I have read the entire thread. Romney lost in a perfect storm:
1. Flawed internal polls gave a false sense of security. There were rumors on this as early as the night before the election. Gingrich echoed this even up to Election Day. And he vanished in the aftermath.
2. Akin and the other nitwit who stuck their foots in their mouths on rape and abortion. Add to those gaffs the Romney sound bite stating that he would be happy to sign legislation banning abortion. And add in Limbaughs 2 day rant on Sandra Fluke(which was cheered on by the echo chamber) just turned off women. This was not the election for social issues. Just fiscal issues.
3. Romney’s lack of awareness about his wealth. The 10 grand bet with Perry and “My wife’s 2 Cadillacs” removed the ability to connect with the average non political hack voter.
4. Lack of a blueprint to right the nations fiscal ship of state. Sorry, he needed to channel the Ross Perot with the charts and data to tell the American people how he would positively affect their lives going forward. I know they did not want to give specifics because they would need to defend them, but I thought that is why he wanted Ryan on the ticket.
5. I live in a red part of Maryland and I did not receive one piece of mail or a call from the Romney campaign. Andy Harris knew my number, but not Mitt. And no GOTV call at all on Election Day. Granted the state was Obama’s, but you would want to run up the score in red districts.
6. His faith most liely suppressed the hard right evangenelical voter.
7. Palin and Paul voters sat this one out.
8. Obama knew his voters, and modeled the data nightly in 600 scenarios. That remineded me of the movie Wargames and the WOPR computer that did nothing but model WWIII. No indication that Romney had the data analyst team giving him unbiased truth.
Cry fraud all you want. I think Romney just got out played.
Every year someone says that ‘this wasn’t the election to...’ whatever.
Yes it was. They all were. Social/fiscal/whatever issues do not have better times. They are all important all the time.
And those who say they are fiscally con but socially mod/lib are indeed. But they are not ‘conservative’ when the chips are down. That’s easily demonstrated by their dem knack for categorization and (for lack of a better word) class warfare with their own supposed ‘party’. Eventually people have to stop lying to themselves and just be who and what their actions define them as. Whether they want to stay in their self-made political closet or not.
Again...If we cannot win on what we believe in then the country we love is no longer really ‘the country we love’. That’s just the hard reality and no amount of verbal gymnastics changes that.