Posted on 11/08/2012 8:32:03 AM PST by Al Gore Vidal
I never head Mittens once invoke Ronald Reagan and conservative ideals in this election.
The dirty secret is GOP bigwigs look upon conservatives like the crazy aunt in the basement. They need our votes but they never cared about traditional American values.
That’s lip service they get around to every four years and then get back to working with the Democrats to do more damage to our country.
Ask me again why they deserve my support when they won’t back a decent conservative candidate for President. The irony is if the party establishment had backed Mike Pence, we might be looking at a Republican White House today.
They valued electability over principle and we all got shafted and ended up with the worst of all possible worlds!
People like you actually suffer from an arrogance and ignorance - hiding behind some kind of phony self righteousness that shows you do not even know what a vote is.
A vote is not something personal nor is it some kind of insight into your soul. To think it is is to prove you are a navel gazing narcissist. A vote is nothing more than a decision you are given. You are not held accountable for the choice you are given, but you are held responsible for the way you steward that decision.
To perform in a way that helps Obama retain the White House is not only blithering ignorance, but it is very poor stewardship of the opportunity you had.
As for evangecals. There numbers were pretty average. Which is about as much as you can expect if you ask them to vote for a Mormon. From Allah at Hot Air:
One question I’m seeing in the comments is, “Did evangelicals turn out for Romney”? Yep, looks that way. Turnout among Protestants generally dropped slightly from 2008 (54% to 53%) but Romney’s share of the vote increased from 54% to 57%. Among white evangelicals specifically, turnout was steady at 26% of the electorate from four years ago and Romney took 78% of the vote compared to just 74% for McCain. If you’d rather slice the data by how often people go to church, the number who attend at least weekly rose from 39% in 2008 to 42% this time. McCain won 55% of that group. Romney won 59%. He improved on McCain’s numbers among Jewish voters too, from 21% of the vote in 2008 to 30% this time (or maybe more), the highest take for a Republican since 1988. If there’s any religious group that underperformed for him, it’s Catholics. He did improve on McCain’s numbers — from 45% to 48% — but O still won a majority despite the abortion-rights jamboree at the convention and the contraception mandate. Catholic turnout was down two points this time, however.
Some seem to think, after looking at the numbers, that the rural conservatives are the ones who did not show up. These are the voters that Bush appealed to, and Rove figured out how to turn out.
They did not turn out this time.
Now one can make a few guesses why that is...I suspect it isn’t one thing, it is several things.
—some may feel demoralized by the financial crisis, and the “brand” of the party took a big hit when Bush walked out for that bailout...on top of Katrina...on top of the wars. We can argue REALITY all day long, but perception is what it is. I think some of those voters just threw up their hands and decided it didn’t matter. Romney obviously did not turn out the voters.
—I do think the “mormon thing” is something few want to talk about, but is real. Rural Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia...this could have been a big deal. It might not be a huge TOTAL number, but it would hit this part of the population. It can’t be blamed totally, but it is a factor.
—I myself discounted how big the financial meltdown was I think. I assumed anti Obamaism would overrule that, but if you compare the emotion of it to 9/11...and Bush beating Kerry in 2004 and now Obama winning...not a perfect comparison, but maybe it just takes a good 8 years for the “reset” button to be hit on politics. Only FOUR percent voted caring about foreign policy. FOUR.
Obama managed to get the “don’t cares” to care enough to vote. I think maybe the GOP now has its own “don’t care” problem. They “care” but they don’t think voting for President matters anymore. Someone has to come along to change that dynamic. People can argue who it is, but it is not easily definable.
I know one thing, NONE of the people that actually ran on the GOP side had “it” this time.
I suspect the Dems are going to have a hard time finding it in 2016. Biden, Hillary and Cory Booker CERTAINLY don’t have it. Whatever we say about Obama, he clearly had enough to win.
It is funny, now I know how the Bush haters felt in 2004...and by 2006 everything had flipped.
So....who knows.
I left the Prepublican party in 2007 when I realized the moderates were in control.
I still voted for Romney. Conservatives who didn’t made a mistake, in my opinion. I don’t think we really know yet exactly what happened.
America just asked for four more years of decline and stagnation. I don’t know why we did that.
Romney would have opened up the energy industry, which would lowered oil prices and created a lot of jobs. That’s more important at this time than the social issues. I did notice an attitude from some that the election needed to be about them pesonally rather than the country. Another selfish and silly mistake in my opinion. But what’s done is done.
Now we will decline until we experience a complete financial and social collapse. That will probably take 10-15 years, and younger people are really screwed as they will find it very difficult to acquire wealth.
We older folks who planned will be in much better shape than those under 50. I went mostly Galt in 08 as it was obvious what was coming. I’ll stay that way now.
Americans just voted themselves a long trip down a very hard road.
I left the Prepublican party in 2007 when I realized the moderates were in control.
I still voted for Romney. Conservatives who didn’t made a mistake, in my opinion. I don’t think we really know yet exactly what happened.
America just asked for four more years of decline and stagnation. I don’t know why we did that.
Romney would have opened up the energy industry, which would lowered oil prices and created a lot of jobs. That’s more important at this time than the social issues. I did notice an attitude from some that the election needed to be about them pesonally rather than the country. Another selfish and silly mistake in my opinion. But what’s done is done.
