Posted on 11/23/2012 2:11:34 PM PST by SeekAndFind
What if we told you that the election was decided by a phrase?
You might not believe it, but assume we’re right for a minute. What word would you guess decided the election? Hurricane Sandy?
The answer lies in perhaps the single most illustrative exit poll question conducted, where CNN asked “What is the most important candidate quality to your vote?”
The response options were “Strong Leader,” “Shares Your Values,” “Has a Vision for the Future,” and “Cares about People.” Among folks that chose one of the first three responses, Mitt Romney won between 54-61% of their vote. But, among folks who chose “Cares About People,” Romney lost dramatically – 81-18%.
“Cares about you” is the single phrase that lost Romney the election. Those for whom empathy was the most important candidate quality clearly did not get a sense that he cared about people and worse, many eventhought he was antagonistic towards many Americans. Why was this so?
Romney’s business career, which was the central argument for his candidacy in an election dominated by the economy, was turned into a weakness by the left and the Obama campaign early on, with them portraying his experience leading Bain Capital as one of the opposite of care: harm. Laying people off, taking away their pensions, and destroying communities, Mitt Romney allegedly brought all of these across America.
The Bain attacks were less about vilifying Wall Street (though that too) and more about conveying the message “he’s not like us, he doesn’t care about us.”
Many voters bought into this early portrayal of Romney as one who does not care for people. Others, who did not quite buy into it, still held it as a potential lens through which to consider his future actions and statements.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
For BO's constituency, "caring" means getting rid of the baby.
This is hereditary with some people, so if that's your problem please accept my apology for brutally ridiculing you, but black people in America used to vote for the Republicans. I believe it was Ann Coulter who worked up the numbers of black Republicans who were murdered in the old post Civil War South ~ something like 30,000 people.
There's a reason they voted Republican when they voted.
You need to buff up on American history.
Actually its very simple, we simply have to find someone who is very Charismatic(like Obama) and lead him around on a stick(also like Obama).
Unlike Obama we however will have to convene people to be consernd about the fairness of personal property, and caring about those who work hard for what they get.
Still without a population that cares about sanctity, or liberty the future is as bleak for this country as Mexico’s past. Like it or not we can no more expect to win all the battles than the liberals can, unless we get such a man(or woman) to tear down government we are forced to fight a defensive war.
Oh I have no doubt that there was voter fraud, but not “massive”, nor was that the reason Romney lost IMHO.
Romney could barely tie Obama in the polls, so why is it such a shock that he lost? He ran a tepid campaign and could not convince a lot of liberals, independents, and conservatives, to vote for him.
It was massive candidate fraud.
There was little if any loss ~ except due to death ~ should have been a couple of million since we are now watching the Baby Boomers hit the high death rate years. So that means registrations were holding up on the other end of the line.
Democrats had a big drop ~ in fact, Obama ends up with about the same vote, or less, than George W. Bush in 2004!
If Romney or McCain could draw as well as George they'd both be President (except for Obama's record breaking total of 69 million in 2008.
The problem with both McCain and Romney was they gave little encouragement to Republicans to show up to vote!
So how to we fix the primaries so that these dimwits don’t get the nod?!
First of all, stop allowing states like Iowa and New Hampshire to have so much sway over who the nominee is.
I’m tired of the race already being decided by the time of the Texas Primary.....Texas, the ONLY big state that is reliably Republican. If anything, Texas should be the first primary.
Soon as we can get the show on the road Texas Republican party should sign up with the NRNC and just walk away from the old RNC. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when it comes to primary politics.
Remember Texas Gov. Ann Richards deriding GWB saying he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth? The GOP has a major image problem. Too many voters think it's the party of big business.
We may need a better party now...the republicans are all screwed up. i mean McCain and Romney one after another! O boy...that is suicidal.
“They are today. Or I mean they have in the past few years. Giving you what you think you want is not always a good idea. Unfortunately, America is getting what it wants now.”
It is not geting what you think you want its is what they are convenced by a carrasmaic man is fair & caring.
If “humanity possesses six moral foundations”(as the artical suggest) and they are “care, fairness, liberty, authority, sanctity, and loyalty” And liberals & “centerist” only possess two of them: “care, fairness”.
Then there is no reason anther carasmic man might not convence people some other policy is “caring and fair”.
There is also insodently no reason such a population lacking a value in “authority”, “sanctity”(of institution) or “loyalty”(to a particular man) would necessarily react so badly if their dominate carrasmic leader simply ended up dead.
To put it simply politics in this country will become more cutthroat, as despots & rivals are removed in political competition. unfortunately it is only a matter of time before a new Caesar is anointed.
Pray that the union is not preserved long enough to find out, or be consolidated under such a man. As John Adams pointed out 200 years ago sectionalism is our only defense against such faction.
RE: Remember Texas Gov. Ann Richards deriding GWB saying he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth? The GOP has a major image problem. Too many voters think it’s the party of big business.
Not really, Dubya won with one slogan conservatives disliked because of what it falsely implied — COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM.
Whatever the senselessness of it, that phrase worked to elect Dubya twice.
