Posted on 11/07/2012 5:32:07 AM PST by SJackson
In this election the Republican Party ran two wholly inoffensive blue state Republicans on a platform of jobs at a time when the economy was everyone’s chief concern and the incumbent had absolutely failed to fix the economy. And they lost.
The Monday — or Wednesday — morning quarterbacks will have a fine time debating what Mitt Romney should have done differently. The red Republicans will say that he should have been more aggressive and should have hit Obama on Benghazi. The blue Republicans will blame a lack of outreach to Latinos. Some will blame Sandy, others will blame Christie and many will point to voter fraud. And they will all have a point, but the makings of this defeat did not happen in the last two weeks; they happened in the last two years.
Mitt Romney won the primaries because he was electable. But, as it turned out, he really wasn’t electable after all. Not when the chief criteria of electability is having no opinion, no point of view and no reason to run for office except to win. Not when the chief criteria of being a Republican presidential nominee is being able to convince people that you’re hardly a Republican at all.
Romney was a star political athlete who had an excellent training regimen and coaching staff. But to win elections, you have to change people’s minds. It’s not enough to try hard or to fight hard; you have to fight for something besides the chance to round the bases. You have to wake people up to a cause.
The Republican comeback did not begin with innocuous candidates; it began with angry protesters in costumes and Gadsden flags marching outside ObamaCare town halls. The 2010 midterm election triumphs were not the work of a timorous establishment, but of a vigorous grassroots opposition. And once the Tea Party movement started the fire, the Republican establishment acted like the Tea Party had sabotaged their comeback and cut the ties with their own grassroots movement. Separated, the Republican grassroots and the Republican Party both withered on the vine.
The stunning 2010 midterm election victories happened because a conservative opposition loudly and vociferously convinced a majority of Americans that ObamaCare would be harmful to them. And then that fantastic engine of change was packed away and replaced with political consultants who were all focused on seizing the center and offending as few people as possible. But you don’t win political battles by being inoffensive. And you don’t win elections by avoiding conflict.
Is it any wonder that the 2012 election played out the way it did?
The Democrats in the Bush years were about as unlikable a party as could ever be conceived of. They were hostile, hateful and obstructionist. They spewed conspiracy theories at the drop of a hat and behaved in a way that would have convinced any reasonable person not to entrust them with a lawnmower, let alone political power. And not only were they rewarded for that by winning Congress, but they also went on to win the White House.
Why? Because dissatisfied people gravitate to an opposition. They don’t gravitate to a loyal opposition. They aren’t inspired by mild-mannered rhetoric, but by those who appear to channel their anger.
When the Republican Party sold out the Tea Party, it sold out its soul, and the only driving energy that it had. And there was nothing to replace it with. The Republican Party stopped being the opposition and became a position that it was willing to reposition to get closer to the center. Mitt Romney embodied that willingness to say anything to win and it is exactly that willingness to say anything to win that the public distrusts.
The elevation of Mitt Romney was the triumph of inoffensiveness. Romney ran an aggressive campaign, but it was a mechanical exercise, a smooth assault by trained professionals paid to spin talking points in dangerous directions. But, what if the voters really wanted a certain amount of offensiveness?
What if they wanted someone who mirrored their anger at being out of work, at having to look at stacks of unpaid bills and at not knowing where their next paycheck was coming from? What if they wanted someone whose anger and distrust of the government echoed their own?
Romney very successfully made the case that he would be a more credible steward of the economy. It was enough to turn out a sizable portion of the electorate, but not enough of it. He tried to be Reagan confronting Carter, but what was remarkable about Reagan, is that he had moments of anger and passion; electric flashes of feeling that stirred his audience and made them believe that he understood their frustrations. That was the source of Reagan’s moral authority and it was entirely lacking in Romney. And without that anger, there is no compelling reason to vote for an opposition party.
The establishment had its chance with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor was everything that they could possibly want. Moderate, bipartisan and fairly liberal. With his business background, he could make a perfect case for being able to turn the economy around. They had their perfect candidate and their perfect storm and they blew it.
The Republican Party is not going to win elections by being inoffensive. It is not going to win elections by going so far to the center that it no longer stands for anything. It is not going to win elections by throwing away all the reasons that people might have to vote for it. It is not going to win elections by constantly trying to accommodate what it thinks independent voters want, instead of cultivating and growing its base, and using them as the nucleus for an opposition that will change the minds of those independent voters.
The Republican Party has tried playing Mr. Nice Guy. It may be time to get back to being an opposition movement. And the way to do that is by relearning the lessons of the Tea Party movement. The Democratic Party began winning when it embraced the left, instead of running away from it. If the Republican Party wants to win, then it has to embrace the right and learn to get angry again.
You're confusing a symptom with the problem. The media and their allies did a hatchet job on Romney worse than on Palin. We had wall-to-wall ads paid for by planned parenthood (your tax dollars at work) of women moaning about how evil and untrustworthy Romney is. Any kind of conservatism will be attacked no matter what who delivers the message or how. The problem is not the persons we nominate, the problem is the enemy using our tax money to attack us.
“Even gay marriage won last night.”
This is one of the most astounding results to me. To think that no state had done this before, and even as recently as earlier this year the people of N.C. soundly rejected gay marriage. Then last night, 4 state all approve gay marriage. How quickly we have slouched into Gomorrah...
