Posted on 11/20/2012 11:30:54 PM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
In the aftermath of establishment Republican Mitt Romney’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election, Governor Romney said he lost because he couldn’t overcome the effect of Obama’s “gifts” to key demographics; student loan modifications for young voters and amnesty for young and predominantly Hispanic illegal aliens.
We think Romney missed the mark with that analysis because conservative ideas have successfully countered the Democrats’ attempts to bribe voters in the past. However, the comment is a good place for conservatives to start analyzing the failures of the Romney campaign – and learning from the successes of the Obama campaign.
Here are our top 10 reasons Romney lost and Obama won – starting with five top reasons Romney lost.
Romney lost because he failed to nationalize the election and present a starkly contrasting conservative world view to Obama’s radical liberalism. During the campaign we criticized Governor Romney for playing “small ball” and not nationalizing the election. By nationalizing the election we mean presenting a stark contrast between conservative and liberal world views – the freedom, personal responsibility and traditional values of conservatives versus the state control, government dependency and radical secular humanism of liberals.
We can’t repeat this point often enough; Republicans never, ever win national elections unless they nationalize the election and include the conservative agenda – especially the conservative social agenda – in their campaign. Doing so isn’t a guarantee of success, but failing to do so is a guarantee of defeat.
Unfortunately, that advice fell on deaf ears and you couldn’t find conservative ideology anywhere in the Romney campaign, the establishment GOP’s national advertising or even from Karl Rove’s much vaunted Super PACs. Romney managed to eventually say all the right things to conservatives during the primaries, but he didn’t “run” or “campaign” on them in the general election.
Romney lost because he ran as a technocrat, not as a conservative. Making the welfare state more efficient is not exactly a compelling conservative vision of the future, or even a credible one given the recent Washington Republican record on spending, earmarks and pork. When Tea Party candidates stood for a constitutionally limited government in opposition to liberal candidates whose policies led to economic stagnation and suffocating government regulation being imposed upon this country by President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress – overwhelmingly the voters chose the Tea Party candidates.
The Romney campaign and their allies in the establishment Republican Party rejected that proven model for political success, and instead ran a content-free campaign selling Mitt Romney the technocrat.
Romney lost because he and his establishment Republican allies distanced themselves from and alienated the Tea Party. In 2010, a fourth leg was added to the three legs of the Reagan coalition – the small government constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party Movement. As a result of adding this fourth leg to their existing coalition of economic, national defense and social conservatives, the GOP was swept back into control of the House of Representatives, brought within striking distance of a Senate majority, and a re-energized Republican Party elected thousands of down-ballot candidates.
Unfortunately, unlike the wise Party leaders who built the Reagan coalition -- men such as Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, Lyn Nofziger, Dick Allen, Ed Meese, Marty Anderson, and Judge William Clark -- instead of solidifying the four legs of the new coalition, in 2012 Mitt Romney distanced himself from the Tea Party and did his best to alienate and marginalize the adherents of the new conservative voting bloc of the Tea Party Movement.
Romney lost because he wasn’t in the fight on many issues and failed to establish his own narrative on Obama’s radical secular liberal agenda. You are always going to lose a fight you’re not in. Obama and the Democrats threw down the gauntlet on the social issues -- such as same-sex marriage and abortion – and created a phony "war on women" revolving around rape, contraceptives and abortion. Romney never established his own narrative on these issues, or even fought back, and consequently an attack unanswered is an attack believed.
Romney and his establishment Republican allies ran away from such issues as same-sex marriage, religious freedom and Obama’s war on the Catholic Church. You couldn’t find any mention of the Constitution or the conservative social agenda in a Romney ad or in a Rove-run Super PAC ad or an ad run by the national GOP.
The “stand for nothing” strategy didn’t work for President Ford’s 1976 campaign, it didn’t work for President George H.W. Bush’s re-election and it certainly didn’t work for Bob Dole and John McCain. Governor Romney won the nomination by spending tens of millions of dollars knee-capping his conservative opponents in the primaries and then handed the election to Obama because he and his campaign team spent most of the campaign mired in the establishment Republican folly of trying to win by standing for nothing.
Romney lost because he failed to understand and effectively use the new and alternative media to get-out-the-vote and deliver a conservative message to voters who only get their information through online media. Romney’s ORCA get-out-the-vote technology was spectacularly bad and may have cost him the election in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, but that wasn’t Romney’s only online failure.
