The elite GOP phonies are so full of crap with their post-election “analysis.” They’re simply plugging in whatever pet issues they had before this election and reiterating them as if they’ve had some new revelation based on these results. Much of the analysis from both sides of the aisle is a pack of lies.
The only people we should be looking to for ideas on what went wrong and where we go from here are the people who FOUGHT AGAINST ROMNEY in the primary. They were proven absolutely right. Their wisdom has been vindicated. The establishment stuffed shirts who pushed Romney on us need to be ignored and driven out of any positions of leadership or respectability.
Coincidentally these elites are the same people who have been trying to destroy the pro-life movement and talking about capitulating on same-sex marriage for years now. The whole reason they nominated Romney in the first place, as they admitted, was because they wanted to run “on the economy” and ignore social issues. How’d that work out for us?
Above all else, Romney was simply a bad candidate. Modern presidential elections are almost always won or lost on personality, charisma and likability. Aside from his brief shining moment in the first debate, Romney lost to Obama on those points. There aren’t a whole lot of solid conclusions that can be drawn from a presidential election since they are so superficial, other than that the people who pushed Romney on us are horrible strategists and their advice needs to be FLAT-OUT IGNORED from now on.
While I don’t think the party should be changing its platform, and I support flat tax rates, if there’s one issue the party is having trouble selling, it’s the idea of cutting taxes or not raising taxes on the “rich.” The most damaging stereotype for years of the Republican party has been that it’s a party “for the rich.” But the blue blood GOP elites who wet dreamed about Romney during the primary and who say we ought to abandon “social issues” would NEVER recommend changing our stance on the tax issues.
In any case, the party needs to come up with better messaging for lower income earners. THIS is where the party’s big marketing problem lies, not social issues. Romney lost with voters with incomes under $50,000 big, and won with voters with incomes over $50,000 almost as big. This gap also explains most of the race, age and gender gaps, since minorities, young people and single women all tend to have lower incomes. By contrast, if you look at married women, they have higher incomes and vote Republican. We should all be brainstorming on how to communicate our message better to people with lower incomes. Nominating Romney was certainly not a way to do it.
Thank you very much, JediJones!! Agree with mostly everything you stated. Ultimately, I’d like to repeal the 16th amendment and abolish the income tax, but would go with a flat tax in the interim.
Restore the Constitution!! Restore the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and enforce them!! Repeal the 16th and 17th!! Restore state sovereignty!! Cut the unconstitutional baggage out of the federal government (about 90% of what’s there now) and restore the government functions that are worth saving to the states and the people where they can be controlled locally and we wouldn’t need to send trillions of dollars to the feds every year. Seal the borders!! Shutter the IRS, the EPA and a whole host of other unconstitutional tyrannical government agencies!! Outlaw government workers unions!! Take us out of the UN and kick them the hell out of the US!!