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.
The Tea Party could have gotten it right and could have made a huge impact if they had stuck to the NO BAILOUTS and fiscal conservative message ... and that’s it.
They could have been a contender. Maybe they still can if they get their heads out.
BS! Without the GOP, conservatives and the Tea Party are nothing.
yes I agree with you and Homer J Simpson.
I was no fan of Romney, but I voted for him, against the other guy..
Reagan would have lost last night..
the left has split and fractured our country into groups of various takers and interest groups.. they will continue to win until the country crashes.
we may be able to re-build after the crash.
The Hillary Mitt of Massachusetts was nothing more than a Puppet for the financial fascists and their government gravy train,and a bunch of other gravy train government users, who got a free 08 bailout, while unemployment skyrocketed.
The youth smelled right through the scam, and are not interested in another Bush war.
There is already a Constitution Party and it is was a big loser last night.
This election was won though logistics NOT message.
The Tea Party was effective because it did not run a campaign, and did not compromise its message REGARDLESS what and how the media painted it as. The Tea Party simply got voters to the polls and did not worry about participating in the beauty contest that is rigged by the left.
This election was not about which message won in the free market place of ideas. The Media all but censored the message from the Right and instead was an active participant for the Left -assisting the Left in a propaganda campaign.
It was only with the first debate that Americans caught a true glimpse of what Romney was about -that glimpse was but a brief one.
The Left won by a combination of lying and strategic logistics that got useful idiot voters to the polls.
The Right would have fared much better IF instead of playing the unfairly stacked game it would have simply identified voters in key areas and hired people to get them to the polls,
And don't forget, if 10,000 retired Jews could have figured out a butterfly ballot, G.W. would have lost.
Romney kept talking about working w/Democrats. That moderate crap didnt inspire enough voters plus he didnt counter Obama lies with a boatload of commercials. The RNC keeping those millions instead of spending it on ads was a fail.
bump
As long as taxpayer dollars are funding birth control and abortion its not a personal issue.
Telling proLifers to shut up won’t get that vote either and people who support abortion will also support taxpayer funding of it- not Conservative is that.
You and everyone else who didn’t vote for Romney are personally responsible for the reelection of Obama. Thanks a lot.
Conservatives lost big time and we all will be in purple or blue states in 20 years.
Maybe I’ll get flogged, but I cam to love and admire Mitt Romney. It breaks my heart that he will not be our President. But the campaign SHOULD have been won.
Despite the fact that Mitt suffered an endless barrage of assault ads, his campaign drove his positives WAY up, as with me. What they failed to do was drive Obama’s negatives UP. They nibbled around the edges with their own attacks on the Punk, and treated voters as mature, informed adults. This would prove to be a fatal mistake. When talking about Obama, you must deal with the average voter as a 3rd grader. No one understands why his policies are destroying America, and those same idiots decided, in a void, that their troubles were still BUSH’s fault. This tragedy could have been so easily avoided. *sigh* Bob
Romneycare - too similar to Obama Care
Bain Capital -easy to exploit as Vulture Capital
UAW opposition especially important in some swing states
Unacceptable to the base especially social conservatives
Inability to articulate the conservative message
Romney won the primary not by crafting a positive vision or explanation, but by running very negative, inflammatory ads of questionable veracity. His claim to fixing the economy was: I ran a successful company and I know what to do.
He allowed Obama to define his plan as the same old policies that got us here to begin with. He allowed Obama to define him in the Swing states as a vulture capitalist, unfriendly to the Auto Industry, and concerned only about avoiding taxes on the 1%.
Given the importance of the economy, he needed to articulate in simple terms what his economic policy would be, why it would work better than Obama, and how it was different from Bush(or at least why Bush's policies were not to blame).
The Pubbies in Congress are partly to blame for allowing the Democrats to get by with laying this blame on Bush for the melt down. They need to take a page from Pelosi.
As soon as the market crashed, she hopped on it like a junk yard dog - this is the fault of Bush's policies. That should have been refuted on a daily basis.
Obama gets by with claiming that rich people like Romney and Buffet only pay Federal taxes based on Capital Gains of 15%; It is actually more like 45%, because his share of the corporate rate is around 30%.
No one explained that the Buffet Rule would not have caused Buffet to pay more taxes: Buffet keeps his individual salary at $100,000 and usually less than $75,000 for director fees.(less than $200,000).
He would still be calculating his rate as less than his secretary, because he assigns the employer part of payroll tax to her, and ignores his share of the corporate tax.
No one in the National leadership ever gets out there and explains effectively the truth or counter the Democrats lies, and Romney didn't do it either.
Absolutely true. The other problem, maybe as big as the absence of a sharp attack, is the fact that the Democrat strategy beneath the radar was to pound away at the idea that both parties are the same, and that maybe we should look into Mitt’s scary Mormonism. Between those subtle destructive messages, you had enough Paulbots and narrow-minded evangelicals to crush Mitt’s chances. The fact that so many millions stayed home rather than vote for a great candidate is maybe the most depressing news of all. Shame on them all! Bob
To the left, there was nothing inoffensive about Romney. He was a religious extremist that would make birth control and tampons(!) illegal, an evil big businessman who would raise taxes on the middle class, make people go hungry by cancelling food stamps, someone who hated brown people and thought women should be forced to stay at home and have child after child.
How would running someone less inoffensive help? The left owns the narrative. And you can’t win just pulling white male votes anymore.
As long as stubborn people refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils we will always get the greater evil.
Fertilization issues and the miniscule amount of tax money to deal with it is meaningless within the bigger picture. Yet way too many hardcore people let it control their common sense and allow the real dangers to America barge right in and destroy us.
The most annoying part of all this..I mean other than 0 bankrupting/destroying America and putting lifetime radicals in SC,is he will never be held accountable.
Even WHEN the whole calapses during his next term.
He promised, PROMISED, he would cut the deficit in half his first four years in office.
What does a promise mean anymore??? Or, the truth for that matter..?
Frankly, I think the Republican Party and the Constitution are all but dead. We have a misinformed population that believes ANYTHING. Between pathologically sick black communities who would vote for Hitler himself if he came back as a black leftist, Hispanics, who escape third worldism only to come here with their hands out, ready to vote for the highest bidders, and government union members who don’t care if thousands of old folks and families get tossed out of their homes due to punishing taxes. We have staggering problems, and there may be no solutions, given the Communist mentality held by tens of millions of Americans. Our best days ARE really way behind us. Bob
There’s not a Republican on this planet that would have won...not a conservative, libertarian or RINO stood a chance against the entitlement society. The majority of this country voted based on their envy of others while the rest of us voted for our country.
You can’t best the devil at his own game.
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