The third alternative is that the country got inundated with anti-Romney propaganda and enough people believed it. After Obama lost the first debate Axelrod came out the next day and said Romney is a liar. The news media picked up on it as "can Romney be trusted". Then in Virginia we got nonstop ads by planned parenthood against Romney "can he be trusted, he won't fix the economy, etc etc" Our tax money at work, every 10 minutes on the country music station. My mailbox had several anti-Romney fliers a day.
In my rural area the fat ugly chicks came out in droves for Obama. I asked a woman in my van what did Romney lie about (after I overheard her saying he lies). She had no answer, just "he lies". We are up against the forces of evil with unlimited funding preying on the stupid. The best we can hope for is that the stupid people get bored and stay home.
Pile it higher and deeper! Romney ran on a conservative and traditional American values agenda. He lost. That's all there is to that.
Stop blaming the candidate, the blame lies with the voters. They bought Obama's campaign of fear, they believe our misery is still Bush's fault, they believe Obama just needs a little more time to get America back on track and he's the first black POTUS in history.
No candidate could overcome the wildcard of that last fact.
The character of the electorate is also changing and radical racist elements stubbornly refuse to learn the hard lessons of the CA GOP. We must learn from history or be doomed to repeat it. Immigration MUST be reformed but in a way that there is outreach and understanding.
It could already be too late but that's no reason not to try. We need to marginalize and resist the crazies.
Not in Virginia. What got him elected here is simply millions of dollars of ads paid with our tax money (Planned Parenthood) spreading lies and innuendo about Romney. That triggered the stupid people (women and effeminate men) to line up for hours for Obama. Hispanics too. It's amusing to hear about how the lines and turnout were good for Romney. Not a chance. We were badly outspent here and it shows.
Not a chance. The Planned Parenthood ads here in Virginia (every 10 minutes on the country music station) painted Romney as right wing (and "untrustworthy"). The fact is that any R candidate would have lost here.
Article is BS
Conservatism is dead. People have rejected the rights ideology and belief system.
Plain and simple. If the Republicans toss up some more conservative candidates then they will lose by even bigger margins.
The nation has changed. Whether we like it or not. America is not the same as she was 20 years ago. Heck - 10 years ago.
The post 9-11 world has arrived.
If the Republicans think that Mitt lost because he wasn’t conservative enough then they are blind and fooling themselves.
I don’t know what options remain on the table for Republicans. Not many. Just the reality.
Enjoy life - enjoy what we have now. It is only a matter of time before the whole system comes crashing down. There is nothing - short of a civil war (which is laughable and not going to happen) that will stop what is coming.
Eat - drink - be merry.
I'm afraid you are right from everything I have seen here in Virginia.
I hate to think that's my only choice. The two party system is long gone, there are two halves of one party spending the country into ruin. One President gave us enough growth (with help from Volker) to keep the boom going for a couple of decades. Now we are post boom. A mighty country like ours will take decades to disintegrate but we can no longer grow out of the debt that we have piled up. Hyper-inflation, default, war, maybe a combination of those.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
I get it, you’re willing to fund with taxpayer dollars abortion and birth control now how is that fiscal Conservatism? That’s embracing the greater evil- liberalism. What next are you willing to concede to the Democrats, tax policy because you can’t be bothered to explain how low taxes helps rise all economically?
Romney will win many more states than McCain. He ran a good race and just needed Ohio and Pennsylvania to win the whole thing, assuming Florida comes in on the final count, as a Romney win.
No other candidate with the will and the money, would have done better.
The deck is stacked against any GOP candidate. Unless the Dems run a Gore or Kerry, the MSM and the Dem money will win.
What you say about the Senate is true, though not all Tea Party candidates failed. IMO in retrospect, I thought Romney won it, the issues should have been addressed more directly. And lots of those positions were Tea Party positions. They simply weren't elucidated in simple terms.
You can't, but Romney got about 2.3 million fewer votes that McCain (The One was down 9 million). Who stayed home, GOP rank and file or Royalty? Stupid decision either way. A shame they stayed home.
Col West was a painful loss, as, imo was George Allen’s loss. Future leaders.
And yours is odd. You’ll have to forgive my disappointment: I have only waited four years to be rid of that miserable amateur and now we have four more years in front of us. What have you done for this country and this fight -other than accuse fellow creepers of “trollishness”?
The lesson here is that Conservatism is too hard, therefore surrender and be a liberal like all the Mitt and Christie apologists.
No, two months ago there were multiple paths. And if Mitt had attacked on the issues, and won, the credit wouldn't have gone to the Tea Party. Which today, unlike 2010, is a phantom. Not a criticism of that phantom, but if perhaps there was a grassroots uprising continuing this year, things would have been different.
Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I think you're wrong, I don't think self interest was the defining issue, an issue, but it can be overcome. Don't ask me to name the primary candidate that would have done it, I don't know. In retrospect perhaps none of the canditates could have overcome the Axelrod-Obama hate campaign.
Irrespective of FR differences, yes, he was a good man. As was GWB and McCain. Not sure any of them engaged on character issues, which they could have done short of the libel/slander which has characterized the left. A rather sad commentary.
IMO there were some message issues, but as I noted Romney got 2.3 million fewer votes than McCain, not as severe a drop as Obama. But Tea Party rallies with buses standing by to take folk for early voting, I guess that's logistics. Effective, maybe, maybe those folk voted anyway. But if the McCain voters had all showed up it would have been close, include non-McCain Tea Partiers, a win.
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