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Mitt’s Loss Leaves Us With a Lesson

Mitt’s Loss Leaves Us With a Lesson

Barack Obama is the first two-term president in at least 100 years to get fewer votes in his reelection than he did the first time out. (FDR did less well in both his third and fourth terms.)

That is a consequential fact, completely aside from whether Obama lost the popular vote.  It means that the election was there for Mitt Romney’s taking.

There may be a thousand lost opportunities Romney didn’t capitalize on, especially after the first debate when he had shifted the momentum to his side.  But instead of playing to win, he appeared much of the time—as did Paul Ryan—to play not to lose.

To me, the most consequential lost opportunity occurred in the third debate, when Romney let Obama slide on Benghazi.  As I wrote here the morning after in an open letter to Romney:

But if we awaken on November 7 to a reelected President Obama, I’m going to blame that on your failure tonight to make Barack Obama explain why he claimed that Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were killed by Youtube.

There were 44 comments on that thread, most of which disagreed with me.  Commenters said they believed the game plan was simply for Romney to look presidential; that that’s all he had to do, given Obama’s record.

But that strategy is for Democrats who have the media on their side.  It’s not for Republicans who have to battle uphill from day one—which is the lesson to be learned here.  Republicans have to exploit every weak spot, and on this particular spot Obama was mortally vulnerable.

Last Saturday, when I read that CBS had quietly inserted into its Web footage some comments from Obama that had been excised from from its broadcast of the interview given just a day after the Benghazi attack—footage that proved Obama had lied in the second debate about his calling the attacks a terrorist act—I felt sick.

Had Romney pressed Obama’s attitude toward Benghazi in the debate, the contretemps would have been a major story; and CBS might well have had to release the video earlier, or risk having it leaked.  But instead, CBS could justify the omission on the grounds that Romney himself had elided the issue. Then, with only two days left in the election cycle, and Sandy still dominating the news, the release dropped soundlessly.

Well, so be it.  Let’s hope that whoever the nominee is next time, he’ll treat his opponent—someone who won’t be the incumbent and therefore won’t have an atrocious record to run against—as aggressively as he’ll (she’ll?) have treated the other Republican candidates that he beat to win the nomination.

On the bright side, Barack Obama now inherits the problems created by Barack Obama, including Obamacare.  We’ll know a lot about how he’s going to approach those challenges by what happens in the next two months.  Will he be a doctrinaire Socialist Marxist progressive, or will he tack a few degrees right in order to save himself from the ignominy of being known as the president who presided over America’s suicide?

If he proposes that the Bush-era tax rates stay as-is before they expire January 1, we’ll know that he understands a little something about the nature of capitalism, and there will be cause for optimism.  If he lets them expire—well, fasten your seat belts, assume crash position, and brush up on your Greek.

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Comments

Jusuchin (Military Otaku) | November 7, 2012 at 8:17 am

Looking presidential is different from being presidential. Being presidential would’ve been to hammer that point home and not let the media cover it up.

    I am not sure the answer. Unfortunately I think Newt or Santorum would have done even worse. That is not saying we should compromise principle, but retreads are not the answer.

    I know this, no Jeb Bush or Fat Man in 2016.

      Thank you Professor Jacobson, Joel, Anne and all you LI commentators and contributors. You rock. We need more of this, not less. Take a break, recharge and get ready to rumble.

      This is Bush-Kerry 2008 again, but flipped. BO is going to come out of four years with a failed economy. You just can’t do these policies and fix things. I do not wish that to happen, but it will. I am not a conservative to join a team, I am a conservative because I believe the underlying fiscal principles are correct. Welcome to the New American Century: Venezuelan style.

      So take care of your own. Protect your own interests. And make sure you are self sufficient if a natural or man made disaster strikes.

