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.
I did vote for Sarah and the reason I did was because I knew if I voted romney and he won at some point I knew he would screw us over.It was sure easy after thinking that.
The situation for Republicans is dire. Despite all hos deficiencies and weaknesses, 0bama got reelected. Hillary Clinton, or whoever Democrats nominate in 2016, will be in a stronger position. It’s hard to picture Republicans taking the White House again without first doing dire things like restrict voting rights and deport illegals en masse. But only dire measures will suffice at this point.
yawn - keep mumbling to yourself bub. Us folks on planet Earth aren’t listening.
Romney was second to last on my list of primary candidates next to the crazy uncle.
Allen West got screwed by the GOPe on redistricting. Your argument there is bogus.
Disgraceful. Thanks so much for your support and I ‘hope’ you enjoy the next four years.
The limited list of candidates that are *allowed* to run with party backing are predetermined by the leadership. Anyone else can run, but they will be denied party funds, access to the database of party members, introduction to the big money party supporters, etc. In effect, they will be third party candidates within the Republican party.
Setting aside his platform and opinions, Ron Paul made a great example of this. He obstinately chose to run, though he had no backing from the leadership. And while he was able to muster a large group of very dedicated backers, he could “only bring a spoon to the gunfight.”
Even pushing it all the way to the convention, his people were forced out of the rules committee by the leadership, and he was denied the chance to appeal to the delegates. In effect, they even went so far as to change the rules so that he could not win.
And this is where it really hurts conservatives. Because Republican liberals (who call themselves ‘moderates’), are far more in agreement with the Democrat status quo, if not all the leftist changes they want, than they are with the conservative agenda. To the point they would even prefer a Democrat win instead of a conservative Republican win.
On the plus side, the Tea Party has had considerable success in eroding the liberal wing of the Republican party, systematically taking out many of the worst offenders. And this is the way to slowly and methodically make the party more conservative.
This is often a painful process. For example, persuading the two liberal senators from Maine to retire means that these seats are now controlled by independents working with the Democrats. But at least now the enemy is in front of conservatives, instead of standing behind us with a short knife to sabotage us from within.
And the RINOs were and are expert at this, doing far more than the Democrats to thwart the conservative agenda. Until they are purged from the party, and the conservatives take over the leadership, everything conservatives want to do will be twice as hard.
You're right on this...
Your #40-—absolutely right.These two are exactly the kind that are pointed to as “representative” of what the Republican party stands for, even though they are, were , and continue to be fringe players with their weirdly fundamentalist views on this permanently hot “wedge-issue”.
It’s of course thoroughly dishonest of the Left to bring these two up, but they do it all the time, and for their current purposes, managed to nullify them at least in their local elections.
Who are the “Geriatric Old Plotters”? I think I know who you mean but let me know who you’re referring to.
The limited list of candidates that are *allowed* to run with party backing are predetermined by the leadership.
You know this based on..? You've seen the list? You sat in a leadership meeting once...? Did you see who was on the list in 2011?
It’s not about image. The Obama ground game would have killed anyone on Tuesday. They knew exactly what buttons to push to get white women, single women, minorities, etc. to vote againg the GOP. The Obama campaign was able to paint the GOP as a monolith— everyone was a homophobic, sexist, racist Mourdock-Akinite in favor of rape and making women have babies from rapists. The demographics won’t get better and the Democrats know how to keep those demographics on the plantation in large enough numbers.
Go to Salt Lake City Mitt and take the leadership seat in the mormon church that awaits you as your birthright.
Side note: Much touted black republican candidate Mia Love in UT lost to white democrat challenger.
"SALT LAKE CITY — The Republican Party held its majority in the Utah Legislature on Tuesday, expanding its control of both chambers.
He gave an excellent example.
Get over it. He’s right.
Demographic trends and successful liberal indoctrination means there is a huge mass we can’t reach. You are correct. Tweaking image would not matter to this group. They are gone unless they become educated to understand the benefits of conservatism.
Image is important in politics particularly for the politically ignorant independents. image matters for this segment we have a shot at influencing
My general take is we are hosed. The first group of unreachable partisans becomes so large over time due to illegals, breeding and propaganda that it dwarfs the independents that we could influence. In fact this may has already occurred.
Then ... Game over. we find ways to slow them down
The dead souls and apparatchiks who are the actual decision makers in the GOP. Not the obedient, gullible, desperate or nostalgic base, but the withered old Rockefeller Republicans who actually run the place.
This is no great secret, and has been done for decades.
Originally it was half legitimate, that the party leadership decided to only give support to candidates that they felt were competitive, often who had already secured the backing of the big name donors to the party.
This came to a head even before the primary season had begun with W. Bush before his first term, who had so monopolized the big contributors that all challengers, especially John McCain, were locked out of the process. For his part, McCain was livid about it.
However the Tea Party has clarified a new angle to this, by pointing out that the leadership are all “big tent” Republicans, who were automatically cutting out conservative candidates on the assumption that they could not win, so should not be given a chance to try, as it would just waste party resources.
And while to conservatives, the leaderships’ disastrous choices of Dole, McCain and Romney showed that liberal Republicans couldn’t win; it just reinforced the leaderships’ belief that it proved “since liberals (moderates) can’t win then conservatives have no chance.”
That is their assumption that even their liberal choices weren’t “big tent” liberal enough. In all fairness, the leadership did not reach this conclusion on their own, it is a major belief of the Republican beltway bandits, like Karl Rove, who increasingly reject conservatism and are rejected by conservatives.
You have no list to show. You have a conspiracy theory instead.
All you are pointing to are big contributors, and then the power that comes from winning a campaign.
Yes, you need money to run. If you can’t get big ones, you need a lot of small ones.
If you can’t organize and inspire and raise money and attract talent and build a winning campaign, you lose. No, it’s not easy, particularly if you don’t already have a base - you have to build it. It takes what it takes.
That’s no conspiracy: it’s politics and reality.
The rest, IMHO, is making excuses for not succeeding for one real reason or another.
I should also point out that the most money doesn’t always win. In the end what counts is votes.
The freshman house under Gingrich was outspent three-to-one. John Conally is famous for having spent a million dollars (back when that was a lot of money) on one delegate, and the list goes on.
You tried.
Thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.