Posted on 11/08/2012 3:14:29 PM PST by Arthurio
Mitt Romney's campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to President Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade.
Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to the president.
But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.
After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.
"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
“He gave it his best shot,”
You know, he did give his best and surprised us by how well he ran the campaign.
He took conservative positions. He selected Ryan. He debated well.
His speeches were great. He acted like a competent leader we could get behind.
I argued strongly against him here during the primary. But, came to support him all the way.
Obama and his minions of darkness figured out how to slip by with negative ads, division, and promising to give away free stuff.
We feel like how the Dims must have felt after Bush won re-election. They despised him so much couldn’t imagine his re-election.
Fact is: it is very difficult to remove a sitting president.
Hillary will be 69 years old in 2016.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the media said he was the oldest man ever to be elected President of the United States. Reagan’s age at the time.....69.
my feelings were similar. As soon as I heard NC was too close and PA was called about 30 minutes into it, I took a sleeping pill and went to bed. I still would not count out shenanigans but not enough to really effect the race. Romney learned a lesson in campaign management. It’s not a for-profit, large cumbersome entity but it needed to be a series of franchises with local autonomy in relation to the most effective GOTV.
They did not expect the level of graft and cheating that took place.
If the system of voting is not fixed between now and the next elections, our elections will be as real as North Korea’s.
YOu know, I said the same thing in 2008?
Totally, agree. When Romney conceded so quickly I honestly thought that if he and his team were that naive, that — ummm — maybe they were not qualified to play government in this corrupt world... surely they didn’t think the dem’s were playing much of anything straight.
Maybe there should be a Sandbox 101 course available for campaign managers and presidential candidates...
Next time?
God bless you back.
When all you do is play prevent defense towards the end of the game, you almost always lose.
All Romney had to do was attack Obama over just about everything, just like he did to his Republican opponents in the primaries.
People base their decisions on fear of what might lie ahead. Fear sells, and every salesman should know that.
Romney never went after Obama on Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Obama’s close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama’s Muslim faith, all the corruption,the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and Islam was assaulting women and taking away their rights. Romney could have so easily won the battle for the female vote.
All of this would have been successful and destroyed any chance Obama had to win.
FDR wasn't incompetent and didn't hate his country.
And precisely what did that change? Simply being right is useless. You have to take action on the information.
Romney may not have been the best candidate, but I lay all the blame for this at the feet of the evangelical and other republican idiots who stayed home election day.
Some of them are even stupid enough to congratulate themselves for defeating Romney. Their desire for the perfect candidate has doomed this nation. We will not recover from this.
I have been reading conservative web sites ever since the election trying to make some sense of this mess. One thing I have come away with is that we are just nice people. Maybe too nice. We don’t have the killer instinct like the libs do. We know we are in a jam and don’t have any idea what to do. I have saw a lot of good ideas but we just don’t really know how to implement them. Maybe it’s because of our individualism. We don’t do group think real well. We are used to taking care of ourselves and ours. I guess we really don’t know how to go for the throat like they do. I like the going Galt thing. That’s something I think we would do well at. But we need to think of something substantial we can do to take the Senate in ‘14 to start with. I guess I’m just in a speculative mood tonight.
BS.....
You had Barone, Gallup, Geo Will...many who supposedly KNEW and put their reputations on the line predicting a Romney romp...
Nothing showed what ended up being the case...
Fraud, pure and simple.....
Yea, he worked hard. It wasn’t his fault, America has chosen a different path. I admire him for his campaign.
I totally agree. The polls and election results make about as much sense as the Libya debacle. Something very fishy.
Rich Lowery’s take:
54 Percent
By Rich Lowry
November 8, 2012 5:42 P.M.
One of the numbers that hasnt gotten much attention from the exit polls is President Obamas job approval. According to the exits, it was an astonishing 54 percent. Maybe that number is off. Maybe it is a function of who showed up to vote. But if we accept that its roughly correct, it says a lot. If we had known a year ago that Obama would have a 54 percent job-approval rating, we probably would have said he couldnt be beaten.
No sympathy for Mitt from me. He was a liar and a pandering phony who would have done effectively nothing to reverse Obama’s disastrous policies had he been elected. Let him fade away into well-deserved obscurity.
I, too, liked Newt. And others in the lineup. Anybody but Romney. When Romney won out I decided to go with my party-of-choice (for a lifetime) and support our candidate.
When he conceded, however, I wondered ‘why are you conceding so quickly?’, as I immediately thought the election must have been stolen. Now I’m seeing threads posted on voter fraud. Enough to change the outcome of the election.
Anyway, I do hope you feel better and soon... and will live to see a good man become POTUS. Someone who wants the office enough not to give up quickly in light of typical dem strategy in swing states.
It’s sad.
“Uh, no he wasnt. Missed several senate races and was wrong on predicted margins. He was mostly right, but not spot on to a frigging tee”
Go look again and be sure to look at the “projected vote share” and not the “chance of winning.” for each state:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
He was so accurate for each state it’s mind boggling. He wasn’t just aggregating and averaging polls, he was using LOTS of other data points in his model like history, census data, house effects, statistical bias history, sample size, date, weather, cell phone percentage, auto/live interviewers, and lots of other apparently relevant stuff.
This is similar modeling that he used for years on baseball players. He’s trained for this for years and although new to the political scene in 2008, kind of, he’s not new to the numbers game.
And he only got one Senate race wrong. He thought the Republicans would get North Dakota but democrat Heitkamp got it. But it is interesting to note that she won by barely 0.9%.....and that was the only thing he missed for the entire night.
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