Romney’s team was stuck in the 20th century TV “air war” campaign mindset. They failed to grasp that the most dramatic change in the media environment, ever, has been the rise of digital media and social networking sites. The Romney team failed to craft conservative messages that would appeal to voters who use these sites – especially young voters.
This failure by itself may account for much of Romney’s deficit with young voters; among adults younger than age 30, according to a Pew study, as many saw news on a social networking site (33%) as saw any television news (34%), and just 13% read a newspaper in print or digital form.
Conservatives long ago recognized the power of the new and alternative media. Ron Paul and the various elements of the Tea Party Movement have built vast networks of voters connected by online communications and social media. However, at every phase of the campaign, Mitt Romney's digital operation was behind the tech savvy Obama team. By alienating Paul supporters and the Tea Party Movement, Romney missed the opportunity to tap into their established networks and connect digitally with those millions of conservative voters.
Tomorrow we will explore the reasons why Obama won and what conservatives can learn from the success of the Obama campaign.
They are next to unteachable now.
My wife, the now (thankfully) retired university instructor, will move and second, automatically. ;)
Romney lost because voters saw no difference between Obama and Romney. Might as well keep the liberal you know as they say.
Expecting voters to know what’s going on and their reliance on MSM is just part of why we lost. While there are examples of fraud which may close up the gap, the gap is too big to blame the loss on fraud .
..Expecting GOP E’s to address media bias or Romney to call Obama a congenital liar or even point out that the fact and figures released by the white house were allways questionable is another Let alone call him a “socialist”.. Until we have candidates willing to do this and challange and call them for what they are ..WE WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE...
Even so (disregarding the philosphical differences) the fault lies really in the messaging the Republican campaign came up with. Choking on political correctness parameters or triping over past positions on global warming and Romneycare both of which were bread and butter issues. .Then busy responding to pseudo positions devised by the demo-com party and echoed by their hand maiden camp followers in the media allowing them to set the agenda ..
Romney ran a “Johnny One Note Campaign”. Used a poison dart blow gun when he should have used a cannon loaded with grape shot because he had pleanty of stuff he could fill that cannon barrel with..
THE DEMOGRAPHIC STRAW DOGS
This campaign failed to hammer away on what will happen when Obama gets retained; The Obama AHCA past due 2013/14 Tax Increases. The impact of Obama’s gagging energy resources (a socialist construct never branded as such) with policies requiring reliance on “free” intermittent resources wind and solar and that resulting in massive corruption .,Restricted use of drilling, discontuned reliance on coal ,bans and on fracking, and resulting prices doubling on everything.. This was a bread and butter issue which reached into every “demographics” pocketbook including accepting the demo-com definition of hyphenated African-Hispanic -Americans, college students and single women.
.The impact of Supreme Court Appointments.. 18,000 new IRS agents and on and on. . Some were very briefly touched most weren’t and Benghazi/ foreign policy was left to languish. Then there is Obama’s personal extravagance and behavior refusing to visit Nashville after its disaster showing up at New Orleans after Mitt visited it. Even after the Christi thing if that was brought up it would have blunted the impact.
Instead we got a sales pitch on executive ability but not the reason why one should toss the old model and buy his. That print and tv pitch , 20 million new jobs, was given a discrarded dose of skepticism .
In addition Rove who I understand was handling the Charter PAC senate campaign played games. His material never warned voters that IF OBAMA GETS RE-ELECTED AND SENATE CONTROL REMAINED . .. OBAMACARE AND ALL THE TAX INCREASES THAT GO WITH IT WILL NEVER GET REPEALED Let alone tie into or cover the formentioned grape shot which would have perhaps changed that body. I don’t recall any of that material directed toward that fact.
Finally they didn’t believe the polls which turned out were dead on. Even going as far as setting up focus groups which could have looked into what’s going on . Even to the point of going out to local eateries and bars and eavesdrop into conversations and pick up on topics being discussed.(chat rooms twitter too contrived) They would have learned their turnout projections were off and the sence of urgency to get out the vote was diminished by their glowing projections and disbelief never mind ORCA which should have been tested. COMPLACENCY WAS ENCOURAGED BY THE MEDIA AND NOT COUNTER ACTED UPON
WHEN YOUR GETTING RESPONSES LIKE “THERE AIN’T NO DIFFERENCE” and projections of heavy turnout... you got problems...Voters won’t show up.
