Posted on 11/21/2012 10:10:03 AM PST by Strategerist
No, it's not time to stop such a thing. The story is precisely about those 8 million 2008 Obama voters that abandoned him this time - and decided NOT to vote for Romney. We can safely assume those 8 million were not the hardcore leftists - they'd never abandon a Marxist like Obama. So it has to be those “Independents” that we are relentlessly told we absolutely HAVE to have by all of those alleged Republican Strategists ( you know, like Steve Schmidt - ever count sheer number of losing campaigns this clown has been involved with?). So not only did they not vote Obama again, but evidently they gave Romney a pass too. Or, worse for the GOP, a lot of those 8 million did vote for Romney - and the ones who stayed home were the very social conservatives who are the majority of the TEA Party movement. I suspect it's much more the latter.
Let's be clear about Mitt Romney: nobody really wanted him, as was evidenced in the Primaries. He was the lone wolf to stake out the RINO middle ground: works well with Democrats, lots of big spending programs to his name, no aversion at all to tax increases. He was Democrat Lite, and only the Progressive Republicans in the party and in the Congress loved him. He was one of them. No one in the Republican Base of Conservatives wanted anything to do with him. Romney had to come from behind to win almost all of the primaries in the beginning of the season: Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania - and he lost South Carolina outright. He basically took his own money and outspent his foes with ruthless attack ads on them, their character and everything else. Romney wanted the nomination; nobody wanted Romney. We wanted a real conservative. We didn't get one. So we lost. The New York Times did a rare piece of accurate reporting. They discovered this summer that 59% of those who said to them they were going to vote for Romney were doing so only to vote against Obama - none of them were voting FOR Romney. When you have 6 in 10 of your own voters say openly they're aren't voting FOR you but AGAINST the other guy, you can only conclude we did in fact run a lousy candidate.
And the other reason it's important to keep the heat on the Romney's of the world should be patently obvious to the GOP numbskulls: you give us another McCain or Romney type moderate squish - or G-d forbid you even TRY to give us someone else named BUSH - and the base will tell you to F-off and the GOP will win nothing ever again. Romney won over the “Independents” this time by 5 points, and he still came up a loser. Romney basically ran as the non-Obama, and thought that would be enough. But he never told the world why Obama was a disaster. Why his policies are destructive. And moreover, even raise the question of whether it was deliberate by Obama or not. All he said was that Obama was just simply in over his head - a well intended student who just didnt' seem to "get it", according to Romney. So if Romney himself doesn't make the argument of why he is better and what courses he's going to reverse, why should anyone vote for him?
Obama still got less votes than he did in 2008 which means Romney was not able to convince those voters he was an acceptable alternative
Thanks..I needed a good laugh.
Easily—it could have been more those among the many more millions of McCain’s white vote who stayed home instead.
It makes no sense to jump to the conclusion that all of McCain’s white voters made it out to vote GOP again, but then the whites who cooled on Obama since 2008 all decided to merely stay home in 2012 instead.
contradictory? if mccain got a bunch more votes than romney then there is no question that romney, a liberal republican, was a disasterous choice and must never be repeated. it’s a damning argument against liberal republicans given two failures in a row.
so of course, the romney liberals and GOPe have to attack that number. now the argument is that romney didn’t really get fewer votes. he’s getting a bit more. actually he was a good candidate, the author argues. the author wants to imply that a conservative candidate would have lost as well. maybe by a far worse margin. that argument, if true, would have the effect of further dividing conservatives, the main goal of statists in both parties.
to argue romney was a better candidate than mccain (the thesis of this article), he would have to demonstrably hold or gain conservative/republican voters (i.e., increase his vote totals significantly over mccain, who was by every measure a weak candidate. hope your not arguing that), while drawing significantly more obama supporters and first time voters.
for me. this data doesn’t yet support their thesis. but it is clearly an argument the republican elite has to make to keep conservatives on their plantation.
I would have expected a Romney/Rubio to win Florida and maybe Colorado, but I don't see that combination turning the tide in Virginia and Ohio.
where are you getting these scores?
Mitt beat John’s turnout. The margin that Barack got was pinched from both sides. Unfortunately it was not pinched ENOUGH.
Romney is and will always be a number two.
scores, no scores. i’m simply commenting on the argument apologists for romney are trying to make, and the possible reasons the’re trying to make them.
i made my judgement about romney long ago based on his actual positions on the issues.
i’ll wait for all the final numbers and breakdowns before i actually “score” things.
peace to you. moving on.
let’s find some facts before offering color commentary!
sorry. i really didn’t mean to be that annoying.
as for getting more facts, on that we completely agree.
post election polling, and final and authoritative per state breakdowns of the electorate and comparisons with mccain’s and obama’s electorate should be illuminating.
again, thanks for your patience.
Let's say it happened that way. You still have a significant net white flight away from the dems from '08 to '12, but no net white flight to the GOP. It is worth looking into why this happened. You've got a better shot at these voters than minority voters, IMO.
kids, bama won because of vote siphoning, he could not win a fair election. period.
That’s undoubtedly true.
The whites who didn’t vote for Romney were the Reagan republicans. These would be mostly northern working class cultural(not actual church going) catholics
Well, consider me cynical. If people on FR haven't figured out by now that ~98% of the DBM is liberal and ~99.4% of the political pundits are wrong ESPECIALLY on our side, then they simply aren't paying ebough attention.
Yes, why was Romney boycotted?
“The popular vote on the national level is intrinsically linked to the state level results.”
Only because it is a sum of all the state totals, but - as a number by itself - it’s irrelevant to who wins or loses the presidency, because THAT is decided ONLY by the popular votes in the separate states, because THAT - NOT the national popular vote - determines the electoral college votes. The 2000 election showed the irrelevancy of the national popular vote.
Focusing on that number tells us nothing useful about how the electoral college votes were won or lost. That is only found in the state vote totals.
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