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Posted on 11/25/2012 6:01:48 AM PST by expat1000
The difference between victory and defeat often comes down to morale. You've seen it in baseball games and wars. It's that faint sense of air leaking out of the balloon. A weariness and malaise that kicks in when one side decides it can't win and doesn't want to be here anymore.
November 2012 was not a defeat. It was a loss in a close election that rattled the Democrats by showing just how much of the country had turned on their savior. It was a rebuke to Obama's mismanagement of the country and the economy over the last four years.
Or it would have been if the Republican Party had not reacted to its loss by screaming and wailing in despair after their hopes were ludicrously inflated by establishment posters. Followed by running around like a chicken without a head because we fell 400,000 votes short of winning key states. And this defeatist behavior has helped the media create the myth of a second-term mandate.
The country did not repudiate us. The majority of Americans did not pledge allegiance to some rotten post-American country. The majority stayed home. And that is damning, but it's also comforting because these are the people we have to win over. They don't believe in Obama, but they don't believe in us either. They don't believe in politics because it isn't relevant to their lives.
The more Republicans treat the election as a renunciation of everything that they stand for or a reason to give up on the country, the more Democrats posture as having won a tremendous ideological and cultural victory, instead of a limited strategic victory. Our reaction legitimizes theirs.
Republican consultants and pollsters fed the dream of an easy victory and that vision of an inevitable victory made the actual defeat much more shocking and devastating. It made people despair thinking that if we couldn't win an election this "easy", then it's completely hopeless. But this was never going to be an easy ride. Not against the first black man in the White House with a money advantage and the media in his pocket. Not against opponents running a coordinated smear campaign while rigging the economy in their favor.
Obama may have Carter's policies times ten, but he also has the image and the ruthless political machine of JFK. And even Reagan had to work hard to beat Carter. It wasn't the easy ride that some Republicans like to remember it as. Even though the economy was a disaster, the hostages were in Iran and Carter's performance had been so bad that he had a high profile Democratic challenger in the form of Ted Kennedy who took the fight to the Convention; Reagan did not break out until the debate. Now imagine Reagan running against JFK. The man in the cowboy hat might have won, but let's not pretend that it would have been any easier than it was for Romney.
Beating Obama was possible and for a brief shining moment the window was open, when Romney had one good debate performance, but then it closed again as the storm blew in and the polls filled up with the handpicked demographics of the welfare state. And we lost, but we also won.
Win or lose, elections send a message and the message for this election to Obama was not, "We like what you've been doing the last four years. Great job!"
Obama lost his mandate. To win, he had to run a divisive campaign dependent on minority groups. And that locks him in a box outside the mainstream. Forget any of that nonsense about bringing the country together again. That is over and done with. The transformation of Obama from mainstream leader to bellicose mouthpiece for the left was completed at his first post-election press-conference.
Republicans might understand what this means if they weren't busy with an opportunistic internal civil war. And if sizable chunks of the rank and file weren't busy proclaiming that no election can ever be won again because the demographics of the country had changed so dramatically and everyone is so addicted to free stuff.
Neither one is true.
The demographics have not made it impossible for Republicans to win, not unless Republicans make that a self-fulfilling prophecy by jumping on the amnesty express. And you can beat Santa Claus, because our fat red man is a redistributor and does not give or take equally from all. But doing that requires spending more time making a case on the specific individual economic impact, rather than endlessly singing the wonders of free enterprise and depending on enough people to align with your economic philosophy to carry you over the top.
Romney was great when it came to talking about the impact of the economy on large businesses. He was much poorer at connecting to the concerns of ordinary people. He wasn't Reagan and Obama is a much better campaigner than Carter and there was no significant split in his party to tie him down. His victory was not inevitable, though he came close. A better candidate might have won. Even Romney might have won if he had tackled a wider range of issues and done a better job of connecting with the frustrations and anxieties of ordinary people.
In a period of prosperity or hope, he might have even been the perfect candidate. And it's not hard to imagine the electorate choosing someone like him to preside over growth and prosperity. But Mitt was running for the wrong job at the wrong time. He was running for the presidency of a bankrupt company and the shareholders were no longer at the point where they wanted someone competent and professional to run the company. They wanted someone who shared their anger or would protect them from the worst of the company's collapse.
And that may be the larger reason why Romney lost.
