Free Republic

Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he nor his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival’s victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s first term. Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the administration’s plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students...

Bret Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal: And though I have my anxieties about the president's next term, I also have a hunch the GOP dodged a bullet with Mr. Romney's loss. ... the GOP dodged ownership of the second great recession, which will inevitably hit when the Federal Reserve can no longer float the economy in pools of free money. When that happens, Barack Obama won't have George W. Bush to kick around. Stephens's point -- that the wreckage of the past four years now belongs to Obama -- resonates in light of current events: The stock market...

In an article published in 2001, Jude Wanniski, the author of The Way the World Works, noted that since 1896, only Republican presidential candidates running on “pro-growth” platforms have won. Republicans advocating “austerity” have invariably lost. With the defeat of Mitt Romney, the election of 2012 continued this pattern, with one addition. Republican presidential candidates offering clueless confusion also lose. Democracies tend to evolve two political parties, a party of economic growth and a party of income redistribution. If a credible plan for economic growth is offered, the people will vote for it, provided that it does not involve crushing...

***SNIP*** [L]et's be honest. We had little reason to believe that Romney was truly dedicated to improving our social and cultural conditions -- indeed, that all-important thing called the human condition -- because he talked endlessly about his business experience. Most Americans don't like their bosses and have trouble with landlords and creditors. Talking about one's business experience is not usually a good way to win them over. On election day, it became clear to me that the Republican Party had been led into Purgatory by the Laodicean wing. In case you aren't familiar with Revelation 3:14-17, here is what...

Operation Demoralize, the attempt to convince you that conservatism is dead, that you live in a media cocoon, that you are incapable of learning, and that your pundits lied to you, is dominating the media. But are the quick and easy answers — just say Yes to illegal immigration, higher taxes, creeping socialism — based on the reality of why the election was lost? Someone clearly outside the supposed “conservative media complex” suggests that the reasons being peddled for the loss are not accurate, or at least not the full story. Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, writes...

How America got used to his religion, and mine.On the night of the South Carolina Republican primary in January, I sat near the front of a dark campaign press bus and listened to reporters talk about Mitt Romney's underwear.Earlier in the day, one of them had happened upon the candidate and his wife doing laundry in the basement of our Columbia, South Carolina, hotel, and a small cluster of colleagues had now gathered to listen to him relate the anecdote, lapping up every mundane detail of this rare interaction with the closed-off couple.Finally, another reporter interrupted."Did you see their underwear?"...

Grassroots Republican operatives and Movement conservatives are quickly turning against the GOP Establishment in the wake of the party's expensive defeat this election cycle. Republicans we spoke to this week voiced a near-universal disgust with the national Republican Party leaders and Washington political class, who are seen as having put their personal financial interest above winning the election. As this internecine struggle gathers steam, the first target appears to be Karl Rove, the former Bush campaign mastermind who has dictated much of the GOP's strategy over the past decade. In the wake of the party's 2012 losses, however, Rove and...

Gingrich: GOP needs to be "inclusive" In the aftermath of Mitt Romney's presidential loss last week, Newt Gingrich is joining the cadre of Republicans calling for the Republican Party to more actively reach out to a more diverse electorate, arguing on Monday that the party needs to become more "inclusive." "I think we need to be inclusive, and I emphasize the difference between inclusive and outreach," Gingrich said Monday morning in an appearance on ABC's "The View." "Outreach is when five white guys have a meeting and call you. Inclusive is when you're in the meeting. And I think we...

The maelstrom of political controversy regarding Free Republic founder Jim Robinson and his attitude towards the then Republican presidential candidate front runner and odds-on favorite to win the nomination, as anointed by the msm as the weakest candidate in the Repuplican field, was one punctuated by severe criticism of Mr. Robinson for his uncompromising, vituperative take-no-prisoners stance towards the liberal bent, RINO candidate Mr. Romney,as unacceptable under any circumstances as Republican Party nominee in the 2012 presidential election. While his intensely vociferous stance against Mr. Romney surprised, confused, alienated many, the political rationale for the utter blanket rejection of Mr....

