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GOP Turns Sure Victory into Defeat
Townhall.com ^ | November 8, 2011 | Michael Reagan

Posted on 11/08/2012 7:03:34 AM PST by Kaslin

Wait until next year -- 2016, that is.

That’s what disappointed Republican spinners kept saying Tuesday night as they watched Mitt Romney’s hopes crash and burn in swing state after swing state.

How many times did I hear a Republican talk about how their party’s deep bench of future all-stars will return it to power in Washington in four years?

But all the Ryans, Rubios, Bushes, Haleys and Christies in America can’t put the GOP -- or the country -- back together again.

The GOP is a wreck -- and not just in California, where the party’s registration is now below 30 percent.

Look how easily the Republican Party managed to turn what should have been a sure victory over an incompetent and dangerous incumbent into an embarrassing defeat.

First they tore each other to shreds in a bitter primary, smearing their eventual nominee in debates as a rich, uncaring profiteer who put working people out on the street and shipped their jobs overseas.

Then, while Obama’s ads in the battleground states reinforced the Republican-made caricature of Mitt, the Romney campaign did just about everything wrong.

It squandered the GOP convention and tried to make their candidate into “Mitt the Moderate.” Team Romney also shunned their natural allies in talk radio and didn’t reach out for help from conservatives like me.

I would have been glad to help the Romney campaign in Ohio or Pennsylvania, where I worked for my father in 1980. I offered, but the phone never rang. It didn’t ring for Bill O’Reilly or for the other major radio and TV talk shows, either.

But Team Romney’s biggest mistake was playing prevent defense after his big victory in the first debate. It was a terrible, fatal blunder.

Instead of hammering away at the horror of Obamacare, the cover-up in Benghazi and President Eye-Candy’s four years of failure, Romney ran the last five weeks hoping the clock would run out before Obama could recover.

But you don’t play prevent defense when you are running in second place in Ohio, Virginia, Florida -- and Tuesday’s results proved it.

Hurricane Sandy struck Mitt a final blow, giving Obama the chance to look presidential and making Mitt disappear from the media for four days.

But give credit to Obama’s Chicago Gang. They ran a much better campaign -- on the ground and in the air. They got out the vote and Obama got out his message of class envy and federal entitlements for all, without any trouble from his toadies in the media.

Now bigger deficits, higher taxes and a stagnant economy lie ahead for as far as the eye can see. And socialized medicine -- which my father warned was coming to America 50 years ago -- is going to soon become a reality via Obamacare.

Team Romney blew an easy win because it had a poor game plan. But it also lost because the Republican Party is all talk and no guts when it comes to fighting for real conservatism -- Ronald Reagan conservatism.

GOP bigwigs constantly praise my father. For years they’ve used him to suck true conservatives into the party, but they’ve never really embraced Reaganism or its ideals.

They didn’t in the 1980s and they still don’t today. They only talk about him. The party bosses don’t really think like him.

Most of those Republican candidates who lost Tuesday played the same game of pretend. “I’m like Ronald Reagan!” “No, I’m like Ronald Reagan!”

But most of them aren’t like my father. They weren’t waving the “bold colors” of real conservatism he talked about in 1975. The banners of the losers -- like Mitt’s -- were colored in “pale pastels.”

The GOP needs a new playbook. Unless it starts embracing my father’s conservative ideals instead of just paying lip service to them, the so-called “Party of Ronald Reagan” may never win another national election.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: michaelreagan; romney2012
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To: chimera

Look the day that a WHITE, SUCCESSFUL, WEALTHY, UNHIP GUY gets elected might be around never... people vote today in a POP CULTURE SOCIAL MEDIA kind of way. The Liberals and Democrats are so much better at that game and build so many coalitions through that structure. Here in California the GOP is gone. I can find few outside my Orange County town of Newport and it is just NOT in VOGUE here to even say Republican.

The Demographic face of America has changed and you either change with it accordingly or it leaves you.


21 posted on 11/08/2012 7:28:50 AM PST by Republic Rocker
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To: rbg81
Unfortunately, I have no idea what a peaceful solution might be. There may be none.

When I suggested that America may need a Pinochet person to run this country, I was met with derision that was even of a sexual nature. I still think I am correct and more so during these days.

