Posted on 11/18/2012 5:01:56 AM PST by Kaslin
In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss, many Republicans say the GOP must make far-reaching changes to be competitive in future elections. White voters are a smaller and smaller part of the electorate, they point out, while Latinos and other minorities are growing as a percentage of the voting public. Unless the Republican Party reinvents itself to appeal to those voters, the argument goes, the GOP can get used to being out of power.
There's something to that. The electorate is changing, and the Republican Party needs to keep up with the times. But the more fundamental answer to the GOP's problems could be much simpler than that. To win the next time, Republicans need to find a really good candidate. Just listen to the masterminds of Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012.
On Thursday afternoon, the Obama campaign held its last conference call for reporters. Toward the end of the call, the three top officials in Obama's re-election effort -- David Axelrod, Jim Messina and David Plouffe -- were asked what will happen to the mighty Obama campaign now. What next for the enormous campaign infrastructure, with its massive databases and voter profiles? Will it go to a new candidate?
"You can't just transfer this," said senior adviser Plouffe. "People are not going to spend hours away from their families, and their jobs, contributing financially when it's hard for them to do it, unless they believe in the candidate."
"All of this, the door knocks ... the contributions made, the phone calls made, were because these people believed in Barack Obama," Plouffe continued. "And so for candidates who want to try and build a grassroots campaign, it's not going to happen because there's a list or because you have the best technology. That's not how this works. They have to build up that kind of emotional appeal so that people are willing to go out and spend the time and their resources and provide their talents because they believe in someone. ... The reason those people got involved was because they believed in Barack Obama. It was a relationship between them and our candidate."
Plouffe is right. He and Axelrod and Messina could have created the most awesome campaign machinery in the world, and it would have failed had the candidate not been able to forge an emotional connection with enough voters to win. Obama could do that, especially with blacks and Latinos and young people, but also with a significant portion of white voters.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, appears not to have excited any big group. Yes, he won the support of 59 percent of white voters, but there are indications that whites actually stayed away from the polls in large numbers. Overall, Romney won fewer votes than John McCain's doomed 2008 campaign.
"The 2012 elections actually weren't about a demographic explosion with nonwhite voters," writes analyst Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics. "Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up. ... The reason this electorate looked so different from the 2008 electorate is almost entirely attributable to white voters staying home."
Trende is not sure why so many whites didn't vote. Looking only at Ohio, he suggests many did not like Obama but were turned off by Romney, or at least the negative picture of Romney created by Obama's attack ads. So they did nothing on Election Day.
There is much data still to come in from Tuesday; the popular vote figures and exit poll details aren't yet final. But it's fair to say Romney's problems stemmed as much from his failure to appeal to white voters as his failure to appeal to any other voters. He lost because he did not connect to large swaths of the voting population.
That's where finding a great candidate comes in. Romney is an able, accomplished, intelligent and hard-working man, but Republicans knew from the start he was an imperfect candidate. During the primaries, GOP voters tried every alternative possible before finally settling on Romney. He remained a flawed candidate in the general election.
Now, because of Romney's loss, some are urging that the Republican Party completely remake itself. Some argue that GOP lawmakers must support comprehensive immigration reform and change positions on other issues. The answer, they say, is broad, across-the-board change.
But listen to the Obama team. There is a less complicated lesson to this election. Voters want to believe in a candidate. If Republicans find that candidate, they will win.
Answer the question strategerist. Will Romney cover McCain + 4 percent, or not?
You’re just so super skilled with maths.
The GOP will need a candidate whose supporters can advocate for them in a sincere way- and that means someone who isn’t a milder version of the incumbent. I voted for the POS Romney but understood it as an act of hypocrisy on my part, being a conservative and voting for a left-winger like Myth. I certainly wouldn’t have told people “I am voting for Romney because I think he’d make a good president” because that wouldn’t be the truth. That’s the sort of support that Romney could not get. All he got was a grudging vote from a good many people on the right- and obviously, that isn’t going to be good enough.
Of those running who would you have preferred?
Good thing we have you to run in and save your hero. “Oh no - after all the votes are counted, Romney might actually finish ahead of McCain’s numbers from 4 years ago.”
Maybe he can run ads - “Hey, people I didn’t suck as bad as you all thought. I’m still eligible for 2016!”
It is a result of being intelligent enough to think and analyze vs. the Left's penchant for moving as a consolidated herd. We would be arguing whether the best apostle was Peter, Paul, Mark, Luke, John, etc., and lose sight that failure to come to some sort of agreement will result in Judas holding the scepter of power.
“Can you say Marco.....”
I’ve noticed they’re (conservatives) already starting to head that idea off at the pass.
You do understand the difference between talking points and numbers, don’t you?
There’s reality, and there’s what you want to believe. What you want to believe doesn’t match reality.
There are quite a few states that actually are done or almost done counting.
Go here for state-by-state totals for 2008:
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2008/federalelections2008.pdf
And for 2012, some results:
Georgia:
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/42277/112424/en/summary.html
Kentucky:
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/KY/43107/112742/en/summary.html
South Carolina:
http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/42513/112871/en/summary.html
So no calculations, no spreadsheet - actual numbers you can look at yourself.
