Free Republic

Despite their weak candidate, Republicans increased their share of the presidential vote among many major demographic groups. Compared with 2008, they made significant gains among men (four percentage points), whites (four points), younger voters (six points), white Catholics (seven points) and Jews (nine points). Mr. Romney also carried the independent vote 50% to 45%. Four years ago, independents voted for Mr. Obama 52% to 44%. Republicans can take some solace from these gains. In addition, only 43% of voters this year said they wanted an activist government (compared with 52% in 2008), and 49% continued to disapprove of Mr. Obama's...

Mitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment— nice, moderate losers, people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have. The list of Republican presidential candidates like this goes back at least as far as 1948, when Thomas E. Dewey ran against President Harry Truman. Dewey spoke in lofty generalities while Truman spoke in hard-hitting specifics. Since then, there have been many re-runs of this same scenario, featuring losing Republican presidential candidates John McCain, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and, when he ran for...

American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall...

Have you ever been a fly on the wall? How about right out in the open, undercover? Well I have and the RNC should pay me for it on retainer. New tools, new tactics, and firing Rove and the pantywaist consultants is the only way to win again. Yesterday - and quite often I'll add - my wife and I are the only conservative ones in large settings with staunchly democrat blacks - you know the type, 0bama is king, is perfect, and only bigots would not vote for him. But to sit there, watch how smart phones get passed...

(More Project Orca fallout, and Romeny being blindsided) If you spend your time watching politics and haven’t been hiding in a deep depression since Tuesday, you’ve probably been hearing a lot about “ORCA.” According to the Washington Post, ORCA “was designed as a first-of-its-kind tool to employ smartphones to mobilize voters, allowing them to microtarget which of their supporters had gone to the polls.” There is now widespread condemnation of the program as being sloppy and poorly deployed. ....... Specifically Targeted Victory, FLS Connect, and The Stevens and Schriefer Group. While the Romney campaign did work with other consultants, they...

Fellow FReepers -- This is designed to serve as a single repository for layoff announcements, stories and other related news pertaining to the future dismantling of our economy due to the re-election of Barack Obama. The goal here is a one-stop source to bolster our argument that Obama's reelection is truly the detriment to our economic well-being.

Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public.If the president begins his second term under any delusion that voters rubber-stamped his agenda on Tuesday night, he is doomed to fail.Mandates are rarely won on election night. They are earned after Inauguration Day by leaders who spend their political capital wisely, taking advantage of events without overreaching. Obama is capable—as evidenced by his first-term success with health care...

Columbus, Ohio — The realities of the electoral map meant that the Romney campaign really had no choice but to bet big on Ohio, and that bet was a loser. In addition to some critical on-the-ground specifics — Ohio is not hurting as badly as the rest of the country — there were three main reasons for that.1. Ohio likes crony capitalism. The automotive bailout is popular in Ohio, and not just among self-interested workers and investors in that industry. Putting General Motors on federal life support is economically daft and morally dubious, but it gave the Obama administration a powerful...

The Conservatives’ Obama Delusion Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 11.07.2012 - 1:05 AM For most of the last two years, if not the last four, many conservatives and Republicans assumed that Barack Obama could not be re-elected. A poor economy, an unpopular liberal agenda shoved down the throat of the country, and a largely uninspiring presidential leadership style combined to create a widespread belief on the right that the 2012 election would be a layup for them. We now know what some of us suspected for a long time: Republicans drastically underestimated the president’s appeal as a historic figure. The...

The 2012 Presidential election was a rerun of 1988. Michael Dukakis was slow and superficial at presenting himself to the voters. It was already too late by the time Dukakis got around to trying to tell the voters who he is and what he stood for. This time, it was the Democrats who defined Mitt Romney and controlled the national debate before Mitt Romney’s campaign could get its message across. Democrats learned the lesson of 1988. Republicans forgot it. Democrats acted early, aggressively, early, relentlessly, early, forcefully, and early to define Mitt Romney in the voters mind. In fact, the...

The shock of last night’s electoral outcome in the presidential race is setting in for some conservatives. But just how it was lost seems to be up for the debate. On Laura Ingraham’s Wednesday radio show, conservative commentator Ann Coulter and Ingraham debated who is to blame. Coulter, author of “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,” was less willing to fault the candidate Mitt Romney, while Ingraham put the loss mostly on the shoulders of those running the Romney campaign. COULTER: I think Romney ran just on his own force of will, a magnificent campaign. I think he...

Many pardons but search does not appear to be working right now. Since 3am this morning when I got up and checked the election results, I've been trying to figure out what happened. Mr. Kitty sent me a blog post that I really think explains why BO actually won a second term. And while it may be combination of many things, I really do believe that the main reason Obama won is because of a dramatic change to the social structure of the United States. Those of us old enough to remember the Carter presidency believed that, like Reagan's landslide...

Obama's machine rolled over us because the democrats continue to play chess while Republicans play checkers. Watching the Republican Party go up against the democrats is the true picture of futility.

Allow me to paraphrase Dana Carvey playing George H. W. Bush in a 1990s Iraq War SNL skit, in which he said, "This will not be another Vietnam. We have learned the lesson of Vietnam. Stay out of Vietnam." We have learned the lesson of Obama. Don't run against Obama. Obama is the Republicans' Vietnam. We can do everything right, dominate the territory, win every battle, but it doesn't matter, he'll still win the war. This election wasn't lost on the issues. It was lost because Obama is a clean, articulate, light-skinned person of color. That is pretty much all...

Galveston County has extended voting hours until 8:54 pm. Votes after 7:00 will be counted as provisional. County will have further details available at the polling location and on Galveston County website. Any idea what caused this extension?

The former Digital Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee tells Townhall he fears he's been victimized by voter fraud in the key swing state of Virginia.  His early morning ordeal played out in the House district of Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), whose 23-year-old son abruptly resigned from the campaign in late October, after being caught on film conspiring to count illegal votes.  When the NRCC alumnus arrived to vote at his polling place in Alexandria this morning, his attempt to cast a ballot was rebuffed by election officials: "I got inside, they set me up, I gave the woman...

This will be a running thread for morning anecdotal observations of voting in Ohio. What are you seeing at the polls? If you are in a predominantly democrat district, what does the crowd look like in comparioson with 2008 and in past election years?

Which issue will most decide who will get your vote for president two weeks from today? Foreign policy Economy Domestic problems Other