Posted on 11/07/2012 5:32:07 AM PST by SJackson
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 and many will point to voter fraud. And they will all have a point, but the makings of this defeat did not happen in the last two weeks; they happened in the last two years.
Mitt Romney won the primaries because he was electable. But, as it turned out, he really wasn’t electable after all. Not when the chief criteria of electability is having no opinion, no point of view and no reason to run for office except to win. Not when the chief criteria of being a Republican presidential nominee is being able to convince people that you’re hardly a Republican at all.
Romney was a star political athlete who had an excellent training regimen and coaching staff. But to win elections, you have to change people’s minds. It’s not enough to try hard or to fight hard; you have to fight for something besides the chance to round the bases. You have to wake people up to a cause.
The Republican comeback did not begin with innocuous candidates; it began with angry protesters in costumes and Gadsden flags marching outside ObamaCare town halls. The 2010 midterm election triumphs were not the work of a timorous establishment, but of a vigorous grassroots opposition. And once the Tea Party movement started the fire, the Republican establishment acted like the Tea Party had sabotaged their comeback and cut the ties with their own grassroots movement. Separated, the Republican grassroots and the Republican Party both withered on the vine.
The stunning 2010 midterm election victories happened because a conservative opposition loudly and vociferously convinced a majority of Americans that ObamaCare would be harmful to them. And then that fantastic engine of change was packed away and replaced with political consultants who were all focused on seizing the center and offending as few people as possible. But you don’t win political battles by being inoffensive. And you don’t win elections by avoiding conflict.
Is it any wonder that the 2012 election played out the way it did?
The Democrats in the Bush years were about as unlikable a party as could ever be conceived of. They were hostile, hateful and obstructionist. They spewed conspiracy theories at the drop of a hat and behaved in a way that would have convinced any reasonable person not to entrust them with a lawnmower, let alone political power. And not only were they rewarded for that by winning Congress, but they also went on to win the White House.
Why? Because dissatisfied people gravitate to an opposition. They don’t gravitate to a loyal opposition. They aren’t inspired by mild-mannered rhetoric, but by those who appear to channel their anger.
When the Republican Party sold out the Tea Party, it sold out its soul, and the only driving energy that it had. And there was nothing to replace it with. The Republican Party stopped being the opposition and became a position that it was willing to reposition to get closer to the center. Mitt Romney embodied that willingness to say anything to win and it is exactly that willingness to say anything to win that the public distrusts.
The elevation of Mitt Romney was the triumph of inoffensiveness. Romney ran an aggressive campaign, but it was a mechanical exercise, a smooth assault by trained professionals paid to spin talking points in dangerous directions. But, what if the voters really wanted a certain amount of offensiveness?
What if they wanted someone who mirrored their anger at being out of work, at having to look at stacks of unpaid bills and at not knowing where their next paycheck was coming from? What if they wanted someone whose anger and distrust of the government echoed their own?
Romney very successfully made the case that he would be a more credible steward of the economy. It was enough to turn out a sizable portion of the electorate, but not enough of it. He tried to be Reagan confronting Carter, but what was remarkable about Reagan, is that he had moments of anger and passion; electric flashes of feeling that stirred his audience and made them believe that he understood their frustrations. That was the source of Reagan’s moral authority and it was entirely lacking in Romney. And without that anger, there is no compelling reason to vote for an opposition party.
The establishment had its chance with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor was everything that they could possibly want. Moderate, bipartisan and fairly liberal. With his business background, he could make a perfect case for being able to turn the economy around. They had their perfect candidate and their perfect storm and they blew it.
The Republican Party is not going to win elections by being inoffensive. It is not going to win elections by going so far to the center that it no longer stands for anything. It is not going to win elections by throwing away all the reasons that people might have to vote for it. It is not going to win elections by constantly trying to accommodate what it thinks independent voters want, instead of cultivating and growing its base, and using them as the nucleus for an opposition that will change the minds of those independent voters.
The Republican Party has tried playing Mr. Nice Guy. It may be time to get back to being an opposition movement. And the way to do that is by relearning the lessons of the Tea Party movement. The Democratic Party began winning when it embraced the left, instead of running away from it. If the Republican Party wants to win, then it has to embrace the right and learn to get angry again.
I preferred Gingrich to Romney as well. We all know Newt would of pounded President Obama with Benghazi night and day until the election. There would have been no letup through all three debates. On the flip side don’t you think the gender gap might have been even worse with Newt?
I preferred Gingrich to Romney as well. We all know Newt would of pounded President Obama with Benghazi night and day until the election. There would have been no letup through all three debates. On the flip side don’t you think the gender gap might have been even worse with Newt?
Palin actually helped the ticket. From the time she came on the ticket until McCain suspended campaigning to go back to DC and vote for the bailouts, they were leading.
Both McCain and Romney were “moderates” (i.e., liberal RINOs.) And both got swamped. We need a good solid conservative who isn’t afraid to stand up to the Democrats.
Not everything is the other side's fault.
I am not going to sit around letting people blame tea party for these losses. Tea party is what got us the Senate gains 2 years ago and strong House majority that remains intact...
...sorry, but, fair or not, correctly or not, Tea Party as a political marker has been successfully vilified into oblivion...it is poison now in the political landscape, made so by a lefty sycophant media...the politician that stands up and proudly proclaims ‘Tea Party’ will end up a footnote in political history...the premises underlying the movement are sound and everlasting, but another method of delivering that message must be found other than buzz phrases that can be cornered and eviscerated...this will require a lot of analysis and asking tough questions...and making decisions that are going to anger a lot of people...no other way to compete against the demographics we’re confronting, which will, eventually, render this country into a unique socialist state with a lot of internal strife between diverse populations...
