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.
all good but the old guy issue..although mid 50s seems a good age
there have been excellent over 60 guys...Reagan for one
and that obscure guy who chopped down the cherry tree..aged 57-65
Old Tom was nearly 59-67 years of age in the White House
Madison 58-66
Monroe 50-67
Younger presidents have gotten us in trouble...watching Ryan in that silly debate with Biden I knew then that even if ideologically cool he might not have the IT FACTOR just yet for our all video campaigning
We need someone to fight the media and carry the base...mainly conservative white voters...those few minority voters with us really don’t matter...their votes are lost in safe red states and safe blue states and we cannot turn enough of them on a dime to matter...they now voting what they are...dependent anti white bums
middle of the road whites are capturable and there are enough to matter
and don;t let them pin red state on us arbitrarily...they did not want to be stuck with red so the media pinned us with it
biggest enemy...the media people here claim is irrelevant
Obama survives because of them...he is a vampire...they keep the daylight off him
That's such a crock. Rubio is eligible. Nobody's buying that birther crap.
Who is your pick?
Women are the main moderate vote in the GOP. They control the vote due to numbers. We will not get the Conservatives we need.
If Marco is not eligible than what about zero?
I agree. The only candidate that remotely enthused me was Rick Perry, only to watch his campaign crash and burn right out of the starting gate.
I'd be hard-pressed to think of a worse slate of candidates than the one the GOP fielded for 2012. It pains me to say that out of this whole gaggle of pathetic losers, only Romney was even electable. I don't think anyone else would've received a hundred electoral votes.
That’s the same argument the liberals use in favor of Hussein.
‘All I can tell you ace is that once you meet the guy in person, hear him speak over and over it’s hard not to like him. For me when I compare him to the rest,and to FDR, he keeps coming up first,Lincoln second.
Who is your pick?’
Oh, I don’t know, someone who defends, or has an acquaintence with the Constitution.
Tha is precisely why you wise guys let obozo run TWISE, each time you think you can dedeat him!
Upholding article II is a strictly constitutional issue. If you believe it is crap then crap all you want - help the left destroy the constitution. They will thank you with more obamas. See how you can defeat their obamas with your Marcos.
Haven’t you heard the last 4 years?
0 is constitutionally NOT eligible but they all (not just the left, but the Republicans, the conservatives leaders, the tea party leaders, the majority Americans) let 0 run for election, twice, despite mountains of evidences he is not ELIG.
Unbelievable? YES,it is like we are living in a twilight zone!
I have no candidate in mind.
Until we can deal with voter fraud prior to the elections, you can have your own version of messiah zero. Your messiah will be defeated by their rampant voter fraud which hardly anyone cares to address!
I remember during the primaries when it was obvious that Romney was the establishment candidate, we were being told that even though Romney wasn’t the conservatives first choice, we would come out in droves because we didn’t want Obama to get re-elected. Also, Rush Limbaugh told us that the Republican higher-ups were more concerned about winning the Senate to get the chairmanships and the big money. Well, looks like they were wrong on both counts. The fact that Romney got about 3 million fewer Republican votes than did McCain showed that the conservative voters weren’t going to just accept Romney and show up to vote for him anyway. And they lost 3 Senate seats. Wrong on both counts. Will they learn from this? Time will tell I guess.
He is not a natural born citizen and is constitutionally ineligible to be the president
That’s such a crock. Rubio is eligible. Nobody’s buying that birther crap.
Rubio’s eligibility is a moot point. His wife Jeanette is totally “not ready for prime-time”, as you saw in the interview with Hannity some time ago when the search was on for the VP pick. Jeanette does respond well to political questions. She appears shy and she is short of being able to express herself sensibly.
[[ Looking for Reagan is not going to win elections, and elections have consequences. If this election means the party is dead, garnering precious little loyalty, I have a feeling, principled elections are dead, a result of fractured loyalty.