You’ll notice Romney has more votes than McCain in all three states posted (and these are only 3 of the 32 states where that is true ALREADY, even with all the votes not being counted.)
How is it possible that Romney got more votes than McCain in Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina, yet millions of white base voters “stayed home?”
OK - here’s a question;
Do you think Reagan won in 1980 because he got a bunch of “true conservatives” that didn’t vote in 1976 because Ford was a moderate RINO, to turn out?
Or because he got a bunch of people who voted for Carter in 1976, including millions of Democrats, to switch to him?
Popular EV
Romney/Ryan 59,637,581 47.7% 206 EV 38.3%
McCain/Palin 59,934,814 45.7% 173 EV 32.2%
Net McCain/Palin +297,233 -2.0% -33 EV -6.1%
Whomever becomes the nominee in 2016 needs to be someone that can bring enough voters together to defeat the democratic candidate. We surely don't need a 16 year run of democratic control plus however many years into the future the Supreme Court impact of their nominees will be.
That has never been the thrust of my argument. I have said that the way Obama governed drove people away, I have focused on his losses more than Romney’s. But if you really want to talk about “people that stayed home” on the Republican side, where are the 62 m that voted for Bush 8 years ago? Or the additional 12 m who turned out for him in ‘04 compared to ‘00? Romney really should have made a gain on that order over McCain’s ‘08 total.
Edwin Edwards is out of prison and available. Like Mutt, he’ll run on any ticket that’ll have him.
I believe that Reagan clearly articulated what people were looking for - conservative principles.
I like to explain this - it’s really not that hard to figure out.
Suppose you have a girl that’s been raised in a family, where the father divorced the mother. She has never known a home where a real marriage occurred. Now that same woman goes out in the world what is she going to look for?
See - Reagan figured this out. People want to be happy, they want to be successful. But they don’t know how to get what they really want. You have to show them! You have to walk them through why conservative principles work, and why you are better off with them.
Reagan understood. Did Romney? No.
I was sitting on my couch earlier this election, and a good friend of mine was asking if I had heard about his 47 percent comment. She asked me what I thought about it all.
Here’s what I told her.
“I disagree with Romney”.
I myself have been written off by people who knew better, who said I would never be successful, that I had nothing to hope for - but we had a principal. And do you know what our principal used to say - “we are kids from this school, from this neighbourhood, if you give us half a chance, we’ll go far”.
My goal was to be the kid who won the award in the school for the scholarship, to be the best kid in my grade for that year. Everyone flat out laughed at me. Everyone. It was one of the proudest days of my life when they did award me it (and it wasn’t particularly close).
But it took years of hard work and effort to get there - years to position myself where I could be in a position to win. And then I still had to close the deal.
But I did it.
How many of the 47 percent believe the same?
Only if someone tells me anything they like about Marco. Just to start, he is scrambling to get Latinos over the border. Two, he adores the UN in favor of US rights.
NO.
The problem is that conservatives define a “good candidate” differently from liberals.
Conservatives expect a good candidate to have bona fides and a commitment to core values. In short, an actual conservative. Liberals expect a candidate to say the right things to make them feel good.
Hence, Baraq Obama. Hence, Mitt Romney’s failure to out-Obama Obama. The Republican Party will never be able to out-liberal a liberal.
Plouffe is correct that almost all voters are seeking a fantasy to believe in. That is why campaign managers market their candidate as an empty suit, who “cares about people like you.” Democrats have an edge, because their voters tend to be driven by emotion rather than rational thought. They start with the 50% of people with IQ below 100, supplement that with “interested” government employees, benefit collectors and cronies, add fearful “victims” looking for solace, and top it off with higher-IQ but emotionally-driven collectivist ideologues. The Democrats own a coalition of the easily-marketed: the believe-in-Santa voters.
Republican voters are looking for a harder-headed fantasy: a return to what the U.S. “used to be” (i.e., Mayberry in the 1950’s), with real patriotism, rugged individualism and self-reliance, a world where merit and hard work are rewarded, public officials act with decency, competence, prudence, and integrity, the Constitution and rule of law matter, the U.S. always does the right thing on the world stage, all overlaid with a mix of Judeo-Christian “traditional values.”
The Democrats enjoy a fantasy gap, because they market belief in the future (nebulous and perfect), whereas Republicans market belief in the past (concrete and imperfect). The Republicans have a dilemma: few candidates will ever measure up to their fantasy, because it tends to be specific. The fantasy that works for conservatives is not so appealing to moderates and independents, or groups like women, Latinos, blacks, and gays who did not fare so well in the Past.
Unbelievable...but I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. Thanks for the link...wasn’t familiar with FOM.
The Republican Party has to tighten up it’s primary process. In the last 2 elections the Democrats played a big role in selecting our candidate. They seem to get who they want to run against.
Above all, they need to kill voter fraud before it infests the elections!
>> Overall, Romney won fewer votes than John McCain’s doomed 2008 campaign.
Not mentioning Sarah Palin when making a statement like this, as many recent commentators have done, is borderline criminal. Almost no one was enthused about McCain as a candidate. He very much represented more of same.
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