      As for fundamental things the GOP needs to do: First and foremost is to admit we need a shift to bring in Latinos. I am not pro Amnesty. I am pro expanded legal immigration with a goal of citizenship and assimilation. Perry was right on that issue. And if you disagree, get ready to keep losing. http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/11/they-have-point.html

      I would have rather failed with a true Conservative making the case than to nominate a RINO who we were assurred could deliver both the Presidency and the Senate and still COME UP SHORT.

      We didn’t have the discussion we NEEDED to have. Paul Ryan had the opportunity to make the case, but it was too little, too late.

      Now we’re going to suffer under the government that the people of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida deserve.

        Chuck, I was no fan of Mitt. But he ran a decent campaign. Yes I would have preferred a more principled conservative. But we got screwed across the board. We need to recognize the demographic changes that are killing us.

        That does not mean consuming 5000 calories a day and becoming Chris Christie (yeah I am bitter over him). But we need to recognize some changes need to be made. And yeah, we need to not be hostile to Hispanics. Because the current GOP positions drove away 80 percent of them.

          CalMark in reply to EBL. | November 7, 2012 at 11:38 am

          Enough with the whole Politically Correct Hispanic thing, OK? I’m beginning to think you’re a concern troll.

          Consistently close to 40% of them object to the free-n-easy immigration that you’re hinting about. So it’s not that, if we only got 20% of their vote.

          The Democrats have co-opted them with racial identity politics, same as blacks. I don’t think anyone saw that coming, because Hispanics as a group used to think for themselves.

          It’s not too late. But we have to target them as people seeking excellence, not as a group to be accommodated. That’s how Dems do it, and when we try to do things their way, WE LOST. Got it?

      Con Ed in reply to EBL. | November 8, 2012 at 1:05 am

      “No Jeb Bush or Fatman next time.”

      The Democrats are celebrating because GOP is “too extreme”. We have run two RINOs and they have done very poorly. Again, the rich, white RINO model does poorly. That is the take home lesson.

It’s a never-ending source of wonder to me, how Establishment Republicans go scorched-earth on conservatives and smile about it (all’s fair in politics, they say), but are gentle and kind to Democrats.

It makes no sense.

Another lesson: rich white conservatives don’t win. Carly Fiorina, Linda McMahon and Mitt Romney.

Another loser: Ann Coulter. She backs RINO’s.

    9thDistrictNeighbor in reply to Con Ed. | November 7, 2012 at 8:34 am

    I don’t think it has anything to do with skin color or wealth. Mitt was obviously wrong about the 47 percent…that number is obviously much higher. Go read Charles Murray’s latest.

    At latest count, in 2008 McCain got more votes than Romney did this time. With the way Sarah Palin was demonized, it’s a wonder he was able to get the votes he did.

    And yes, Ann Coulter needs to go into the wilds of New Canaan and shut up.

    persecutor in reply to Con Ed. | November 7, 2012 at 8:52 am

    Coulter has some weird obsession with Krispy Kreme. Maybe she’s a chubby chaser at heart.

      Ann Coulter: “If we don’t run Chris Christie for President, then Romney will win the nomination and we’ll lose in 2012.”

      How about, “If we run Romney, Chris Christie will publicly embrace Obama a few days before the election.”

      Bit of an aside, but I used to be an avid reader and fan of Ann. She was particularly good at ridiculing all the errors of logic & reason routinely committed by leftists and her columns were always filled with great zingers.

      Then early this year or late last year she penned a column on evolution in which she committed virtually every error of logic & reason she had been condemning in leftists her entire career & that was it for me. Her subsequent conversion to born-again Romneyite completed her transition to certified hypocrite.

“Preside over America’s suicide”? That’s the goal. Kill the America he hares.

9thDistrictNeighbor | November 7, 2012 at 8:27 am

I recall Valerie Jarrett being quoted as saying “it’s payback time.”

Had Romney pressed or hammered, the leftist media would have screamed racism (just ask matthews).

“(FDR did less well in each of his third and fourth terms.)”

With obama’s understanding of the U.S. Constitution, a wave of the Magic Wand (what constitution) just may mean going for a “third and fourth term”(s).

