Free Republic

My impression from reading campaign coverage is that Romney's were upbeat and positive, whereas Obama hammered Romney at every turn. What was your experience?

Congratulations Mr. President on your most recent win in your bid for reelection – “Well Done.” You have earned the right to be THE man responsible for America’s decline – Congratulations. Your high water line is 23 million Americans unemployed, 8% unemployment for 42 consecutive months, 47 million Americans on food stamps, 6 trillion dollars in NEW debt, a declining military (with a looming 1 trillion dollar budget cut, laying off or firing many that voted for you), Iran on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb, threatening Israel’s peace and security, interest rates set to skyrocket (currently at 3.4%...

Duffleblog says that the tardy delivery of the ballots caused them to be returned too late to be counted but these hundreds of thousands of ballots seem preliminarily to have been enough to hand Romney the election. Sources confirmed today that hundreds of thousands of military absentee ballots were delivered hours after the deadline for them to be counted, with preliminary counts showing that they would have overturned the vote in several states and brought a victory for Governor Mitt Romney.Officials say the ballots were delivered late due to problems within the military mail system. Tracking invoices show the ballots...

If Election Day is about picking winners, the morning after is for post-mortems. That's when we slice open the losing campaigns, set aside the hundreds of millions of dollars that gush out, and pick apart the cause of death. Why did the Romney campaign fail? Maybe the country is now GOP-proof. That is, maybe a Constitution-guided, free-market, limited-government candidate no longer can "appeal" to the majority of the electorate. It could be that the death knell rang early this year once 67.3 million of us, or one in five Americans, had come to depend on federal assistance, formerly known as...

... Yet despite the onslaught, Obama has retained an overall advertising advantage over Romney and Republican groups. Under federal law, television stations must offer presidential campaigns a discounted price — it's known as the lowest unit rate — to run their spots in the two months leading up to Election Day. Independent political groups aren't eligible for the discount, so their ads cost as much to run as do commercials for products like Pepsi or Tide. The Obama team has taken full advantage of the lower ad rates available to them, having booked their fall advertising last July and August...

Simply based on CNN raw totals counted so far (no projection for votes not counted) Romney has 18,573,603 votes from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tenessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. McCain had 18,402,511 in those states. By the way, in 2004 Bush had 17,746,072 votes in those states. Obviously there is no official definition of "Bible Belt" and PARTS of many other states would fit (Virginia, Colorado Springs, southern Indiana, etc.), and PARTS of the states I included as "Bible Belt" are definitely not full of Evangelicals. Obviously the voting age population has grown over...

The story of the 2012 election is that voters still blame Republicans for systemic problems caused by liberalism, and yet they credit Obama for victories brought about by applied conservatism. Now how does this happen? The answer is both a short story and part of a longer festering narrative. Consider: during the Republican primary season, half of Mitt Romney's consultants told him to call Newt Gingrich the devil. The other half told him to merely to claim that the devil worshiped Gingrich. Then these same sorcerers all told Mitt to call Barack Obama "a nice guy." Well, gee, what could...

(Putting on my flak jacket). Let me say that I'm no fan of Romney's politics, but the guy ran a decent campaign, and he appeals to swing voters in a way that Santorum and Palin cannot. And let's face it - what's he going to do with the rest of his life? If there's one thing he's got, it's time and money. He can learn from his mistakes, just as Nixon learned from his, and perhaps lead the GOP to victory in 2016.

As Republicans try to explain their Election Day losses in terms of policy, tactics, and strategy, one factor is emerging as the essential difference between the Obama and Romney campaigns on November 6: the absolute failure of Romney’s get-out-the-vote effort, which underperformed even John McCain’s lackluster 2008 turnout. One culprit appears to be “Orca,” the Romney’s massive technology effort, which failed completely. ... Likewise, Twitchy recorded widespread real-time complaints and criticisms on Twitter by Project Orca volunteers. At one point during Election Day, the system had malfunctioned so badly that desperate volunteers wondered if the program had been hacked. ......

