of who Republicans have a shot at.

One last thing, how can I be a racist? I hate the white half of Obama!


92 posted on 11/08/2012 12:12:10 PM PST by LeonardFMason
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To: eddie willers

No, I don’t, for the same reason that Cubans don’t eat Mexican food and Costa Ricans don’t dance merengue, etc.
The only type of person who could transcend that would be an extremely well known sports figure, and then there would still be people from Boston rejecting him if his team beat the Red Sox, etc.
Maybe a star of Mexican soap operas, which are watched all.over. Is that who you want for your candidate, a brainless slut actress?.I didn’t think so.


93 posted on 11/08/2012 12:12:49 PM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: kabumpo

Why do you hate Mexicans so much?


94 posted on 11/08/2012 12:20:02 PM PST by LeonardFMason
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To: BlessingsofLiberty
Looking the State’s vote break down, you can sure see where the “Takers” vs the “Makers” live.

Take a look at the District 3 results - the heavily minority population in northern NM which is mostly unemployed, or have government or low-paying service jobs produced Democrat vote totals over 79 percent in Mora, San Miguel, Taos and Rio Arriba counties. These folks have grown up on government providing assistance and have no other frame of reference. Jobs that were once to be had in lumbering and mining are gone as environmentalists (who live mainly out of trendy Santa Fe) have shut down natural resource production. Hispanics in my office told me they voted for Steve Pearce for Congress - they know how important their jobs are as they depend on the O&G industry.

http://sos.state.nm.us/2012GenResults/CountyResults.htm

95 posted on 11/08/2012 12:53:39 PM PST by CedarDave (Presstitutes: Journalists who refuse to ask hard questions and who report by omission or distortion)
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To: kabumpo

OK...I buy in to what you say....however:

I still want Marco Rubio since he is the best of the young Republicans at explaining conservative thought and why it is superior....all while doing it in a friendly and enthusiastic way. Ryan was lackluster and a poor speaker.


96 posted on 11/08/2012 1:01:10 PM PST by eddie willers
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To: LeonardFMason

You misunderstood me. I was not calling you a rascist. I was saying that the concept of a Latino vote is wrong because the very idea is uninformed, reductionistic and racist - because it tries to categorize by an ethnic/group identity, but that identity does not exist.
To call people of different nationalities “subgroups” - is ridiculous. Referring to a “Latino vote” is like talking about a “European vote” as if it’s a single entity - and then when I tell you it’s not, you ask what the “subgroups” are. Guess what, Germans and French and Spaniards and Greeks are not subgroups, they are nations. And while Mexicans and Costa Ricans and Dominicans all speak Spanish, they are racially and culturally distinct. They are not subgroups.
And yes, I think that where Mexicans are concerned, there will never be a chance of any significant support for a Republican, unless the candidate himself is Mexican. But then don’t look for other.Latinos to fall.in line behind him.


97 posted on 11/08/2012 1:05:04 PM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: ventana

But we’re told it’s social conservatism that turns off single women and moderate suburban whites, so wouldn’t we be losing even more of those by going after Hispanics with religious appeals?

Putting that aside, the obvious truth is that on Hispanics are more natually Democrats than Republicans. Maybe they have a strong bit of social conservatism, but it’s obviously outweighed by their liberalism on other issues. Small, limited govt and fiscal conservatism just doesn’t appeal to them in mass. And so long as mass immigration continues, the GOP will never win them over. The most we can hope for is to repeat George W Bush’s performance in 2004, when he got maybe 40% of the Hispanic vote.

And as far as latino social conservatism goes, if it’s so strong, then why haven’t they injected even the slightest bit of social conservatism into the Democratic party?


98 posted on 11/08/2012 1:19:07 PM PST by Aetius
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To: LeonardFMason

What did I write that indictated any emotion or negative attitude toward Mexicans? What I criticized were false assumptions about the “Latino vote”.
You can like Rubio all you want, but any Cuban is radioactive to.the majority immigrant group here, which are Mexicans. He’ll never get support from Latinos outside of Florida.


99 posted on 11/08/2012 1:21:52 PM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: HangingTuff

Then it’s time to radicalize the youth with the politically incorrect truth.

Tell them about fraud, welfare queens, terrorists getting food stamp money, and all the dirty politicians.

Tell them corporate America is indeed working for our enemies and we will stop it.

It’s time to upset the youth with the truth.


100 posted on 11/08/2012 2:03:27 PM PST by donna (Pray for revival.)
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