‘Cause after this next four years, our nation will be worse than/then (pick one, i’m tired) it is now.

I am not, nor was I ever, a Mitt Romney supporter. That being said, I voted for him due to Benghazi. I will say Mr. Engel, that Mitt Romney was not the problem. The american people are the “problem”. The majority of voters did not have a problem with his conservative credentials, rather they actually believed he was a “radical” conservative. They basically swallowed the media cr*p hook, line, and sinker. The good people on this and other conservative sites who (like me) didn’t think Romney was conservative enough are not the people who decided this election. The people who are too busy, who only tune in to “mainstream” thought, and who can only be bothered to listen to soundbites believed the soundbites and re-elected a facist (one who favors state sponsered capitalism). Now we are all going to pay a price. Our children will grow up in a country with fewer freedoms, crippling debt, less opportunity, and the spector of possible impending global war. The global war, like the last one, will be the way for many industrialized countries to “deal” with their finances. War does this only by killing vast quantities of the population so there is less competition for jobs.

Here’s the only Greek I intend to learn for the second term:

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

For those of you not familiar with this Second Amendment favorite, please Google “molon labe”.

(Can anyone tell me how to lose this avatar?)

Lesson Learned — Americans want their fair share and they don’t care how they get it. Try spending those ObamaBucks.

Look what happened when Romney did bring up Benghazi in the second debate. Media would have fought Romney over it the entire time.
Every media account of the mistakes was always someone elses responsibility. Under Bush it would have been about “How could Bush let this happen?”. Under Obama its anyone but him.

    persecutor in reply to Zaggs. | November 7, 2012 at 8:42 am

    It’s one thing not to report a story, it’s another to crucify while having to explain what the story is and why you didn’t report it in the first place.

    Had he exploited this and Fast and Furious at the debates (gun control was mentioned in the Hofstra debate, so he had an opening), the LSM would have been caught in bed with Dear Leader.

      Crapgame13 in reply to persecutor. | November 7, 2012 at 11:59 am

      Even I Romney presses on Benghazi and fast and furious it gets fact checked and spun. Fast and furious becomes a “started with Bush” even if not true. Benghazi becomes “intelligence was hazy”

      We can’t escape narratives. 30 years of education, myths about journalistic fairness and demonization of who we are.

      Sure, they would have caught Obama in bed with the LSM, like so many times before. But no-one would have cared except for the people that already disliked Obama. We are living in a different era, where celebrity and likability are what count. We used to look at a man’s principles and then judge the man accordingly. I am not religious, but this is almost certainly a result of us losing our religious values.

I voted for Ryan – Romney just happened to be on the same ticket.

I only hoped against hope that Romney had repented of his liberalism and abortion-mindedness and instigation of gay marriage and Romneycare being a model for the Obama presidency. Hoped against hope that the Republicans really care about the future of the US more than their political and fiscal gain.

I’d rather have voted for Newt/Palin any day of the week.

I started off supporting Bachmann, then Santorum, then Newt. Newt made more sense than any of them.

However, the Media Alinsky tactics orchestrated by Soros and company were the real shapers of the race.

On the bright side? I don’t see a bright side. I see a president who will have no reason to include the constitution in any of his decisions. I see a country that is well and truly screwed.

    radioone in reply to bongobear. | November 7, 2012 at 9:07 am

    “no reason to include the constitution” Yeah, just wait until he gets to appoint more Supreme Court Justices.

    VetHusbandFather in reply to bongobear. | November 7, 2012 at 9:48 am

    The part that scares me is that this time he didn’t run on the idea that he was going to Unite Washington. This time he ran on the idea that he ‘tried’ to work with Republicans and it didn’t work. This time he specifically stated that he would ‘work around congress’. Sadly he was re-elected, and this time he he’ll believe he has the mandate to ignore Republicans, because the majority of Americans weren’t paying attention to what he was actually saying. This was the biggest reason I urged my liberal and moderate friends to vote for Romney instead of Obama. I guess we shall see what will come.