Now we will decline until we experience a complete financial and social collapse. That will probably take 10-15 years, and younger people are really screwed as they will find it very difficult to acquire wealth.
We older folks who planned will be in much better shape than those under 50. I went mostly Galt in 08 as it was obvious what was coming. I’ll stay that way now.
Americans just voted themselves a long trip down a very hard road.
"Evangelicals turned out in record numbers and voted as heavily for Mitt Romney yesterday as they did for George W. Bush in 2004," said Ralph Reed, chairman of Faith and Freedom Coalition. "That is an astonishing outcome that few would have predicted even a few months ago."The Evangelicals went for Romney 78 to 21 according to a story in the Christian Post discussed here.
You’re wrong. Everybody’s looking the wrong direction for a scapegoat here. Conservatives voted ... there just aren’t enough of us right now. The problem isn’t Romney, or Johnson, or Christie, or Coulter, or the GOP Establishment, or the Tea Party, or any of that ...
The problem is “the 47%” ... not that Romney made the comments, but that they are largely true. There are a lot of people that want that kind of government. There are a lot of people who live on unemployment, or SS disability, or welfare, or food stamps, or medicaid, or Obamaphones, or Social Security, or whatever. Those numbers are going up, not down, and every last one of them is a built-in Obama voter. They’ll vote themselves a pay raise every time.
You can paint that as a platform problem. Our positions don’t speak well to the dependent. You can paint that as a demographic problem. You can paint it as a messaging problem. Ultimately, it is an intrinsic problem with the electorate — one that is not only bad for the Republican Party, but one that is bad for the country overall ... and not one that is easily overcome.
The takers are starting to outnumber the makers. The tough part is going to be convincing the takers that there is a better way to live before Atlas shrugs. But, it can be done. I was hopeful that 4-years of Obama would shake it up enough to make the point, as 4-years of Carter did before. Apparently, it’ll take at least four more.
We made some headway — Obama lost 10M votes between ‘08 and ‘12. So, there are a lot of people that don’t like Obama’s way. But, the GOP also lost 2M between’08 and ‘12. So, we need to do a better job of convincing people that there is another way ... and we can get it done.
America gets the government it deserves. Maybe by 2016, it’ll deserve better.
SnakeDoc
BINGO!
Let me spell that out: B-I-N-G-O
Cook County went national. Some of us Christians understood that free and honest national elections ended in 2008. Still, most of us voted, and voted Conservative.
Red states went overwhelmingly for Romney. Blue went Obama. Battleground states all had Chicago funny business to give Obama the votes he needed.
Mitt was drawing crowds of tens of thousands. Obama was drawing crowds of 2500 that walked out on him.
Yet ‘miraculously’ - Obama had major turnout exactly where he needed it to “win”. It’s the Chicago way.
We’ve gone Soviet.
Blaming Christian Conservatives is going to be the meme from here on out - and angry club Republicans are going to join with the Left to see us punished.
If you’re not voting for the Republican candidate, you have a lot of gall calling anyone else a RINO.
Our Constitution does not provide for a "party system."
Politics is about forming coalitions and apparently conservatives aren’t very good at that. One issue voters have caused our downfall. If we aren’t willing to vote for the lesser of two evils then we will always get the greater of two evils.
I don’t get it.
All of the ‘evangelicals’ I know (and I count myself among them) were motivated to vote and did so. Yes, we understand the ‘cult’ aspects of Mormanism, but agreed that Mitt Romney was, at heart, a good man and most definitely the BETTER man for this country.
Lines to vote were huge, every where. The general excitement was palpable.
I still don’t buy the meme that ‘we’ sat this one out.
I believe we got schooled by a gifted grifter and his amazing team of sneaks. With the state-run media leading the way (and mopping up from behind) there will never be a valid inquiry into irregularities.
78% of white evangelecals voted for Romney. Name me any other demographic group that matched that.
You can’t blame white evangelicals.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who perceives themseleves as a conservative and chose to sit it out is as guilty as those morons who voted for a Marxist/socialist state.
There are some on this site that appear to be proud of their “NO VOTE” or vote for an irrevelant 3rd party and will disparage those who did vote for Romney and apparently expect others to applaud what they did. Now I’ll probably get another reply from soconpubbie disparaging me for supporting Romney.
What you read is incorrect. See #35.
My wife and I were talking this morning about this. How can several of her smart department head co-workers vote for Socialism?
Short answer, all of their information comes from the old media or Huffington Post left blogs. They are in the “Matrix” just like the movie.
They have no idea of how economics really works and they have no clue about the facts of the world reality. They have been brought up by
socialist school teachers, brainwashed by socialist professors, and kept ignorant by modern society music, movies and popular culture.
They listen to PBS radio and watch ABC and CNN for news. They think Conservatives are a bunch of old white Dixie, racist, homophobic,
sexist Neanderthal males, neo-Confederate tea partiers, smokestack polluters, homophobic evangelicals, and xenophobic anti-immigrants.
At least with Romney there would have been a chance for conservatives to influence decisions that they think are important. With Obama there is little to no chance of doing such.
In this election, it wasn’t that we could take one step back to move two forward. Too many perfectionists are focused on the two steps forward while ignoring that they’re on a fully loaded freight train running in reverse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.