Posted on 11/07/2012 4:46:49 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Conservatives lambast Romney, vow to take over Republican Party By Erik Wasson - 11/07/12 02:43 PM ET
Conservative leaders on Wednesday lashed out at Mitt Romney, saying his attempts to paint himself as a centrist and hide his principles cost him the presidency.
They vowed to wage a war to put the Tea Party in charge of the Republican Party by the time it nominates its next presidential candidate.
“The battle to take over the Republican Party begins today and the failed Republican leadership should resign,” said Richard Viguerie, a top activist and chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.
He said the lesson on Romney’s loss to President Obama on Tuesday is that the GOP must “never again” nominate a “a big government established conservative for president.”
Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots said Romney failed to make the kind of strong case for conservatism that would have won the election.
She described Romney as a “weak, moderate candidate hand-picked by the country club elite Republican establishment.”
“They didn’t see a clear distinction so they went with what they know,” she said of voters.
“It should have been a landslide if Romney had run as a true conservative,” said Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center.
“Romney took all the right stances, no question. The problem was not communicating them on the national stage with President Obama,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List.
Martin argued that there was no repudiation of the Tea Party by the electorate because Tea Party values were not firmly articulated.
“This is not the death of the Tea Party,” Martin said.
“Tea Partiers will take over the Republican party in the next four years,” Viguerie said.
In the meantime, conservatives will work to ensure that congressional Republicans do not compromise their principles in fiscal talks with Obama, he said.
“Conservatives and Tea Partiers are just sick and tired of Republican leaders compromising on the state and national level with Democrats that grow the size of government,” Viguerie said. “We are going to hold their feet to the fire.”
Bozell said conservative groups need to up their financial pressure on GOP lawmakers unless they agree to a series of demands, including again vowing to approve of no tax increases for anyone.
That didn’t take long :)
If it’s anything like this joint there will be a dozen different conservative groups trying to take over the GOP, each shrieking that the others are all RINO’s and whaling away at each other until they collapse of exhaustion.
I got news for them. Those WERE his principles.
Yeah...I guess Romney won the primary because Newt, Santorum, Bachmann and Perry were all so much less conservative than he.
The ideas in this article make little sense.
We’re going to hear a lot of crap from all sides in the coming weeks. For crying out loud, I heard on the radio news this afternoon that “people are already begging Chris Christie to run for President in 2016.” Yeah...I just bet they are.
Then there’s a whole contingent blaming conservative social values. And there’s yet another contingent blaming it on Republicans alienating Hispanics.
Right now it’s all crap, sound and fury signifying nothing. I think it will be awhile before we truly understand how/why this happened. In the meantime, people are vulnerable to having their emotions manipulated. It’s a perfect time to be very careful what we give credence to.
The Democrats didn’t want the House, now they have the perfect scapegoat for all of Obama’s failings.
I think Romney is a likeable guy, from my perspective. I ultimately had no problem voting for him. However, he certainly didn’t inspire people in a way that got them fired up and excited. If he had, we would not have lost 3 million voters from 2008.
The problem with Romney was that on nearly every major issue that could have been a wedge that Republicans could drive between the Democrats and Independents, it was almost impossible to argue with a straight face that Romney was markedly different than Obama. Obamacare was chief among those issues, but the same thing applied for gun control, tax reform, education policy, judicial appointments, etc. There was always something there in the background that was a black eye for Mitt. Sure, Romney has publicly claimed to change over the years, and maybe many conservatives were willing to take a chance on him, but Independents (in my opinion) saw that as dishonesty on his part. I also think that the Bain Capital attacks were extremely destructive. In my opinion, Romney should have spent most of his advertising dollars on positive message ads with him talking directly to the camera explaining the truth about Bain, the truth about his taxes, the truth about his plans, etc. Because he didn’t do that, he gave the impression that a lot of that stuff might be true (and maybe a lot of it was). I think that most of the independent voters ultimately would rather dance with the devil they know than the one they have questions about, and that’s why I think Obama won.
I know that this is unpopular among some here, but I truly think that if Sarah Palin had run, we’d be celebrating today. She had baggage, sure, but she would have made a forceful case from the beginning of the primaries right through election day, and there could not be a candidate who could draw a sharper contrast with Obama on key issues. I know one thing - I’d rather have climbed that hill with her leading the way and lost than than to have had things end up the way they did.
I wish Romney well. He’s a fine man and I admire his love of his country. Don’t get me started on that fat slob Chris Christie.
Romney didn’t need gutter politics. He needed to tell the stark truth to show the evidence of the altered birth certificate, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, things in 0bamacare like how the dhimittudes work on taxes, 0bama campaigning with 0dinga in ‘07, with the murdering of Christians and buring of Christian churches, and on and on and on. But, no, we don’t want to be birthers, and demonstrate the truth on all his other bizarre problems, do we? Well, here we are with 0bamacare and 3 liberals supremes staring us in the face.