Our local small population (-8000) rural blue county GOP had at the outset good and growing attendence at their meetings 50 plus. At the meeting the Thursday before the election only about a dozen people showed up and I knew we were in trouble .
Nuts...This loss is inexcuseable, while I trully don’t believe Mitt Romney would ever continence losing, I’m begining to believe that most GOPE’s really didn’t want to see AHCA, (affordable health care act) otherwise known as ZerO care go ..
And now the country is being made into sausage. The analysis of why Romney is useful, but going forward, there needs to be an analysis of what, if anything can be done, to pull back from the maelstrom after Obama legalizes millions of new permanent Democrats and makes the country dependent on a national health care system. How to get the country off of heroin like dependency on handouts will be the premier question. However, if Obama succeeds in destroying the USD and hyperinflation kicks in along with spreading Shariah law, we will no longer have a solution through the ballot box anyway.
I was repeatedly informed by Team Mittens' self-appointed advocates on this very site, throughout the entirety of 2012, that:
a.) ... as a socon, my views and desires were "statistically insignificant" and "fringe," and therefore did not merit serious (or even grudging) consideration or inclusion; AND, simultaneously --
b.) ... as a socon, my lone, individual vote was absolutely essential, and the only sure thing standing between The Forces of Light and C'Thulhu's Ravening, Extra-Dimensional Night Hordes.
At no point whatsoever did the thundering cognitive dissonance absolutely inherent in those two violently antipodal viewpoints occur to any of them, however fleetingly.
So, obviously, then: they ended up blaming Mittens' epic electoral belly flop on voter fraud. ;)
Bump for later reading
The GOPe is more afraid of us than than they are of the communists.
Viguerie's fifth paragraph entire seems, to me, as appealingly straightforward and sane as it does eminently do-able, in that regard:
"We can’t repeat this point often enough; Republicans never, ever win national elections unless they nationalize the election and include the conservative agenda – especially the conservative social agenda – in their campaign. Doing so isn’t a guarantee of success, but failing to do so is a guarantee of defeat.
Let's try that, just for grins and giggles. Lord alone knows, mulishly doing the exact, diametric opposite, these past two presidential elections, has yet to put even so much as Point One up on the boards. ;)
>>I cringe every time I hear that McCain got more votes than Romney. Wrong. Sarah Palin got those votes!
Thank you! I pointed this out in a thread the other day. Many post-election analysis columns have done this, mentioning the fewer-votes-than-McCain while not mentioning Palin.
>>Mitt Romney didn’t lose this election for ten reasons; he lost it for one: The media campaigned for Obama for four straight years, and suppressed Romney’s message.
You just identified a key reason why Romney was such a terrible candidate: He is completely unable to punch a message through and around the unfavorable media environment. Newt and Cain were the only candidates in this cycle who showed any ability here. This is a *must have* skill for a Republican Presidential candidate.
Let the record also show, incidentally, that the MSM waged no less vicious, feral (un)holy war on one Ronald Wilson Reagan for eight years as well, all-out and non-stop... and (mirabile dictu!) that never seemed to prevent him from:
a.) ... campaigning as an open and unapologetic conservative; and --
b.) ... W-I-N-N-I-N-G. ;)
Romney had already backstabbed conservatives since
throwing the 2008 election to Obama for their Soros.
Romney was in it for the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
He and Rove cashed their checks on election eve
and were done with it.
I could not have put it better myself. Well done!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LLS
You are on fire this morning!!! Love reading your comments, analysis, and rejoinders — I’m on board with your themes and analysis, especially the part about there being no excuse for such lame execution after spending the mega-bucks and time campaigning.
I look forward to your comments on Part Two. Wishing you and yours well for the Thanksgiving holiday...
Bingo.
Palin is the one. She is everything our side admires, and she does not seek, much of anything. Family first.
If we can convince Tod to share her with us, we can win.
Many blushing thanks. ;) Willingly ignorant obduracy does tend to bring out the fanged and the snarly in me; and lazy, pie-in-the-sky conspiracy theorizing and wish-casting, even more so. Call it a quirk.
Wishing you and yours well for the Thanksgiving holiday...
Likewise and redoubled, FRiend! ;)
Is anyone else getting tired of reading another story on why Romney lost?
It’s time to focus on the solution, not the problem.
Given that Romney got more votes than McCain in the Bible Belt (TX, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, GA, KY, TN, SC, NC) the idea that his Mormonism hurt him can pretty much be completely dismissed.
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