Posted on 11/14/2012 1:22:44 PM PST by jazusamo
The most successful Republican presidential candidate of the past half century— Ronald Reagan, who was elected and reelected with landslide victories— bore little resemblance to the moderate candidates that Republican conventional wisdom depicts as the key to victory, even though most of these moderate candidates have in fact gone down to defeat.
One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called "the great communicator," but much more than a gift for words was involved. The issues that defined Reagan's vision were things he had thought about, written about and debated for years before he reached the White House.
Reagan was like a veteran quarterback who comes up to the line of scrimmage, takes a glance at how the other team is deployed against him, and knows automatically what he needs to do. There is not enough time to figure it out from scratch, while waiting for the ball to be snapped. You have to have figured out such things long before the game began, and now just need to execute.
Very few Republican candidates for any office today show any sign of such in-depth preparation on issues. Mitt Romney, for example, inadvertently showed his lack of preparation when he indicated that he was in favor of indexing the minimum wage rate, so that it would rise automatically with inflation.
That sounds fine. But the cold fact is that minimum wage laws create massive unemployment among black teenagers. Conversely, one of the lowest rates of unemployment among black teenagers occurred in the 1940s, when inflation virtually repealed the minimum wage law passed in 1938, since even unskilled labor was paid more in inflated dollars than the minimum wage law required.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
heh, heh, heh, of course he meant that he wasn’t a wonderful actor, of star quality.
Baring an acceptable way to do it, I would have to agree. And I’m not convinced there is a reasoned way to do it.
Nothing you say is private in a public setting.
My advice would be, you never say anything that you don’t want others to hear when you’re running for office.
Received wisdom. Or rather an old propaganda line of the Left against Reagan. YAWN!
I understand your point. I just responded to your first post.
The sad thing is that Romney could see problem issues, but he couldn’t address them in a manner that connected with the public he wanted to vote for him.
His record was detrimental. His inability to flesh out proper fixes was inadequate. And there was the feeling that he wanted to correct Obama misdeeds with his own brand of misdeeds. “We’ll strike down Obamacare and replace it.” Say what?
We are not inspiring people on our side to go to the polls. We are abandoning too many people in our quest to lead.
I don’t think I saw Romney/Ryan address minority unemployment once during the campaign. I know for sure they weren’t talking about numbers pre Obama post Obama.
There was so much fertile ground that went untouched upon.
My take on that was similar to the other stuff Romney said. He thought it sounded better to the average voter tha total repeal. Obama-care is unpopular but many Dems didn't like it because they wanted single payer instead, not repeal. And other voters didn't like it because of the bribes or other crap in it they heard about.
I don't think Republicans found any general polls where most people in the US thought that the Fed gubmt should do nothing about the uninsured, even though we do.
So I think Romney was just playing the polls song again. And as you say, why would he believe in total repeal given his record? with Romney we will never know.
Thomas Sowell - a political and moral giant and a Great American.
Not really. Being an actor allowed Reagan to reach people at a different level that most politicians.
It was an asset. Politicians used to train with stage performers in order to do the same thing. Part of the reason Reagan was who he was is that he was a veteran stage performer and actor.
BIG
AZZ
B U M P
You do it in ads, and in the debates, and get away from these sterile answers designed not to offend.
You don’t run an entire campaign based on the premise that Obama is “a nice guy who is simply over his head.” You don’t agree that he and Biden merely “inherited a mess” and haven’t quite gotten us out of it YET.
Why we lost, in a nutshell.
” Finally! Thomas Sowell pointed the finger to the root of the problem - it’s not “demographics” or sudden change of ideology (2010 “shellacking” was not so long ago) - it’s the lack of conservatism in all Republican presidential candidates ever since Reagan left the White House. “
I posted the same on another thread.
” Romney doesn’t need to “apologize for his success” in making money, but it doesn’t make him a “businessman” or a “job creator” and as a politician he was nothing but a failure, from his run for Senate, to his one term as a liberal Governor of MA, to failing to win a nomination against widely despised by conservatives and badly outspent John McCain despite pouring $50M of his own money. No wonder he found such a firm support from GOP-e in the next cycle - he was the most liberal and Bush-like in the bunch.