This was a loss and there are lessons to be learned from it, but it was not a repudiation of conservative values, the end of America or any of the other things that some people keep insisting it is.
The country isn't lost and acting like it is will just make it easier for the Democrats to win. Right now the establishment is trying to sell out the base and the base is abandoning ship. That is a truly toxic combination which could very well accomplish what this defeat did not. It can bring down both the Republican Party and the Conservative movement.
On the one hand we have Liberal Republicans who want to realign their party as a less extreme version of the Democratic Party. On the other hand we have Paleoconservatives who view the country as a hostile cultural territory that they are no longer interested in fighting for, but a liberal Sodom and Gomorrah that they would be happy to see burn. Some expect a better America to emerge out of the ashes. Most do not. They just want to see America destroyed to prove their point.
Pulling out of the political process is no answer. It's comfort food before the apocalypse. There isn't any room in this country for private enclaves, cultural or otherwise. Not when the left gets through with it. There will be as much room for a real or virtual conservative enclave in 2035 as there was for one in the USSR in 1932 or as there is for one today in Cuba. If the left consolidates its control, then the only place to go will be underground, alive or dead. History bears ample witness to that.
Right now we can still fight and win, but the window is closing on that. If we accept the premise that change is no longer possible, then it really will be all over.
The left has not won. It is doing what it always does, acting as if its victory is inevitable. And that is the sum of its ideology. The left believes that its movement is the inevitable progress of history. It believes that it must win, it's only a matter of time. That sense of inevitability can be a powerful thing. And its opposite number, the thing that the left tries to instill in its opponents, the sense that they are doomed fossils, dinosaurs watching the comet, is equally powerful in killing hope and urging on the false wisdom of bowing to the inevitable. Amnesty, why not? It's inevitable.
Defeat is a teacher. How we behave in defeat shows what we are made of. It shows whether we have what it takes to win. If we fail the tests of defeat, then we shall never be worthy of victory.
Kipling said it best in his famous poem, "If". "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same/If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken/Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools/Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken/And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools."
The question is can we do that? Will we bend down and do that?
But when the buzzer sounds and the game is over, then you have to adjust to live with it. The buzzer has sounded, the game is over, the USA as we knew it is gone. I’m SICK of the “hope” the losing team is continually fed. Hope is not a strategy, so quit passing it out. A different strategy is on the horizon. And if you don’t feel it coming you aren’t paying attention.
Nice thoughts, but for reassurances to work they have to ring true. The majority of Americans did not opt out of voting and the Dems were not rattled. (Hint: They are never rattled and the GOPe always is.)
Ridiculous. "Enclaves" is exactly how the left has stolen the southwest. Mexican enclaves grow until they begin to elect their own, and they are leftists 2 to 1. It's racist top to bottom. Same thing with the Blacks, only more so.
There is no assimilated American ideal anymore, which was the only hope we had to remain a union of common ground Americans. We are all divided into enclaves now.
All very true, no side has truly lost until they surrender.
But conservatives have to organize if they are to take the country back. We can’t depend on the GOP, they’ve gone to the dark side, and the Tea Party has already been Palinized.
However we do it though, we have to unite and take on the media and voter fraud. We have to!
State conventions is a great place to restore the GOP policy making power structure to American conservatism. A few hundred votes is usually enough to remove RINO committeemen from the RNC as was done in Michigan last spring. Less than 1500 total votes were cast and a coalition of tea partiers, libertarians, and GOP conservatives came together and swept the RINOs aside like dust.
srbfl
The author was obviously watching a different election than I was.
Must be a real "glass is half full" kind of person.
I’m paying attention, and I don’t see any different strategy. What is the different strategy?
Good to know, thanks.
We still own the House and we increased (R) at governors' level. We own 23 state houses/senates and governorships outright.
We fight just like "cripplecreek" said: we take over the state party apparatus, like in MI and WI, and IN, and OH, etc.
Ignore the grumbling gas bags around here: the third party types, the self-righteous and self-important.
Refuse to be painted in to the MSM's defeatist trap.
Remain aware of the roughly 30-year cycles of US politics: the 1770's, the 1800's, 1830's, 1860's, 1890's, 1920's, the 1950's, the 1980's, and now, the 2010's.
FReegards!
Republicans might understand what this means if they weren't busy with an opportunistic internal civil war.
