Free Republic

Filling in on Rush Limbaugh’s Monday radio show, National Review columnist Mark Steyn said that Republicans lost big on Election Day because less engaged and more uniformed voters turned out in force. “We do very well in off years, in the midterms — 1994, 2002,” Steyn said. “Republicans can have good years then because essentially they’re low-turnout elections — people who are engaged in politics vote. In the presidential years, people voted — a broader pool of voters comes in, and they’re basically people who swim in the broader culture. They’re not people who know the name of their congressmen...

Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center's "Restoration Weekend" in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican "consultant-lobbyist-establishment" complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning. “No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.” Caddell said “Republicans never attempted to put a frame around the national election” because “the people who run the messaging in the Republican party and their consultants refused to do it.” Caddell, the former...

November 22, 2012 The GOP Turnout Myth To win future elections, Republicans will need more than better get-out-the-vote software. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL To win the next presidential race, the GOP will have to understand what went wrong in 2012. To do that, they've got to come to grips with what did, and did not, happen with turnout. Even as Republicans have engaged in some agonizing over their candidate and agenda, many have sought comfort in the notion that a big part of the loss came down to simple mechanics. President Obama had a stunning Election Day operation, which turned...

Small minds always leap to the answers given the last time around, which is probably why Maxine Waters keeps getting re-elected. But the last time is not necessarily the same as this time. A terrorist attack is not the same as the Cold War, a war in Afghanistan is not the same as a war in Iraq, and Mitt Romney is not the same as John McCain or Bob Dole. But since the election, many conservatives seem to be coalescing around the explanation for our defeat given by Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots, who said: “What we...

Romney: 60,099,431 McCain: 59,948,323 Obama 2012: 64,185,237 Obama 2008: 69,498,516

"Barack Obama won because he recognized a new America." Or maybe an America more fluid, more insubstantial than post-election wisdom is ready to grant. You can't always tell about "new" -- a truth the human race rarely acknowledges. We'll see whether James Carville's and Stan Greenberg's words from a Democracy Corps survey stand up better than the consensus of November 1965, following the Lyndon Johnson-led slaughter of almost every Republican downwind from Barry Goldwater. Johnson, father of the Great Society, was all but run out of Washington on a rail after mucking up the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, as everyone these...

In this election the Republican Party ran two wholly inoffensive blue state Republicans on a platform of jobs at a time when the economy was everyone’s chief concern and the incumbent had absolutely failed to fix the economy. And they lost. The Monday — or Wednesday — morning quarterbacks will have a fine time debating what Mitt Romney should have done differently. The red Republicans will say that he should have been more aggressive and should have hit Obama on Benghazi. The blue Republicans will blame a lack of outreach to Latinos. Some will blame Sandy, others will blame Christie...

The 2012 election was an open door for the GOP to lead America back to its roots in faith and morality, and the Republicans were AWOL, says Dr. James Dobson, founder of Family Talk and a brand new political outreach arm called Family Talk Action. “I waited throughout the campaign for Mitt Romney to declare himself, to at least identify with the moral issues that are before us. He would not touch them,” Dobson said on a two-part radio program in which Penny Nance, head of Concerned Women for America, joined.

By KEVIN ROBILLARD | 11/16/12 4:38 PM EST Sen.-elect Ted Cruz believes Mitt Romney got a little too close to Barack Obama in the third presidential debate. “I’m pretty certain Mitt Romney actually French-kissed Barack Obama,” Cruz said in a speech at the Federalist Society’s annual conference Friday. Cruz said that conservatives failed to make their case to the American people, leaving Romney no choice but to move toward the president. “We didn’t win the argument, we didn’t even make the argument” throughout much of 2012, Cruz said. But in the first debate, he argued, that changed. “It was the...

Despite Gov. Rick Scott’s seven-hour waiting lines in Florida’s minority voting precincts, President Obama won the state’s 29 electoral votes, giving him a 332-206 victory and, more important, a clear mandate to lead America forward. Just two weeks ago, Republicans were told by Fox News’ resident genius Dick Morris the election was in the bag. So, what happened? David Frum may have the answer. “The problem with Republican leaders is that they’re cowards, not that they’re fundamentally mistaken,” said the conservative pundit and former George W. Bush speechwriter. “Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday added his name to a growing list of Republicans who are rebuking Mitt Romney over his “gifts” comments. “You can't expect to be a leader of all the people and be divisive,” said Christie on MSNBC’s Morning Joe when asked if he agreed with fellow Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who was one of the first to criticize the former GOP nominee over the comments. In a conference call with donors Wednesday, Romney said that minorities and young people voted for Obama because he offered them “gifts.” Said Christie: “You have to...

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....