Posted on 11/18/2012 5:01:56 AM PST by Kaslin
In the wake of Mitt Romney's loss, many Republicans say the GOP must make far-reaching changes to be competitive in future elections. White voters are a smaller and smaller part of the electorate, they point out, while Latinos and other minorities are growing as a percentage of the voting public. Unless the Republican Party reinvents itself to appeal to those voters, the argument goes, the GOP can get used to being out of power.
There's something to that. The electorate is changing, and the Republican Party needs to keep up with the times. But the more fundamental answer to the GOP's problems could be much simpler than that. To win the next time, Republicans need to find a really good candidate. Just listen to the masterminds of Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012.
On Thursday afternoon, the Obama campaign held its last conference call for reporters. Toward the end of the call, the three top officials in Obama's re-election effort -- David Axelrod, Jim Messina and David Plouffe -- were asked what will happen to the mighty Obama campaign now. What next for the enormous campaign infrastructure, with its massive databases and voter profiles? Will it go to a new candidate?
"You can't just transfer this," said senior adviser Plouffe. "People are not going to spend hours away from their families, and their jobs, contributing financially when it's hard for them to do it, unless they believe in the candidate."
"All of this, the door knocks ... the contributions made, the phone calls made, were because these people believed in Barack Obama," Plouffe continued. "And so for candidates who want to try and build a grassroots campaign, it's not going to happen because there's a list or because you have the best technology. That's not how this works. They have to build up that kind of emotional appeal so that people are willing to go out and spend the time and their resources and provide their talents because they believe in someone. ... The reason those people got involved was because they believed in Barack Obama. It was a relationship between them and our candidate."
Plouffe is right. He and Axelrod and Messina could have created the most awesome campaign machinery in the world, and it would have failed had the candidate not been able to forge an emotional connection with enough voters to win. Obama could do that, especially with blacks and Latinos and young people, but also with a significant portion of white voters.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, appears not to have excited any big group. Yes, he won the support of 59 percent of white voters, but there are indications that whites actually stayed away from the polls in large numbers. Overall, Romney won fewer votes than John McCain's doomed 2008 campaign.
"The 2012 elections actually weren't about a demographic explosion with nonwhite voters," writes analyst Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics. "Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up. ... The reason this electorate looked so different from the 2008 electorate is almost entirely attributable to white voters staying home."
Trende is not sure why so many whites didn't vote. Looking only at Ohio, he suggests many did not like Obama but were turned off by Romney, or at least the negative picture of Romney created by Obama's attack ads. So they did nothing on Election Day.
There is much data still to come in from Tuesday; the popular vote figures and exit poll details aren't yet final. But it's fair to say Romney's problems stemmed as much from his failure to appeal to white voters as his failure to appeal to any other voters. He lost because he did not connect to large swaths of the voting population.
That's where finding a great candidate comes in. Romney is an able, accomplished, intelligent and hard-working man, but Republicans knew from the start he was an imperfect candidate. During the primaries, GOP voters tried every alternative possible before finally settling on Romney. He remained a flawed candidate in the general election.
Now, because of Romney's loss, some are urging that the Republican Party completely remake itself. Some argue that GOP lawmakers must support comprehensive immigration reform and change positions on other issues. The answer, they say, is broad, across-the-board change.
But listen to the Obama team. There is a less complicated lesson to this election. Voters want to believe in a candidate. If Republicans find that candidate, they will win.
Excellent, more surrender conservatives.
I never said Obama will end up with 69 million. That’s what he got in 2008. Probably more like 67 million.
The end result of the turnout will likely be close to 2008, with 2-3 million votes switching from Obama to Romney.
To true!
Until someone in the media, Rush, Beck ..... anyone points out the fact the election was completely stolen, it won’t matter who runs. You can’t win an election that is rigged.
Oh ya, what about judges that will actually enforce the law with out an agenda.
The only other option is that our side cheats as bad as theirs, but that is really not a solution.
Can you say Marco.....