<p>A score of people this past week have asked me about the three million Republicans allegedly "missing" at the polls this year. For starters, if the Washington Post is to be believed, Mitt Romney received 1.3 million fewer votes than John McCain did in 2008, not 3 million. For the record, Obama received 7.5 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008.</p>

The key to understanding the 2012 election is simple: A huge slice of the electorate stayed home. The punditocracy — which is more of the ruling class than an eye on the ruling class — has naturally decided that this is because Republicans are not enough like Democrats: They need to play more identity politics (in particular, adopt the Left’s embrace of illegal immigration) in order to be viable. But the story is not about who voted; it is about who didn’t vote. In truth, millions of Americans have decided that Republicans are not a viable alternative because they are...

Ok, I was wrong. I thought the Republicans would win the Presidency. I was not the only one. Smart people like Michael Barone and Karl Rove thought so also, in addition to people like Dick Morris. A knowledgeable friend called me the Saturday before the election and told me John McLaughlin, the pollster, just told him Romney wins it going away. So what happened? First there is the big picture. I think there were three issues that hurt the Romney campaign along the way. The first is his turn to the right to win the primaries. My now politically-astute son...

Disbelief is the word that defines the Republican state of mind in the wake of the 2012 re-election of President Barack Obama. The obvious questions are: “How can Americans have re-elected a president who has presided over an economy where unemployment still hovers at 8 percent ?” And, “How can Americans have re-elected a president who still doesn’t grasp that his big government policies are what have blocked our economic recovery?” The Republican Party needs to take responsibility for this disaster. Nothing in the outcome of this election is a surprise. The realities which produced these election results have been...

The election post-mortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans’ defeat, from the “woman problem” and the “Hispanic problem,” as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney’s fatcat persona and his inept campaign. But there’s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient Athens––Obama and the Democrats promised voters more free stuff. The differences between the political mechanisms of ancient Athens and those of America today do not erase the similarities of mentality and sensibility popular rule creates in its citizens. Most important is the way democracy leads to radical egalitarianism: the belief, as...

Let’s face facts. Democrats gained in the House of Representatives, the Senate and the chief Democrat in charge was re-elected after one of the worst four year periods in American history, economically and constitutionally. How does that happen? Republicans/Conservatives gave voters credit for being smart while Democrats assumed they’re not. Let’s break down what Obama, Pelosi, Reid, the Obama SuperPACs, et al were saying for a year and a half: Republicans are prosecuting a war on women Romney only cares about his rich friends and Wall Street Romney is responsible for the death of a woman by somehow giving her...

MessageToEagle.com - Normally, as a matter of personal preference I don’t get into politics, but when we have a presidential campaign that begins to cross over into the strange twilight zone of religious weirdness that centers on the one person who’s going to control the most powerful government and army on the face of the earth, well, it brings up some unusual scenarios to wonder about. It is being reported in the media today that former presidential candidate Mitt Romney only wrote a victory speech for Election Day; presumably a harried, last minute scramble to revise his speech was being...

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...

Catholics are a quarter of the electorate, and they voted for Obama over Romney by the same margin as the total electorate, 50%-48%. Contrary to what many pundits are saying, this suggests that the bishops’ campaign for religious liberty, waged against the Health and Human Services mandate, actually paid off: Obama got 54% of the Catholic vote in 2008 to McCain’s 45%. Some commentators talk about the Catholic vote as if it were monolithic, and others say it doesn’t exist. It would be more accurate to say there are four Catholic votes: practicing and non-practicing; white and Latino. Among practicing...

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%...

Perhaps I should have changed the title of this post to "The Americans Who Stayed At Home". That's really where this all lies. In the aftermath of the election, I was reading some posts on Facebook and came across one from someone I am related to. He and his wife shall remain nameless, but what they posted troubled me greatly. They basically congratulated President Obama for his victory and then wrote that they were proud of the fact that they did not vote. I could not believe what I was reading. How can any American citizen not have the desire...