He failed to hammer away on what will happen when Obama gets returned; The Obama past due 2013/14 Tax Increases. The impact of Obama’s gagging energy resources (a socialist construct never branded as such) with policies requiring reliance on intermittent sources wind and solar and that resulting in massive corruption .,restricted use of drilling, and coal ,bans and on fracking, and resulting prices doubling on everything.. This was a bread and butter issue which reached into every “demographics” pocketbook including accepting the demo-com definition of hyphenated African-Hispanic -Americans . .The impact of Supreme Court Appointments.. 18,000 new IRS agents and on and on. . Some were very briefly touched most weren’t and Benghazi/ foreign policy was left to languish. Then there is Obama’s personal extravagance and behavior refusing to visit Nashville after its disaster showing up at New Orleans after Mitt visited it. Even after the Christi thing if that was brought up it would have blunted the impact.
Instead we got a sales pitch on executive ability but not the reason why one should toss the old model and buy his. That print and tv pitch , 20 million new jobs, was given a discrarded dose of skepticism
This from a much larger essay on the subject I’ve been placing in the comments sections in FR postings on this subject.
Poor Dr. Republican, so misunderstood.
This is often my opening line to people who are shocked that I am a Republican. Then I follow it up, if anyone is still listening, with the assertion that we have a different way of caring for people. We want them to be all they can be, instead of just giving away stuff on a long-term basis.
You may be right, but if pools and studys are correct such a conservative will have to do what the M’s (Mitt and McCain) could not do in their lack of conviction. Convince people that there is no justice(fairness) in so called “social justice”. Convince them of the virtue of hard work(something our present leader has never done) again, and to care about those who actually labor to support our entire civilization(the successful) to care about the working mans right to work.
I don’t believe the M’s were capable of this because in their hearts they did not believe it. They were too much aswaided of the left’s world view, to truly represent a diameticrly apposed one with the needed passion and conviction to lead others.
I fear however it may be too late by 2016. that too many of our people will have been sold & commuted to the pack of lies that is socialism and idleness of Obama.
Say what you will about Obama but having lived this way his entire life he does speak for this ideology from the heart with great experience. Simply put He believes it more fully than most any other democrat because he has never had to work hard. It is that believe that makes him all the more effective a salesman of this self-destructive venium..
In The Righteous Mind, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents volumes of research demonstrating the primacy of moral intuitions which “reason” is then used to buttress. It includes his in-person interviews where, of the 1,620 times that the interviewees were told of a repulsive story that explicitly stated no one was harmed, 38%, tojustify their revulsion at the outcome, nonetheless said that someone was harmed. The interviewees’ moral intuitions immediately led them to condemn the repulsive story, claim there was a victim, and then use their strategic reasoning to support their position rather than truly consider whether there was a victim.In other words: 38% of the interviewees, when they heard a story that contained actions they considered morally repugnant, invented victimization when none existed.
That's enough to make for a fertile greenhouse for a lotta myths.
This is often my opening line to people who are shocked that I am a Republican. Then I follow it up, if anyone is still listening, with the assertion that we have a different way of caring for people. We want them to be all they can be, instead of just giving away stuff on a long-term basis.
We have to show we care for people. I'm afraid we give the general public the impression that we're simply selfish, hateful, and mean people who just resent the fact that other people are receiving benefits from the government. Too much vinegar and not enough honey will never draw flies, or voters.
I think it goes deeper than just charimatic convincing. I think you have to have a majority or close to it to even have a chance of advancing the ideas. Romney was right when he talked about the 47 percent. Either it was 51 or Obama convinced the other 4 percent to follow. This majority was not on the radar 25 years ago. So, I still think the country of America and its’ inhabitants are getting what they WANT. Of course, this assumes no fraud in the election. On either count there are many Americans that want what we are getting, at least for now. Romney got many votes because he was the anti-Obama, but also received many votes for being Obamalite. What America does not want now, at least on the Federal level is a commitment to America’s founding traditional ideals. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness means something much different for the 51 percent than it does for you and me. I do agree with you concerning the future of politics becoming more cutthroat. The Petraeus, Benghazi, Jill Kelly fiasco is indicative of the Romana Empire without the murder or poisonings. But, that is not far behind with all the intrigue surrounding Obama’s past, the media’s compliance to Obama and the Dems, Benghazigate, the Czars, the Chicago thugocracy and so on. I too think we are headed down that path. Right now, state preservation seems to be the only defense. I am not talking seccession, but working very very hard to preserve the smaller unit, the state. Time will tell, but you are correct again in quoting the Founders and what they thought about the future and the time when leaders fail us. We are there I now believe.
I don’t know how we beat the people that control the GOP, Romney rolled in, and in 2006 shaped the primaries for 2 election cycles, using a single term as a liberal governor as his launching pad, and to prove worthy to the big money people.
The GOPe doesn’t get everything they want, like Romney in 2008, but they do defeat or out maneuver most of everything that we try.
For one thing, they are willing to work with the democrats if needed, and even campaign against republican nominees when it takes that to defeat us, for instance the Alaska Senate race when Palin gave us a conservative primary winner, the Senate GOP came out for the liberal independent.
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