Growth in the electorate is 4% from 2004 to 2008.
It would be quite the stretch to suggest that ANY of the base is part of that electorate growth, given that the fastest growing portion of the population is Hispanic.
And I don’t think 18-22 year olds in general are part of the “base” that “stayed home.” Do you?
No , it’s arithmetic, which you haven’t done. Currently, rounding up, there are 125 m counted; +1.7= 126.7. 2008, there were 130 m. The voting age population also increased during those 4 years by 10 million, so the turnout is down significantly. It makes a huge difference going forward which interpretation the Republicans make. You’ve aligned with the KOS interpretation, You’re a FReeper, but on this point, you’re a FRumster.
So Obama’s going to get 4 m more votes than he has now? Name them.
My solution, and the only solution, for a Republican in 2016 is to convince about 3 million people that voted for Obama to vote for them. You can go about that in multiple ways, of course, but there's no other option.
Your solution is to motivate an almost entirely non-existent group of people (those for whom Romney wasn't conservative enough, and thus stayed home), which, if everything worked out, would likely have the effect of allowing the 2016 Republican candidate to win Mississippi by 20% instead of 18%.
I would like to nominate Allen West.
You do realize there are large numbers of uncounted votes in states other than California, don't you?
Also there was a real turnout decline in NY and NJ for obvious reasons.
I've honestly never read Daily Kos in my life, so it would be hard for me to be aligned with them.
When will we ever learn...we just cannot expect the GOP to ever be anything near what we want it to be.
We need a PARTY we can believe in.
This is what conservatives always do. They get sidetracked with non issues.
I call it gathering sea shells. I developed the concept to chide my wife who forgets the mission, the main effort. At the Normandy Invasion, she and those arguing here, would have stopped at water’s edge to gather sea shells. The shells are there and should be gathered while the opportunity exists.
That is this thread. Screwing around with mindless blather rather than making the assault and the successful invasion.
By the way, it's a 1,440 cell spreadsheet I've constructed with the reported AP (on the CNN site) vote totals, and what information there is from all state election websites, which you haven't done.
Their talking points are widely disseminated through journolists in the media; you’re making their argument,as well as David Frum’s (Too old, too white, too male)
-Need to stop opening our primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. (I noticed how that you listed that one first, BTW.)
Take it from a lifelong Iowan who wishes it were otherwise: this is no longer the Iowa of "State Fair," "The Music Man," or any other nostalgic, feel-good make-believe. The un-gentrified older sections of many larger towns looks like West Chicago or Rockford, the land is divided into far fewer - but far larger - farms, and most paychecks are dependent on some form of tax collected from someone else.
The GOP needs to kick these two underachieving states to the curb tout suite.
Mr. niteowl77
Clueless.
The GOP-E was warned, repeatedly, what would happen if they carpet bombed Conservatives and tried to shove Romney down our throats.
You must be lost in the weeds. Even if Obama gets 1 m more out of CA, where are the other 3-5 m coming from?
Bad data leads to bad arguments, bad decisions, and bad strategies. And all too often people invent data to support their arguments, rather than looking at the data and then developing an argument from it.
And once bad data gets out there, it lives forever, especially if people want to use it to support an argument.
For example, Gary Bauer claimed a few days ago that “3 million values voters stayed home” - either he’s lying, or he’s somehow perverted the initial 3 million vote gap on election night between Romney’s reported total and McCain into ALL of that supposed gap being “values voters.”
And of course just based on actual counted votes so far, that “3 million” gap is now about 400,000.
Any 2016 strategy based on appealing to “3 million values voters that stayed home” to get them to turn out for the Republicans is doomed to fail, because the 3 million doesn’t exist.
What makes ANYONE think that there will even be an election in 2016? The dice were thrown and the USA crapped out!
Called it.
Hey, we did that the last two times. Nominate a squish, lose. Nominate a squish - lose.
Now the patented Stategerist strategy - “Let’s nominate a squish because nobody loses like moderates”
Brilliant plan. Who should we credit for it?
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