Posted on 11/07/2012 5:42:23 AM PST by shortstop
The Republican Party died last night.
Somewhere in the suburbs of Cleveland, on the shore of Lake Erie, in the decisions of some suburban voters, the Republican Party stopped being a nationally viable political organization.
Oh, it will continue to exist.
But it will likely never again truly contest for the presidency. The nation has changed, the values have been replaced, the demographics are different.
The demographics are insurmountable.
Last night was a tipping point, a dance on a razor’s edge, and it went the other way. What was undoable last night will become increasingly impossible with each passing year. The margins will grow, the base will shrink, the tide will turn and the day will pass.
The Republican Party died last night.
Oh, it will continue to exist.
There will be the name and the elephants, but nationally, conservatism is playing against an impossibly stacked deck.
The nation had a clear choice. Each party ran candidates who were true to type. The Republicans ran conservatives and the Democrats ran liberals and it was a rout. Nothing changed except that Republicans got rebuffed across the board.
America wants Democrat.
More specifically, America wants liberal. It wants an activist, empowered government, imposing fairness and supporting entitlement.
That’s what America wants.
At least half of it wants that. Half and a tiny bit more.
And the inexorably shifting demographics of the nation ensure that that tiny bit more will grow steadily, cementing the liberal majority and creating an electoral impossibility of replacing it.
Last night was the last chance.
It was the last chance to gain a last national electoral victory over the Democratic coalition – Latinos, blacks, gays, feminists, trade unionists, government employees and welfare beneficiaries. The last chance to let a Republican president advocate the conservative, constitutional principles upon which American society was built.
But America said, “No, thanks.”
The majority preferred more of the last four years to anything Mitt Romney and the Republicans were offering.
The constituent communities of that majority are only going to grow in size and prominence in American society. They are going to increasingly dominate our society and politics.
Four years from now, more of the older conservative voters will be dead, and more of the younger liberal voters will be registered to vote. The Latino community, essentially co-opted by the Democrats into an aggrieved permanent minority status, will, like black voters, be larger and more Democrat. Four years from now, the cultural shift away from traditional values will be more advanced, thanks to more brainwashing by school teachers and sitcoms.
Those members of our society who typically identify with the Democratic Party are increasing. Those members of our society who typically identify with the Republican Party are shrinking.
You do the math.
Certain, Republicans will keep running. And some of them, no doubt, will win. But they will be a different sort of Republican.
They will not be conservative. Certainly not socially or morally conservative.
They will bend over backwards to avoid the principles of moral conservatism, so as to not disrespect a social norm.
They will be Democrat-lite.
Or they will not win.
Last night was our best chance.
And America chose the other team.
Almost $3 billion was spent on the presidential campaign. Untold tens of millions of dollars were spent on congressional campaigns across the country. And nothing changed.
Obama is still in the White House. The Democrats still control the Senate. Republicans still control the House of Representatives. The pundits say America voted to break the grid lock, that it voted to demand team work. It did no such thing. It voted to maintain the status quo.
So we have gone on a long, painful and expensive national journey, and it has left us exactly where we started.
A couple of House seats this way, a couple of Senate seats that way, and Obama on top of the whole thing.
That isn’t change, that is business as usual.
Conservatism has become a regional philosophy, the Republican Party a regional party. It will win governorships, it will win seats in the House or Senate, but it will essentially be a phenomenon of the South and Midwest.
Where traditional values endure and dwindle, the Republican Party will still be relevant.
But those places will shrink and shrivel. And each year, the gap between those who support conservatism and the number needed to win a national victory will grow.
Last night was conservatism’s last stand.
And it lost.
The Republican Party died last night.
“The Republican Party stopped being a nationally viable political organization.
Oh, it will continue to exist.
But it will likely never again truly contest for the presidency. The nation has changed, the values have been replaced, the demographics are different.
The demographics are insurmountable.
Last night was a tipping point, a dance on a razor’s edge, and it went the other way. What was undoable last night will become increasingly impossible with each passing year. The margins will grow, the base will shrink, the tide will turn and the day will pass.”
I have to agree. I have felt that way for a couple of election cycles. Sure, 2010 was a great night - but as one local commentator said “I wonder if 2008 was a realigning election anf whether 2010 was just a fluke?”.
I think we, as a nation, have now driven past the last exit ramp. We will reach a point where the minority pay for the majority. We will reach that point very soon. Racial and cultural demographics are strongly against the GOP too.