That leads to stupid mistakes like “I like to fire people” and “47%” (many people who don’t pay income taxes and/or receive some form of permanent or temporary government assistance - e.g., military, temporarily out of work, retired etc. - are not freeloaders) or accusing Obama of “picking losers” (Solyndra, Ener1, A123 etc.), as if government “picking winners”> would be OK - so Obama nailed him with GM and Chrysler who are now declared “winners” because they are in business, with little debt and profitable - courtesy of taxpayers, of course.
Free advice to GOP, which they won’t hear, won’t see and won’t take - Stop picking losers! “
Hey, how bout that??
The Republican Party has been RUNNING FROM Conservatism since Reagan left office. The only Reason GHWB won is Reagan. The only reason W won twice is 2 HORRIBLE candidates!
Had we gotten Newt Gingrich on the debate with Obama, how differently do you imagine he would have handled it, or even Santorum or Perry?
I mean, it’s moot now, but out of curiosity, do you think any of those gentlemen would have taken FuBO to the woodshed, or would they have played Mr. Nicey-Nice?
BUMP!
Newt would likely have ripped Obama’s head off.
“...Newt would likely have ripped Obama’s head off...”
Which, of course, is why “he had too much baggage, just too much baggage” to be President.
Can’t have someone who would actually tell the truth about FuBO.
I’d like to see Gov Scott Walker and LtC Allen West run in 2016, and I’d like to see them start campaigning now to do so, heading off any more GOP-e attempts to foist RINOs on us (hint: Christie, stay home...)
The GOP is controlled by the GOPe/RINO-plex. Unless or until we purge this, we lose.
” I’d like to see Gov Scott Walker and LtC Allen West run in 2016”
Do you know who the GOPe is considering already?
Christie
Jeb Bush
Rubio
I wouldn’t hock a lugie on any of them.
We will be in a depression before 2016, so anything is possible, but if any of the aforementioned run, they will lose.
“...Do you know who the GOPe is considering already?....”
Which is why we the people immediately need to start pushing for the people WE want to run, versus whomever these feckless GOP-e retards want to foist on us.
Walker and West, 2016.
I really like the above comments.
I saw this during the R primary, Romney was the LAST person who could win a debate on redistribution, himself being a rich detached elitist. It was a recipe for disaster. Then he helps Obama with the 47% comments intended to raise R campaign cash while insulting half the country before the election.
The Knee-jerk Republicans fall in line behind the super rich Romney's simply because Dems demonize them.
And did you notice that now when we no longer have to make belief Mitt was a good candidate how many Rs appear to actually believe he was Now even though he lost?
Common sense rule : Don't get high on your own supply.
The 2011 to 2012 Boehner/Tea party house did a great job of delaying the spending cuts till after O was elected(delayed cuts).
Worse yet the prior congress Senate Republican minority in late 2010 won a great victory to keep taxes from going up till AFTER Obama was safely re-elected, go Republicans! You gave Obama an issue. You kept the economy from tanking before the his re-election,
And then Romney picks Ryan. I was never impressed with Ryan but to team him with Romney was absolutely stupid. He had no appeal outside of the R cult. Another boring white guy. HELL, they even lost WI !!! Yet Walker did great in WI even after being targeted by Dems.
Too many things done wrong, then the hoax that all the polls were biased for Dems so it must be voter fraud now.
Don't get high on your own supply (believe your own BS). it just hurts more in the end.
Exactly.
And Romney ran a campaign that was centered around “Obama is just a nice guy whose policies just didn't work out” imagining that his (Romney's) win would be automatic, and many here believed that BS. We never heard “Obama wants you on welfare” from Romney going after his character.
Meanwhile Obama ran the most negative campaign of all time completely destroying Romney's character painting him as a 'Let them eat cake' elitist who hates the voters.
So here we are with Obama going after Bohner with an apparent position of superiority and Republicans in congress terrified of Obama who has not a scratch from Romney.
So we learn anything from this?
“So we learn anything from this?”
So no more Twinkies.
No! Oh the humanity!
I’ll miss Ding Dongs too.
IOW, no. Nothing learned.
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