Newt could've tattooed "Benghazi" on his forehead, and folks would've said, "who's Ben?"
Pretty much. It turned into being associated w Fox News etc.
We need to move to more libertarian - “LEAVE ME THE F ALONE” candidates and let it fly.
These Akin and mourdock types are like a death wish.
Good points all. Clearly the GOP model has failed and its adherents seem poised to acknowledge final failure. Time to consider new models and paths to success.
What is of interest and of substantial potential power in a new model is drawn from your statement:
“Fortunately we still hold the House and something like 3/4 of the State legislatures. And those facts will become far more important as the Obama downward spiral continues on toward next summer.”
If somehow the Red States comprising 3/4 of the total could start a State Convention movement, then the process of such a movement could bypass both Senate and the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.
As an example, look at the number of states pushing for Voter ID and having it moved through the courts with subsequent wins or imminent wins.
The same could happen with issues such as gay marriage, tax reform, education, energy etc. all brought under an umbrella of a States Convention process. The breadth of such a process would be too diffuse and difficult for the MSM to fight as they would need to define, caricature and demonize thousands of targets in geographical regions where they are not welcome.
The Founders left us the States Convention route as a last resort to withstand tyranny.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) could be a vehicle to organize a States Convention movement. The fact that leftist groups hate it is a good sign that its leadership is conservative.
Here’s a couple of leftist orgs and their take on ALEC:
http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10887/cmd-special-report-alecs-funding-and-spending
The chief complaint of a States Convention movement arises from fear that leftists can seize control of it and fundamentally change the Constitution. But a States Convention process to power requires 2/3s of state to pass proposals and 3/4s to implement passed proposals into the Constitution. So there is a strong barrier that the left would need to overcome in order to control power from statehouses.
The left has seized *federal* power from urban centers of population to steer a state to its US Senator picks as well as urban mayorships to service union demands, primarily government unions including public teacher groups. This is the source of their strength. Such a network of urban power strongholds was referred by Obama’s handlers in 2008 as the “Urban Archipelago” that can ignore Statehouses because power at the statehouse level is lacking.
But statehouses tied together and unified can trump the Urban Archipelago.
Statehouse power stems from people that inhabit the land outside the urban strongholds, the “Country Class” and this ‘country power’ when mobilized and impassioned yields power in the US House of Representatives as exists now.
In such areas there exists a diffuse republic in the form of distributed districts that lend considerable opportunity to steer state power. The Left has abandoned this route to power because the centralization of federal power has rendered Statehouses weak and ineffectual, but only because they are not organized together.
What is needed is a groundswell of solidarity to empower leaders of a State Convention movement to unite, organize and train cadres of people to effect Statehouse power.
It comes down to solidarity and the ability to organize and maintain it.
until we get our moral house in order our fiscal house never will be
Attitudes like this are exactly why the people like Obama keep winning.
Americans would rather vote for the Dems and give up economic freedom than give up personal freedoms.
For perspective, think about how we feel when we hear some cleric wanting to institute Sharia law here in the states. That is the same feeling the moderates, libertarians and fiscal conservatives get when they hear social conservatives talk about moral laws.
No they didn’t but when people are offered the choice between pretty liberal and liberal, they will chose the liberal especially the one they’re familiar with.
Yep, and Boehner went ahead with raising the debt ceiling when there was plenty of spending that could have been cut.
This.
Absolutely correct.
The point of the tea party was to bring together people from all over the spectrum - even some who otherwise were moderates/liberals - in favor of lower spending and an end to crony capitalism.
It started to die when the so-cons hijacked the name.
It gave up the ghost when forced to support Wall Streeter Mitt for president.
Well said, though it falls on deaf ears. What a shame.
FMCDH(BITS)
Rick and Newt would have stood a much better chance against the Narcissist in Chief than Etch A Sketch ever did. We told you in the primaries that he wasn’t electable.
I’m going to be pondering that quote for a long time. What is it from?
The TEA party ceased being about economics long ago. Fiscal conservatives and libertartians abandonned it after it was taken over by Beck, Palin & Hannity...
...excellent point about the message getting lost in the telling...by Beck, especially, who I think should be locked away somewhere for a while...be careful what you say about Palin on this forum, though, the Sarahbots don’t like differing opinions...
The Tea Party was never a real party, just a loose association of people who had three common goals of advocates strict adherence to the United States Constitution, reducing U.S. government spending and taxes, and reduction of the U.S. national debt and federal budget deficit. And because they had too many radically unacceptable fringe elements, they were used by the Democrats to vilify and demonize the Republicans who did run with those sorts of leanings. Too few people stood up to call the Democrats on their lies during the campaign; assuming that the media would even publish them.
They did not think he was too liberal, they liked what Obama was telling them, which in some cases was not liberal. Like for example, telling us for the 1 millionth time, he killed Osama Bin Laden. Not something the liberals wanted done. But to a 20 something who plays video games all day, hey, that was a good thing.
I don’t believe for even a second that Mitt fewer people voted for Mitt.
Our votes were were stolen, mislaid, and not counted. While the dark side manufactured all they needed to overthrow us.
This loss goes a long ways to showing how the mainstream Republican Party is so far out of step it is with the American people and their values. Yet they still cling to their base of rotting unprincipled moderates and outright liberals. This loss is of absolutely no surprise to me for I knew in my heart that given a choice between liberal-lite and liberal-real the electorate would take the real deal given that choice. Christians will be the biggest losers resulting from 4 more years of the beast in power.
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