Like the author of this article, I believe we may never again see a Republican President.
This is sad in so many ways.
Mitt gave it his all as did Paul Ryan. The electorate seemed to turn their way after the first debate but the bottom fell out near the campaign’s end. That is not the fault of Romney Ryan but the fault of the people who have been given up to ignorance by the Lord who is allowing the nation to do itself in. You can highlight shortcomings of the candidates until the cows come home, but the candidates were so much better than the voters who decided it, weren’t they? That cannot be denied.
These were not voters who could have been swayed by “let’s highlight Obama’s extremism and let’s obsess on Benghazi”.
Romney Ryan emphazised economics and good small business American values. They were traditional Americans representing what had been a center right nation. And they came across as competent, decent men with plans to save us while Obama Biden Reid Pelosi came across as the opposite on all those points.
Yet, their side won, ours lost.
That says the electorate is responsible.
Your are right about schools being pits of indoctination of the young.
It’s all in what is passed down from grandparents and parents to children.
The bible says so, and it is right!
I sympathize, but I think you’re a little over the top. Some of my best friends are progressives. Nice people, just ignorant. I’m still hoping to educate them.
In other words you don’t have a name.
The Mahdi in the Koran is referred to as the AntiChrist in the Bible. Descriptions and 7 years of rule are the same. The only difference is the Koran stops at the end of 7 years. The Bible goes further. The AntiChrist is thrown into the lake of fire along with his army, and there's 1,000 years of peace on earth after the evil members of the human race are gone.
The antiChrist is a man of desolation (check) and a man of sin (check). Christ was born of a virgin, Oboma was born of a whore. Christ has a loving father. Oboma has many, but I don't think even he knows who his real father is. Christ spoke in truth, Oboma speaks in lies.
If you read the 10 Commandments, you'll see that political correctness, the doctrines of demons, is their opposite.
If you search maps on the net that show the U.S. after a pole shift, you'll see the liberal areas are "cleansed" and under water - just like the Hopi Indians predicted when they talked about the great cleansing of evil that was to come.
No matter where you look, in the end, the liberals are gone. Right now, the world is divided. The sheep are being separated from the goats, the wheat from the chaff. Evil is being bundled together to be thrown into the fire.(Where are the liberal strong holds? Cities - mostly along coastal areas, where they're packed together like sewer rats and easier to gather).
“Romney ran one of the best organized, best-informed, most micro-targeted campaigns we have ever seen.”
I’ll grant you the ‘micro’.
Well said!
Never before has such a law been passed in America with the sheer power that our “present” contained. Never have so many ideals of Liberty been ignored.
It is highly unlikely that our economy will be able to lift the massive weight that has been placed on it. Keep in mind, our debt to GDP ratio is already equal to Greece. 4 years of that law may well bring our staggering economy back on its knees and then to flat on its face.
It is even more unlikely that we will repeal the law after it goes into effect. There is no historical precedence for such action. At best we will ‘reform’ it and prolong our suffering while not gaining the people any freedom.
Yes we will survive, but it will be a hard road and America will never be the same.
So we can either fear that and rue our demise or look for like minded individuals in those groups. You have to remember, Hispanics were traditionally conservative. They are very religious, anti-abortion, hard working and pro-family. They have been slowly morphed into the new liberal stronghold but we can’t just surrender that. We need to get in there and fight it out.
I hope that the GOP elitists (Rove, et al.) who engineered this debacle will learn from their mistakes (McCain and Romney) and not foist another liberal on the party in 2016. But, we'll see.
Maybe it's now time to consider another party. We need to once again unify behind conservative principles.
Thanks, but they are all over the place here blaming Romney.
I have a headline to throw at them, but of course they won’t pay any attention...they never do.
But just between us, the breaking news headline on FR is - “Obama’s winning coalition of women and non-whites...”
Oh yeah, we’re supposed to believe that a different candidate or with a different approach could have won over more of those Obama voters. Failing that, we’re supposed to believe that the “too pure to vote Romney Ryan in the swing states” crowd would have come out by the millions to sweep away the left and the misguided, if only a different candidate had run against Obama.
I don’t believe it. The evidence is not there. Some of those who sat home might have once been mainstreet conservatives who are now on disability and have dropped out of the process. Obama is turning this nation into dependency on steroids. Those who aren’t compromised by dependency but failed to vote against Obama in a swing state because they were “too good for Romney Ryan” are responsible, for it was easy to see that the very worst outcome was Obama Reid winning, and that’s what happened.