So…

We nominated a guy who couldn’t win either of his two home states. In fact, was expected to win neither.

His running mate was not realistically expected to win HIS home state, either.

Great electoral strategy. Back when the GOP used to win national elections, you nominated guys with great creds who COULD win their home state. Gingrich was the only one who fit the bill, but he was too…um…something, so he was demonized.

Regarding Gingrich (not to beat a dead horse): why is he reviled? He led Republicans out of a two-generation wilderness in Congress. He resigned because his caucus tried to dump him as Speaker: they lost a few seats, far fewer than any year under Boehner.

I hate the GOP.

    Valerie in reply to CalMark. | November 7, 2012 at 9:35 am

    Gingrich is reviled because members of our corrupt media, like Rachel Maddow, lied their a$$es off about what he said and did, and the Republican Party at the national level refused to set the record straight or defend him in any way.

    As with Sarah Palin.

    There is a task before us that is at the root of our problems with BOTH parties, and that is the river if malinformation perpetrated upon us by our national media. The corrupt media still has the power to very effectively libel people, and to spike important news stories.

    I truly wish the Repubs had won this one. Thank God they kept the House.

    I look forward to further re-trenchment on the part of the Republican party, because the Democratic party will be cured of its venal streak by the results of this election.

      CalMark in reply to Valerie. | November 7, 2012 at 9:52 am

      I agree about the cause of Gingrich-hate, but…

      In any sane organization, a man whose plan to put you in complete power for the first time in a half-century would be lionized for the rest of his life. Regardless of anything else.

      Gingrich campaigned conservative, but the real problem is that he delivered. The Establishment hated that. I even suspect Bob “Failure ’96” Dole conspired with Clinton to undermine Gingrich during the shutdown.

      The media and Democrats today are the legacy of George W. Bush. He never confronted or condemned their lies and ugliness. Evil thrives when unopposed, and so the MSM and Democrats are now practically omnipotent.

Obama has inherited the mess Obama has created. Let him crapweasel himself out of that one.

    texastommy in reply to VotingFemale. | November 7, 2012 at 9:06 am

    No, he has a new scapegoat. He’ll just blame the House for not supporting his agenda. That’ll work for at least another four years, maybe eight or sixteen when Hilary gets elected next.

      Hillary won’t run in 2016. She will be too old by that point. I don’t care what the “conventional wisdom” says or what the Leftists will be clamoring for. She will be 69 years old, and she’s already showing signs of wear and tear on the body. The last years of being Secretary of State have not been kind to her and 3 more years of any sort of public life will not be kind to her either.

      That’s assuming that she survives any true investigation of Benghazi.

Hey, nobody likes to lose an election and this one was particularly painful for Republicans because its one we should have won.
Obama isnt so remarkable that he should have been reelected given the freight he carried into the election.
But he won. Despite a poor economy..high unemployment and sagging GDP he won.

If I had bet yesterday, I would have bet Obama’s results would have been considerably less than 2008.
I would have won that bet. 10 million people that voted for him in 2008 didnt this time around.
Thats amazing really. A candidate loses 10 million votes yet still manages a win.
I also would have bet that Romney would vastly improve on McCain’s 2008 performance.
Despite everything, Romney didnt even get the popular vote McCain received.
Go figure. For me thats simply amazing that Romney got roughly 3 million fewer votes.

The typical Electoral vote mystery remains. National polls suggested, based on popular vote, that somehow popular votes would translate somehow to a somewhat even split in Electoral college results.
Based on how the Electoral college is reasoned, Obama should have gotten just barely 270 Electoral votes.
As it stands this morning sans Florida, Obama gets just over 300 and Romney just over 200.
It simply doesnt “figure” in a way that the Electoral College indicates a win for Obama to the tune of 3/5ths
and a Popular vote of just 50%.
I dont mean the EC is unfair or worthless, rather its an interesting result.