Fully suited in triple layer flame retardant material. ]]
No flame suit is required when you see reality for what it is, and speak wisely for having seen it.
As is Rubio, Obama is also eligible. While I now believe he used to lie about being born in Kenya in an effort to establish "street cred" in his younger days as a racialist academic, nobody has produced any compelling evidence that Obama's birthplace is anywhere other than Honolulu, Hawaii. In fact, the whole notion that his teenage mother flew by herself to Kenya in 1961 to birth him in a mud hut in some village somewhere is absurd when one really thinks about it.
As far as the whole "two citizen parents" argument goes, nobody's buying it. It's already been smacked down in a few courtrooms and if anyone thinks SCOTUS is going to boot Obama out of office on the basis of this argument, they're smoking crack.
Voter fraud is solved by running any candidate with a Mexican or Spanish surname. And I’m as serious as I can get on this matter.
I bet 40% of this nation votes because of race, ethnicity, or class. The most powerful 3 letter word is not the word ‘FREE’ anymore. It is ‘FAIR’ Using Biden math here.
I love Palin, but Ted Cruz would win 2016 in a walk, and you would get the conservative ideology too.
Romney got the Southern White Voters by default, the DWL/Yankee Voters sucked upto Obama. Romney ignored the working class White Voters and lost PA/WI/OH/MI and VA.
“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.”
Great analysis and the only reason I didn’t copy ALL of it was due to space limitations.
The problem is that the “Republican product” is something in which a growing proportion of the population simply is no longer interested.
We can change the appearance of the package a little (like is done with a cereal box from time to time), but the contents inside remain the same and a near-majority of the population — perhaps now an outright majority — won’t consume it, regardless of the packaging.
The Pubbies better find an attractive “salesman” with the ability to see ice to Eskimos. Otherwise they could be headed down the pathway to oblivion.
Not because of their philosophy, but because of raw numbers.
My next choice after Ted Cruz would be Dennis Millerino. He is hip, cool, funny, can do all the late night shows, can jive talk, and even has a bit of a swarthy latino look.
That’s all it takes to win an election in Amerika.
And he can promise everyone a new joke a day.
I wish I were kidding, but I’m not.
The sons of the current Egyptian President (born in the USA) who lived for years in the USA and is a dedicated Muslim are eligible for POTUS. I think not after reading why/how the words ‘natural born citizen’ were put into the Constitution.
I welcome disagreement, and the voter fantasy angle is no substitute for serious analysis and programs. If you (or others) have a different concept, I would be interested. From your comments, we don’t seem all that far apart. Defense of the Constitution is certainly part of the conservative ideal (some Republicans are conservatives).
The conservative rebellion of 2010 fits the mind-set I was trying to describe — people who believe in merit, self-reliance, and heroic action stood up for the Constitution against creeping totalitarianism, even against their own party “leadership”. Your list of Romney’s shortcomings shows failures to adequately embody or project the ideal I described.
I agree that Romney should have attacked Obama and Obamacare relentlessly on Constitutional grounds (and economic grounds, to help idiots understand why they are unemployed). Reagan won broad support by using Libertarian rhetoric (even if he didn’t govern that way) and being consistent for decades. Tough talk with a smile, and believing what you are saying, works.
Obama is of course correct on one thing. The U.S. Constitution IS a charter of negative liberties: it recognizes the pre-existing natural rights of Man, and establishes and limits the purpose of government to securing those rights. Obama despises this, and wants a Constitution with “positive” guarantees (like food, housing, clothes, “freedom from fear”, employment/minimum income, free education, etc....), with government redistributing wealth in a totalitarian collectivist welfare state. This would seem an easy target to go after, but explaining Obama’s philosophical hatred of our Constitution requires a more complicated discourse than our campaign system capable of. Obama voters either already hate the Constitution, are too dumb to understand, or would think guaranteed free stuff sounds credible. Republican candidates should at least try.
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