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.
Indeed. Mitt got the most important issue wrong.
It was 50.3%, not 47%.
It was the PRESS. The PRESS is responsible for the economy not sticking to Obama, and for failing to teach. And we darn well know why.
Of course, I understand there are other reasons, but the media (including the entertainment complex) being in the tank for the Dems cannot be underestimated.
Get used to being called racist, folks.
Why are the power brokers in the GOP getting behind candidates that are unable to win even their own home states? This, to me is the ultimate political humiliation (see Al Gore 2000; failed to carry TN). Romney was never going to be able to carry MA, or even his first home state of MI. Ryan couldn’t carry WI. This was just one of the many set-ups for failure that the GOP practices. I’ve always thought that any candidate who has a solid, proven, tested-over-time campaign organization in his own home state is far and away a better choice than a shaky one-termer who was succeeded by the opposition party. Conversely, Obama carried both HI and IL, as well as winning PA and DE (Biden’s home states). Before any candidate is seriously offered up in the primaries, the party must ask itself if that candidate’s home state is an automatic win. If the answer isn’t an emphatic ‘yes’, then don’t even consider them. One of the many comments made over and again about Romney during the primaries was that “he’s the only one who’s electable”. Really? well the folks in none of his home states (MI,MA,NH,CA) thought so.
yup....the immoral majority bending to the father of lies
If the GOP wants to commit suicide I’m not going over the cliff with it.
That’s about the best description I have ever read. Exactly what has happened.
We are sadly much more closer to a second American civil war. Count on it to happen down the road.
I agree. Mitt lost on tactics, not performance. I give him high marks individually, as he was nearly error free and became very effective this fall. Tactically, they made several major strategic errors. One was assuming the base was going to show up because of Obama dislike. The campaign needed to woo the base, give a major speech on the religious infringement of the Obamacare mandate on churches. They needed to welcome Ron Paul voters rather than expel them. They needed to bring everyone in united to change course.
I have said earlier, and it sticks in my brian, there was a high level campaign guy at the convention who said their strategy wasn’t to take on Obama’s record because people know the record. They erred...and needed to hammer him relentlessly and ties poor economic numbers directly to his decisions....point to job slowdown immediately after Obamacare. Show 20 year graphs of employment to put his ‘job creation’ in perspective. Obama got away with a crappy economy, because exit polls showed he convinced the voting population that we had come a long way. We haven’t and things are going to get worse. What a lost opportunity...and one we are going to have a hard time recovering from.
Well, if that is true, then there is no hope short of a conflagration. Boehner won't do it, but maybe the House should let the US go over the financial cliff by refusing to raise the debt ceiling and making no deal with the devil Obama and letting all the Bush tax cuts expire and sequestration take effect. That should cause mass unrest. Initially that seems like it would be even worse for the GOP, but the GOP is now a spent force and Obama will put changes in place that can never be undone. Alternatively, bring down the temple and let's see what emerges.
AMEN, SOON AND VERY SOON.
A majority of voters voted for inflation, high unemployment, and jobs losses via businesses closing down. They were told and wouldn’t listen. We point it out as it happens.
The only problem with your analysis is the continued existence of the great sea of red south of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers and west of the Sierra Nevadas (minus Florida, and with a few extra states thrown in). Look at that map. In fact, break it out county by county and it’s even more stark.
The result is not that conservatism loses. It’s that conservatism loses in highly urban areas populated heavily with moochers and secularists. Conservatives win every where else.
The brilliance of the socialists is that they found a way to tilt the population balance heavily in their favor by subsidizing illegitimacy in urban areas, with the subsidies funded by the industriousness of the population in that vast sea of red.
Students of history realize that unless this changes, there will only be one eventual result: Fewer stars on the American flag.
That is not the lesson the Stupid Party is going to take from this. Next candidate will likely be even worse, like a Bloomberg.
Or Chris Cristie.
Ugh!
I agree with this article. After the wildly successful 2010 mid-terms, propelled by vigorous grassroots Tea Party energy, the GOP-E did everything it could to pour cold water on the movement, pushing it aside and basically saying “get lost, we’re the professionals, we’re in charge, we know better; you unruly flyover-country hicks.”
I’d personally love to put a dagger in the skull of the GOP-E.
Let’s look at the last three elections.
In 2008, the Republicans ran a RINO who would not press any big issues. The only traction he got was from his VP candidate. They lost solidly.
In 2010, the Republicans ran as solid conservatives and won one of the biggest victories the party has ever had. They gained over 700 seats nationwide. So what did they do next?
In 2012, they went back to the inoffensive RINO Etch A Sketch with no fixed principles and they got trounced every bit as badly as in 2008.
So whose fault is it? Why, conservatives, obviously.
The Republican Party has a virtually infinite capacity for learning the wrong lesson. it is time to put this pathetic excuse for a party out of its misery.
The Democrats and their hordes will begin to kill each other and Obama and his crowd will be as powerless in the face of such events as they’ve proven to be in Libya. He’ll let his own peeps die meaninglessly in the streets...
...okay, I think it’s time you get some sleep...
The Democrats and their hordes will begin to kill each other and Obama and his crowd will be as powerless in the face of such events as they’ve proven to be in Libya. He’ll let his own peeps die meaninglessly in the streets...
...okay, I think it’s time you get some sleep...
Who? Akin. Not tea party. Tea partiers backed the other two candidates. Akin was the southern evangelical choice.
He also beat establishment standard bearers, including two former governors in WI and VA. Also, Mack in FL.
I am not going to sit around letting people blame tea party for these losses. Tea party is what got us the Senate gains 2 years ago and strong House majority that remains intact.
This year was RNC central controlled bland messaging for our Senate candidates and somewhat for Romney...safe, poll tested stuff. It didn’t work.
Exactly. That is why that quote is my tag line. The people find they can simply take from others through legislative means and once virtues like self-sufficiency are eroded by the Welfare State, there is nothing to stop the masses from living the good life off someone else’s dime legally.
okay, I think it’s time you stop double posting...
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.