So? Romney didnt win. Thats the net result.
Im sure folks smarter than me will spend months analyzing exactly why.
The bigger question is what are Republican’s going to do about next time.
And why 13 Million folks apparently vanished from the total vote.

1.✓ Barack Obama 50% 59,574,491
2.✓ Mitt Romney 48% 56,950,714

    This amazed me too. I voted for McCain in 2008, but this time I had twice the passion about voting for Romney. I woke up at 6:00 AM and would have crawled over broken glass (to use something I heard at Instapundit) to get to the polls. Where were my comrades in arms? Were there really people who were more passionate about McCain than Romney?

    I’m wondering if there is so much economic fear out there that people are leaning towards the safety-net candidate. Because of the lack of a recovery they suspect that things might get worse, and that Obama is a better guarantor of their unemployment benefits.

Joel, what a crock of crap.

Seriously, why is it you are not running of high elective office, or being paid to consult for someone who is?

Romney did not lose this election so much as America made a choice.

    persecutor in reply to Ragspierre. | November 7, 2012 at 9:28 am

    Exactly. They chose the devil they know over the one they didn’t (or couldn’t because he was on every side of every issue depending on the date or location and audience).

    Again, many of us here were berated because we stated we didn’t really like Romney or the way he used scorched earth to get the nomination; we were told we were threatening to make Dear Leader into a two term President by our apostasy and that we needed to get with the program. We did.

    We voted for him but it looks like there were about 13 million AWOLs who are now making Juan McRino’s disaster look respectable.

    I’ve said it before and I say it again: we organize into a bloc that needs to be courted and along the way, take over the GOP.

      Ragspierre in reply to persecutor. | November 7, 2012 at 9:44 am

      Again, I cannot disagree more strongly on your “every side of every issue” nonsense.

      In the last year, what? Name one?

      Romney was solidly for reform. He was solidly for liberty and choice. He was solidly for markets and against regulation.

      He pledged to kill ObamaCare.

      If, as is being reported, conservative voters LET ObamaCare remain and propagate by NOT voting, I don’t know how anybody can lay that on Romney.

        persecutor in reply to Ragspierre. | November 7, 2012 at 9:59 am

        Rags, as a Republican you don’t run for governor of Massachusetts (and win) like you run for governor of Texas. He had a whole host of positions that he made public in that run, his run against Teddy the Swimmer for the senate seat, that somehow evaporated in his two runs for the nomination to become “more” conservative. Look at how he “evolved” on the issue of abortion.

        Is that the sole reason for his loss? No, but rarely is there only one reason for a disaster.

          Ragspierre in reply to persecutor. | November 7, 2012 at 10:28 am

          I know the history.

          I could say EXACTLY the same about Reagan.

          Exactly. The. Same.

          The average American voter also just doesn’t have that kind of knowledge or memory. Hell, if they did would a majority of even Deemocrats have have nominated Obama in the first instance?

          persecutor in reply to persecutor. | November 7, 2012 at 11:32 am

          Maybe it could be said to some degree about Ronaldus Magnus, but he didn’t have eleven primary debates where the media was eagerly reporting every smear an opponent made against him. If you recall there was an Eleventh Commandment that they had a gentleman’s agreement on-and if I recall correctly, GHW Bush’s strongest criticism of him was “voodoo economics”.

          Ragspierre in reply to persecutor. | November 7, 2012 at 11:49 am

          OK. Not to be fulsome, but how is that supportive of your original point?

          persecutor in reply to persecutor. | November 7, 2012 at 1:47 pm

          My original point was that Romney, as decent a man as he is, flip flopped over the decades, over the primaries. I’ll bet his spokesperson’s Etch a Sketch comment resonated with many people,and probably more on our side than we’d care to imagine. You had three million fewer voters for him than voted for Mc Cain and I’ll bet that Etch a Sketch fueled some of those votes, as well as part of the ten million fewer votes that didn’t vote for Obama but stayed home instead of voting like they did in 2008.