I have given up. This last election was our last hope, and the takers finally won. Every day, I walk around with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, knowing that my country is now fully in the hands of Marxists. I feel like I am watching a horror movie, nerves on edge, waiting for the next horrifying event to take place. Then, I realize I AM in that movie, and the horrifying events are really happening.
As conservatives we pride ourselves on how hard we fight but as individuals we really need to ask ourselves how true that really is.
One point of irritation for me is the fact that we keep allowing positions like university boards of trustees, regents, etc slip through our fingers for no reason other than pure laziness. The same is true of state boards of education. Races like these are too important to let slide because they are the factories that keep pumping out our opposition.
I had the luxury of voting for a tea partier (Rob Steele) for a university of Michigan board of regents seat. He didn’t win but looking at the numbers it became clear that he didn’t win because conservatives didn’t bother to vote in that race. Instead we put two former union reps in the two open regent seats. The same was true of every last state board of education seat as well.
The simple fact is that if we think we can get by with fighting only the convenient battles or the major battles, we have zero hope of winning in the long run. The enemy fights every battle and can be guaranteed a win in every one we don’t fight.
I’m kind of curious if there were no secretary of state races in this election cycle. I never heard a peep about them and they’re the single most important election official in the states.
My county put in a Tea Party leader (fairly powerful guy in the Tea Party movement) as county chairman---and he simply wasn't up to the job. He had started a new law practice, and had a new wife. As a young guy, we wanted vitality---but younger people just don't have the financial stability to go without income for months at a time. Hence, he couldn't do a tenth of the things a chairman should do. He was "replaced" by an old-line party operative who knew how to get the phones working, get the walkers walking, keep track, and so on. We had some success, in that Obama won the county this time by 3,000 fewer votes. But we thought we might win, or at least break even.
I have never been more distressed by an election in my life, and that goes back a ways.
In my neighborhood people didn't stay home. They turned out in massive numbers. Everything I hold near and dear wasn't defeated in my neighborhood. It was routed, steam rollered, hammered, overwhelmed and paraded to show what a sap I am to think the way we do.
I may have been distressed if Obama had lost a close election. It would have been depressing to think he could get a significant minority to vote for a guy who despises the country the way he does. The fact that the majority feels that way suggests to me that it's over.
None of this means Obama's policies...the salient ones he has succeeded in implementing, by the way...are other than catastrophic. Nevertheless, perhaps Mr. Greenfield can explain to me how even a conservative victory in four years will succeed in disenfranchising any of it. At best sensible people may someday get a chance to tinker around the edges. And what will cause the conservatives to suddenly become a majority?
Obama has wanted to destroy major industries in this country. What is slowing him down?
Who plans to stop him for even the next two years? Boehner? Now that should prove entertaining to watch. We can start an over-under board as to how long it will take the House to cave on every issue.
The Supreme Court? In four years we will probably lose at leat one and probably two more justices while Roberts keeps growing and maturing.
Obama is at war with the Catholic Church. I think even a majority of Catholics voted for him. I hope I'm wrong, but don't think so.
We hear day after day that minorities are getting more conservative, or that hysterical line that blacks are really conservative...just ask them about issues. It looks to me like minorities are getting more liberal. That has been the trend my entire life.
Sorry for the downer post. I'm not going to change my beliefs in this world, I just never see them prevailing. I almost think we would be better off standing aside and let Obama complete the destruction. We're paying for his policies with monopoly money now. Maybe when there is nothing left, we might be able to get something the tiniest bit usable from the ashes.
I would never have believed a guy could run on a platform of hatred and destruction as Obama has, succed in making huge and growing numbers of people more miserable by the day, and attract a majority to say, "Yes, yes, give us more." When he makes things even worse, I wonder if it won't make his majority even larger.
If we didn't lose this election, really lose it hard, I sure hope I can become one of the uncaring before a real loss comes along.
Maybe it's just that I am older, but I am about ready to say I'm done with it. Maybe because in past defeats there was some rationale, some hope for the future. I lived through the Goldwater slaughter of '64, but I could see that at least we had some hope of picking up the pieces in '68 when LBJ went down the tubes, which I could see he surely would. Same in '76. The country turned to a loser like Carter as a response to Nixon and Watergate, and we had Reagan waiting in the wings to gallop to the rescue. I don't see that happening in '16. Who do we have to look forward to then? Hillary. That's too depressing to even contemplate at this point. Time to find the gulch.
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