We lost. We the People got our teeth kicked down our throat. I know that sounds harsh, but let's face it fellow Republicans, we're members of a party that failed to defeat a racist, dog-eating, homosexual agenda pushing piece of human garbage who isn't qualified to be a cashier at 7-11, let alone be President of the United States. We, the party of strong economies and national defense, failed as a party to dislodge an economically illiterate man who hates the US military with a passion. In short, this election was an absolute train wreck that may very well destroy...

Would we have had a mid-western son of a milk truck driver (Pawlenty) as our nominee has she not surged up until Ames Straw poll? I am trying to trace down to the seed that germinated into re-electing Obama. That is the closest I have come. During this cycle, a more modestly wealthy mid-western governor of a Blue state may just have been the ticket. Thoughts?

President Obama’s post-election offer to sit down with vanquished GOP rival Mitt Romney has spurred talk of a possible White House role for Romney, a move that could help calm jitters on Wall Street and warm the partisan chill on Capitol Hill. Romney is still licking his wounds from the devastating loss, and supporters say he’s more concerned now with being with family than working with Obama.

Once again, Barack Obama has proven to be the luckiest politician alive. Just when the race was tightening to a dead heat in the election’s closing days, one spectacular betrayal and one rank miscalculation on the Republican side have turned the contest back in Obama’s favor. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who will tour his storm-ravaged state today with President Obama, was all over the networks Tuesday telling what a wonderful leader his president was. “I spoke to the president three times yesterday,” Christie boasted, calling Obama “outstanding.” When Fox co-host Steve Doocy meekly asked Christie if he planned any...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that he had called President Obama to congratulate him on his win in the 2012 presidential election — but has only sent an email to Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for whom he campaigned heavily earlier this year. “We didn’t have a political strategy discussion,” Christie said of his call to Obama, according to Bloomberg. “I said congratulations on your win last night Mr. President, he said thank you governor.”

MARK LEVIN: We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our children to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us,...

Mitt Romney had planned to celebrate his election as the nation’s 45th president with an eight-minute fireworks display over Boston Harbor. The same company that does some of the illuminations for Boston’s Fourth of July celebration was poised to ignite fireworks within view of Romney’s party at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center to celebrate a win over President Obama. A permit filed with the City of Boston said the detonation could occur any time between 7 p.m. Tuesday, just after the first polls closed, and 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, which ended up being just before Romney conceded the race.

If you’re a conservative, this story could be too painful for you to read. I suggest you click away now.For those who have stayed, below are pictures of Mitt Romney’s transition website that would have gone live had he been elected president on Tuesday. So how are you seeing it today? Well, the site accidentally went live for a brief moment on Wednesday, and because this is the internet, someone was able to grab screenshots before it was taken down.That someone is Roll Call’s Taegan Goddard. Below are the pictures he nabbed, which has a statement from “President-Elect Romney” and...

Ran across this on Quora: What is the minimum number of people who would have had to change their vote for Romney to have won? Richard Tabassi, Renaissance Ape, Occasionally Witty Biped Around 1/3 of a million in the right states. [1,2,3,4] EC 18:Ohio[1] Romney needed 103,520 people to win EC 29:Florida[2] Romney needed 50,869 people to win EC 13: Virginia[3] Romney Needed 111,985 people to win EC 6: Nevada[4] Romney Needed: 66,380 to win Total: 332,754 to win Electoral College There might be a combination that get him there in a shorter amount that I am not seeing yet,...

What is Project Orca? Well, this is what they told us: "Project ORCA is a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election." Pretty much everything in that sentence is false. The "massive undertaking" is true, however. It would take a lot of planning, training and coordination to be done successfully (oh, we'll get to that in a second). This wasn't really the GOP's effort, it was Team Romney's. And perhaps "unprecedented" would fit if we're discussing failure.

RUSH: So three million Republican voters stayed home on Election Day. Three million predominantly white voters stayed home. The media is all over the place with the fact that the Republicans lost "the white vote." They can't get the white vote. They did lose the white vote, but Democrats didn't get it. They just didn't show up, and it wasn't voter suppression that didn't turn 'em out. What would be the reason that three million voters didn't show up? Let's go through the possibilities. It could be that there are a number... We've talked to 'em. We've had 'em call....