Folks are starting to wake up. Too bad they didn’t do so about ten months ago. (sigh)
What was the final vote count, and percentages? I worked late on Tuesday and didn’t watch ANY of the election wrap up. When I started reading on FR that the networks were calling the election for Obama, I just got disgusted and went to bed.
Why bother? The Republican brand looks moribund.
MiTT had more than a couple chances to slam one over the fence.. as did quite a few Senate candidates, but NOOooo.. sometimes being polite and forthright is not the best strategy.. they should have brought their shovels.
I'm with you on both counts. Frankly I'm disgusted that so many Americans thought Obama did well enough in his first term to deserve a second. But as a friend noted on her Facebook page, we'll finally get the answer to the 32 year old question of what would a second Carter term look have looked like.
I don’t think any of the other Republican primary candidates could have done what Romney did to Obama during that first debate.
Yeah, that will certainly chip into the 75% Latino and 92+% black vote. We are totally f’d if we go that route.
I suspect that the election was lost because of two very icky and very dark factors...
1. Vote fraud and vote suppression. Why, for example, were deployed military not given every chance to vote? (One hopes that this question gets directed to Obama's chum, Panetta). One suspects that Justice will ignore every valid claim (remember the New Black Panther Party, here).
and
2. Constant, continuous, continual, and perpetual pot-banging support from the major "news" and entertainment media. From (I suspect) compromised debate questions to non-stop Obama puff pieces, and equally non-stop Romney hit pieces. For pity sake, there are voting citizens (millions of them) who have not heard of Mister Obama's (again, one suspects) impeachment-worthy handling of Benghazi, and it's aftermath, among dozens of other spiked stories.
.
I was hoping for a strong conservative who could win, but after Perry fizzled (at least Romney could remember five points) I couldn't see any of the remaining conservative candidates having a real chance. We saw how much mudslinging they did against Romney, totally bogus. What would they have done to Newt? Santorum, Bachmann, Cain, Pawlenty...they would have had a more fired-up base (except maybe Pawlenty) but would have done worse with the independent voters than Romney did. Only Cain has a record of achievement to put up alongside Romney's and he dropped out because he couldn't answer the allegations about his private life...plus he had no experience in electoral politics.
With a halfway honest media, or if Christie hadn't stabbed him in the back, Romney might have pulled it off. If he made any mistakes it was from being too cautious (Benghazi especially--Victor Davis Hanson was lamenting that a few days ago). But the media that buried his being endorsed by Lech Walesa and turned his foreign trip into a series of supposed gaffes was ready to pounce on anything he said about Benghazi to protect the Dear Leader.
I think the closest analogy in American history to this election would be if Aaron Burr had been chosen in 1801 over Jefferson.
Honestly real conservatives either subconsciously, or clearly, understand the catastrophic events that Obama’s re-election mean. It is part of God’s plan, the same way Judas was necessary.
With Jesus, we understand that God is love, and the hurt comes from betraying of His love. Obama represents everything that opposes God, and that to many of us means days of tribulation, or “End Times” as we know it. Which although very hard, is okay because we know who wins. Look for the end of Israel, attacks on Catholics, poverty, sickness, deception, etc. If they don’t see it now, just wait. I suggest we pray, beg for forgiveness, and ask for everything we need from our real King, and He will give it to us with love. We need to do a better job at evangelizing God’s love than the “global Warming” folks do at pretending that humanity is in control. Christians aren’t supposed to accept, we are supposed to love, like He loves us.
Unless we get rid of open primaries, Dems will cross-over and negatively influence the nomination process (i.e., will support a vulnerable RINO).
The MSM will either totally ignore the true Conservative candidate(s), or, if said candidate(s) should gain some traction, will demonize them with their coverage.
honestly, I am damned sick of these circular firing squad ‘leaders.’ Can’t they just keep their mouths shut for one day?
Romney wasn’t my first choice, but by election time he’d won my respect for the way he conducted himself and his campaign. He was up against the Chicago Machine.
No Republican or conservative is going to win office without a coalition, there just aren’t enough ‘pure’ conservatives. The Tea Party is one thing, the Religious Right is another. There are fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and on and on. And none seems to think any of the others are “real” conservatives.
Conservative “leaders” will have to learn to stand together or hang separately. Our Founders knew that, it’s past time their successors learned that lesson.
Romney didn't do that because he couldn't do that. He could only begin to respond to the previous 3 months of personal attacks by Obama in Ohio after the Republican convention. After 3 months of constant carpet bombing by Obama, Romney was permanently damaged - (see exit poll data). A Republican Super PAC could respond, but not Romney. Karl, you need to answer for this.
Additionally, Obama/Axelrod had nearly 2 years to put together over 200,000 democrat precinct election workers. After the Republicans chose Romney, he had about 4 months to get organized nationally and only had 25,000 dedicated precinct workers. No army ever won outnumbered 10:1.
How the Obama workers got paid for hustling around their precinct for 2 years is another subject that needs investigation.
The other question that needs to be answered is what happened to the 3 million McCain voters that didn't show up for Romney. Let me guess - 3 million citizens would rather allow Obama another 4 years as President than vote for a MORMON.
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