And there is no right for people who want stuff to take it from the rich and the middle class. From each according to his ability to each according to his needs may be written down in the "Communist Manifesto," but what is a written is history where 100 million people were killed by Communism and they may even be counted as the lucky ones who no longer had to suffer through that horrid system.

22 posted on 11/08/2012 7:29:03 AM PST by Stepan12
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To: fwdude

I was referring to the eventual nominee. To be sure, several candidates this time in the primary advanced a conservative agenda, but Romney ended up slandering all of them, so we ended up with the Massachusetts moderate.


23 posted on 11/08/2012 7:30:11 AM PST by Thane_Banquo
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To: Kaslin

Michael Reagan blames the victim for the crime.

Stolen votes and fraudulent votes are the problem.


24 posted on 11/08/2012 7:32:57 AM PST by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: ontap

Not so President Reagan made a deal to agree to amnesty in exchange for closing the border Democrats reneged on their part of the agreement!!!


What I recall is that in the early 80s, as part of budget reductions, Reagan slashed the border patrol.

As as far as the Democrats reneging—give me a break. Reagan was President and CINC. He could have taken steps, including executive orders and veto threats, to ensure the border was secured. He didn’t do it because he didn’t care.


25 posted on 11/08/2012 7:34:47 AM PST by rbg81
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To: Qbert

EXACTLY!!!!

Obama won because he got more of his drones to vote. It is simple “blocking and tackling”. We are getting beat on the ground.

We also need RUBIO and CRUZ to start becoming more visible in the Latino community. We must get 50% of the Latino vote.

The good news is the 2014 election cycle. If things go as poorly as expected and knowing a lot of Obama voters don’t participate, we need to elect more conservatives to the House. There are 20 Democrat Senators and 13 Republicans on the ballot. We need to start organizing to win +5 or +6 seats. Winnin back the Senate and getting rid of the evil Harry Reid is a MUST. Alaska, NC, and South Dakota should be an easy 3. We need Montana, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas, Iowa, and Colorado.

GET GOOD CANDIDATES NOW!!!!! START ATTACKING THE INCUMBENTS NOW till election day. Best money we can spend.


26 posted on 11/08/2012 7:37:22 AM PST by LeonardFMason
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To: TigerClaws
Rondald Reagan got 54% of white voted and won in a landslide.

Romney got 60% of the white vote and lost by a couple million.

Lots of people are posting that comparison, but does it really mean anything? Do you think Reagan was a better campaigner than Romnney? Do you think maybe he could have won more votes in 2012 than Romney?

And you failed to say that Regan got 43% of the Latino vote.

I'd bet he could have gotten 65% - 70% of the white vote this year and motivated a few million more to go to the polls and vote.

27 posted on 11/08/2012 7:38:33 AM PST by Will88
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To: Kaslin

I do agree on parts of this analysis, but I will also blame the American people’s short term memory. Just two years ago, FISCAL SANITY and FISCAL SANITY ONLY saved the day. A TEA Party sweep! Two fast years later and we cannot bring that same enthusiasm? We cannot even match the popular vote of the pathetic John McCain? And then in the waning hours of the campaign, in comes an idiot like Mourdock and his insane RAPE comment. The support from undecided women was trending heavily toward Romney until that comment. And so once again, an election that should have been focused on our FISCAL cliff was transformed into a social policies war. And guess what. We lost that war again!


28 posted on 11/08/2012 7:40:42 AM PST by Eagle of Liberty (We the People are coming!!)
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To: Kaslin
.


Kaslin ...


"Thanks" for taking the time to post this, and other great articles, at Free Republic ...


Patton@Bastogne



.
29 posted on 11/08/2012 7:41:09 AM PST by Patton@Bastogne (Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin will DEFEAT the Obama-Romney Socialist Gay-Marriage Axis of Evil)
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To: rbg81
He didn’t do it because he didn’t care.

One of the stupidest comments I have read!!!

30 posted on 11/08/2012 7:41:59 AM PST by ontap
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To: TigerClaws
Reagan got 54% of white voted and won in a landslide

What's your source? This source disagrees:

Roper Center - How Groups Voted in 1980

Roper Center - How Groups Voted in 1984

31 posted on 11/08/2012 7:43:47 AM PST by willieroe
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To: LeonardFMason

Brown skinned Hispanics are not going to vote for a white Hispanic and add Republican,who reminds them of the Oligarchs that ruled over them in many Latin countries.