America was a center right nation. The Romney Ryan appeal was to that center right nation. It was traditional mainstreet conservatism if not rock ribbed, theoretical conservatism. Time was in America when their view was predominate and they would have won.
Not today.
This is a different America and the electorate is responsible for how they vote, or don’t vote.
“We have some adjustments to make sure, especially with women and Hispanics....”
Oh, I see. We carried the married women. But, we’ll comntinue to lose the single, childless women unless we sign on to their holy mantra that allows them to kill their children without cost or consequence. And we’ll continue to lose the single women who have kids unless we loudly proclaim that we will be their surrogate husband and the adoptive parent of their offspring. Once we get to that point, we will just be another Democrat.
As for the hispanics, with the exception of the Cubans who escaped Castro’s Cuba, they have historically been socialists who can put out their hands for freebies with the best of them. We will never get them unless we happily give them free stuff. Again, once we get to that point, we will just be another Democrat.
Me? I will never be a Democrat. I will hold on to my honor and my principles, even if I end up being the last man with any. Better to be alone, and at peace with myself, and die an honorable man, than to compromise who I am just to “get along.” I would much prefer death to dishonor.
What is so difficult to understand?,
It's a pretty good bet that being moderate didn't win this election.
If we are going to loose either way, might as be right while we do it.
America died............................
The United States of America
Date of Birth: July 4, 1776
Date of Demise: November 6, 2012
Cause of Demise: OBAMACIDE
Well said. It is too early to say that the GOP is dead. We heard this about the GOP after Nixon, and we heard about the Dems when Nixon was first elected (Seems I remember telethons for the Democrat party back then.).
That said, while I am a Republican, I am a conservative first. There is some major rebranding to do. Some of the social issues should be dumped (mostly the homosexuality-related ones) and others (such as abortion) need to be re-tooled. In my view, abortion is a matter that needs to be addressed at the level of women’s hearts, because we have lost the legal battle. Science will likely catch up and render the abortion issue moot, either by developing contraceptives that even liberals can use, by making viability even earlier in a pregnancy, and/or other developments that we cannot anticipate.
The truth is, the VAST majority of people live their lives in a conservative manner. They work, they go home, they spend time with their families, many still go to church weekly and very few raise their children the same way that liberal government “raises” its citizens.
Don’t shoot for the young vote. The young will always be idealistic and naive. Conservatives are grown up. They will always be the majority.
The race issue really troubles me. The fact of the matter is that many conservatives remain prejudiced against racial minorities, based on skin color alone. That must end. For those of us who believe that ability and a good work ethic trump all other characteristics as a matter of economics, racism just doesn’t fit in. As for myself, and I believe most other conservatives (at least I hope so), it is not skin color that matters, it is behaviors and attitudes that can be adopted or rejected (irrespective of race, in fact). Conservatives need to concentrate on responsible fatherhood, valuing education, personal responsibility and content of character. Those who share those values, and I believe that most people of all ethnic backgrounds share them, can make a powerful impact on the social and political scene.
Forgive my rant.
americas demographics are changing, and their changing to the left.
look for an even more skittish and fearful GOP, too afraid to oppose illegal immigration lest it offend hispanics even though they won’t get their vote anyway.
No, that is a delusion. Hispanics have 50% out of wedlock birthrates. They have the highest school drop out rate of any group. 57% of all immigrant headed households with children are on at least one major welfare program. If you want to look at what happens with large hispanic populations look to CA. And AZ and Texas are moving to becoming more and more Dem. It is just a matter of time.
Oh please. Really people the panic is silly. Elections come, elections go. The GOP will almost certainly win the presidency in 2016, because after 2 terms America is pretty much sick of the president and his party. That’s why sitting VPs so rarely win, and why even when the VP doesn’t run their party loses. There’s no such thing as a permanent majority, because 1/3 is the mushy middle, and the primary belief of the mushy middle is that the guys currently in charge suck.
Demographics have changed, and not in our favor.
And, as such, you enabled the very apparatus you now attack. I don't blame you for your vote and never would.
My vote was not based on religion. It was based on Romney's full-on liberalism. If there is any saving grace from yesterday's results, it's that Mitt Romney is now finished as a major political player.
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