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.
I cringe every time I hear that McCain got more votes than Romney, but it's because actually, Romney got more votes than McCain.
In the 10 states that have completed vote counting, Romney had more votes than McCain in 9 of them - the only one where he didn't was Vermont.
Romney's vote total is now only 36,000 behind McCain nationwide, with millions of votes still to be counted.
Be that as it may, I know several personally who made that statement. I’m glad Christians turned out to vote, because it is our duty to God and country - win or lose.
Pure and simple...Romney lost because the majority of voters were ignorant of the issues at hand. Couple that with the RATS playing Santa Claus.........and you have the continuation of the Marxist/socialist state of the USA
One problem is anecdotal vs. statistical evidence, even on a broader scale - either personally or “someone I know” there were plenty of people on FR who claim they didn’t vote because Romney wasn’t conservative enough, or voted for Goode, but this probably adds up to only a few hundred people. And when you look at the actual statistics, it’s impossible to find any evidence this was widespread or had the slightest effect on the election - there certainly were not “millions” of such people.
Add that to the simple gross incompetence of comparing day-after 2012 vote totals to final completed 2008 tallies, and wishful thinking (people DESPERATELY want to believe that Romney lost because millions of true conservatives “stayed home”) and you get some really terrible analysis.
I disagree.
Romney lost for two reasons:
1) Obama has the black American population locked.
2) Romney does not have the white American population locked.
Fact is, many white Americans voted for Obama.
Yet very few black Americans voted for Romney.
Racism?
I would think it is apparent. But it is deeper. Romney turned away white Americans in significant numbers.
That was inexcusable.
The race is over, but let’s next time - run someone who Republicans genuinely like and support.
No more holding of our collective nose.
Let’s nominate someone next time, we LIKE.
That is all we need to know as to why the Democrats won and will continue to win.
Let’s nominate someone next time, we LIKE.
^ THIS ^, x1,000,000,000,000,000.
As I've repeatedly posted, hereabouts: "No political party or candidate in this country has ever won the office of the Presidency while (simultaneously) warring with/actively suppressing its own ideological voting base."
The GOP-e (and its willing CINO handmaidens) has attempted to disapprove this baseline, irrefutable electoral truth twice now, successively. Both times, the end result has been unalloyed disaster.
For the love of all that's holy, squishes: frickin' LEARN.
Yup.
What you said.
I just don't have the time... the patience... or even the baseline interest in dealing "courteously" with that sort of protracted online drooling any longer.
My suggestion, re: any other FReepers regarding said stance either an intolerable or insoluble dilemma: learn a good coping mechanism. ;)
Exactly
Just a bunch of blah-blah-blah pseudointellectual psychobabble. He lost because many in the Republican party didn’t want to vote for an extreme left-winger from Taxxachusetts and it’s tough to beat Santa Claus. The tide has been turning and we saw it take affect this election.
For 2016 Obama and the Democrats will see to it a few million get amnesty and vote Democrat, more will be on food stamps and other welfare and also vote Democrat. The Republicans will continue to upset working Americans and lose votes there. The margin was slim this year but it will be even larger in 2016.
Axiom of elections: People vote with their wallets, and this year there were more voters for Obama getting free money in their wallets. This election wasn’t about ideology. It was simply about Takers versus Makers, and there are slightly more Takers than Makers so they won.
The Democraps have worked for years at vote buying and now the tide has them with enough Takers to win elections. The economic situation only affects the Makers, not the Takers, so the idea that no President wins re-election with 8+% unemployment means nothing.
Bump.
Your post is spot on!
Romney lost to massive voter fraud—which Obama would do again & again if he could.
I am furious with the Republicans in general for putting their collective heads into the sand & refusing to bark loud & long & get to the bottom of this.
A district in Florida had 7 registered voters.....
900 votes were recorded there.
Someone needs to explain that to me.
“Newt and Cain were the only candidates in this cycle who showed any ability here.”
They would have done no such thing; they were allowed to be heard because the media saw them as no threat who could only weaken the real candidate in the end. Romney wasn’t a great candidate, but McCain/Palin were no better against the slings and arrows of the press.
ANY candidate will be attacked like this, and their response, even if brilliant, will only be seen by a small number of people (while their Dem opponent has praise showered on them). Just think about the state of the economy, and realize that Obama WON RE-ELECTION in this.
It is absolutely frightening how the campaign of mis-information can have such an impact on all of our lives...
The person at the top of the ticket needs this ability. We lacked this in 2008 and 2012. Reagan managed it.
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