32 posted on 11/08/2012 7:46:14 AM PST by Dr. Ursus
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To: Stepan12

If it becomes impossible for us to stop the marxists at the polls, that is exactly what the choice will come down to, because everyone will realize that Conservatism can’t win in that situation. There is only one other system that can stop marxists once elections fail, and so that will be the only alternative left. Nobody is going to be happy in that situation, but the left will have brought it upon themselves by undermining our Republic.


33 posted on 11/08/2012 7:48:12 AM PST by Boogieman
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To: HangingTuff
Unfortunately, Romney shamed a lot of people who know they are "on the take" from big gov't, yet they would like very much to *NOT BE.*

They became angry about their being positioned by Romney, onto the national stage and spotlight --- where their embarrassment over their difficulties that are not of their own making nor wishes --- was made subject to apparent ridicule by the very brand of bad management who was *the type* whose failed business leadership resulted in these people's economic straights, yet the same "type" was trying to become President.

Obama's high-tech intel-research sensed that as a big problem for Romney, and Obama's ads succeeded in placing Romney as *the cause of these people's unemployment and need* in addition to opening the wound caused by Romney's "47 percent" comment.

These people --- particularly the Reagan Democrats among them --- showed up to vote, but did not vote for either candidate for President, though some bit their tongues and voted for Romney for only one reason: an attempt to protect their right to keep and bear Arms.

34 posted on 11/08/2012 7:50:49 AM PST by First_Salute (May God save our democratic-republican government, from a government by judiciary.)
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To: HangingTuff

Yes and no.

We have been exporting American jobs now for a full generation.

China now has an unemployment rate like we used to.

China is now growing and taking over.

Yes. Taking over. We need to stop sending jobs to China, and bring jobs back to America.

Now.

How did we as a party become blind to this??

The Dems or the GOP need to do something about this, or we need a new party.

The problem has gone (way) beyond critical.


35 posted on 11/08/2012 7:50:51 AM PST by Cringing Negativism Network (America doesn't need any new laws. America needs freedom!)
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To: HangingTuff
Then those who are takers will be rioting when they are truly hungry. The makers just need to be sure to safeguard whatever they are able.

It boils down to; We are headed for The Cliff. We will go over. Civil war is coming and those without guns will die.

36 posted on 11/08/2012 7:59:14 AM PST by Bloody Sam Roberts ("The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." Ecclesiastes 1)
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To: Boogieman
Keep in mind that Obama's mentor, Bill Ayers, wrote a book called "Prairie Fire," That book (dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan amongst others) called for the murder of 75 million Americans who cannot be re educated.

During his initial four years, Hitler did not really kill en masse. It was after those four years that the bloody ball got rolling; e.g., kristalnacht, WWII, the holocaust; etc.

Obama and the Democrats are capable of anything and no scrap of paper written by dead white men, some of whom were slaveholders, is going to stop him.

37 posted on 11/08/2012 8:00:35 AM PST by Stepan12
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To: zt1053
The GOP convention showed the Republicans have a very good bench.

And yet:

Virginia - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Ohio - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Pennsylvania - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Nevada - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
New Mexico - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Iowa - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Wisconsin - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
New Jersey - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Florida - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama
Maine - GOP Governor, state goes for Obama

Kentucky - Dem Governor, state goes for Romney
West Virginia - Dem Governor, state goes for Romney
Missouri - Dem Governor, state goes for Romney
Arkansas - Dem Governor, state goes for Romney
38 posted on 11/08/2012 8:02:53 AM PST by Eagle of Liberty (We the People are coming!!)
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To: TigerClaws

As long as our party is anti-immigrant we will lose national elections by increasing margins.


39 posted on 11/08/2012 8:03:45 AM PST by babble-on
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To: ontap

One of the stupidest comments I have read!!!


Yeah, whatever. You are obviously in denial.

In many ways, Reagan was a great President. But he totally dropped the ball on his responsibility to secure our borders. And the proof is that we’re living with the demographic consequences today.


40 posted on 11/08/2012 8:03:46 AM PST by rbg81
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