    Rags,

    Check what you said about my open letter to Mitt. You thought he executed a good game plan and that a trap had been laid for Obama re Benghazi.

    Remember in ’08 when Obama said that if Republicans bring a knife to the fight, Democrats should bring a gun? The problem for Republicans (and therefore us) is that they keep showing up with knives to what they know is going to be a gun fight.

      Ragspierre in reply to Joel Engel. | November 7, 2012 at 10:22 am

      Joel, I was right about the trap laid by Obama and the media WRT Benghazi. It WAS a Tar Baby.

      I would bet that Romney had information that pressing on Benghazi himself was NOT his most efficient use of HIS brand.

      He had surrogates like Rudy and Bolton with meat-axes everywhere they could get on the air going after Benghazi.

      lightning in reply to Joel Engel. | November 7, 2012 at 10:25 am

      Truthfully the media showed quite plainly that they would not support Romney making Benghazi a greater issue. Evidenced by Candy Crowley and the second debate. Romney lost not because of the RNC, the tea party, libertarians, or moderate conservatives. He lost because of the “moderates” who listen soley to soundbites, the mainstream media, and believed that he was a “radical” republican who would take away their paycheck and their freedom. Not a realistic belief, but a widely published one. Add that in with some possible voter fraud, and Obama won. Unless you fight to change the culture and the media that shapes that culture, no conservative is going to hold higher office again. Welcome to living the “cult of personality”.

Jack The Ripper | November 7, 2012 at 9:00 am

Rubio/Ryan 2016

Fuck Aiken, who managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in his own election and puke in the punch bowl at our party.

Maul Mourdock.

Thanks guys. You RAPED us, and now we are pregnant with Obama and Elizabeth Warren. YOU two fuckups managed, despite the impossible, to turn Sandra Fluke from a joke into plausibly credible. I wish you, Fluke, Gloria Allred, and Elizabeth Warren will get trapped in a mineshaft together for six months.

Not being able to express their convictions in a better way is gross political malpractice. Time for Aiken and Mourdock to find another line of work, hopefully one that does not involve communicating with others.

    PhillyGuy in reply to Jack The Ripper. | November 7, 2012 at 9:41 am

    Funny there are some out there that think the Akin and Mourdock comments flipped the election to Obama. Not sure if I agree with that but we need to avoid hot button women’s issues.

    Remember that whole flap about the Susan B Komen foundation defunding Planned Parenthood? The net of it all left the Komen Foundation much, much weaker and the founder had to step down.

    So there’s that piece.

    Ahem. While I appreciate your passion, there are grandmothers present. Don’t make me wash out your mouth with soap! Thank you.

    You have hit this nail squarely on the head.

    Agreed. It amazes me that, even if they really did believe what they were saying, that they were so politically stupid to say it out loud. Talk about being “out of touch.” They had no idea how inflammatory their comments might be.

    I once farted in a meeting as a young man. But even then I knew enough to do it quietly. No one heard it, and I was eventually promoted.

hightechredneck | November 7, 2012 at 9:15 am

i would not want to be John Boehner for the next two years. Progressives have a very short attention span. Their anger and rage will not cease and desist, they will be twice as angry and twice as crazy.

The biggest obstacle Romney faced was the disintegration of Family and Religion in our Republic and the belief by AT LEAST “47%” that Government is who you turn to to get by. We all mocked it but it was right there in the sick “Julia” rollout.

    Sophia Lee in reply to SGLawrence. | November 7, 2012 at 10:41 am

    I also mocked “Julia”, “My First Time” and truly felt that there would be no way that would work. Today I think back to the countless conversations I have had with both of my children who attend two different state universities. In my daughter’s first year, 9 out of 10 entry level classes (English, Math, etc) incorporated issues on the environment, abortion, and sexual “rights”. She switched to another school where this year this discussion is in 6 out of ten classes. When Bill Ayers moved into academia thirty odd years ago this was the plan. It worked and this is what we are up against.

The election was lost when we let the Media decide on Mitt like they decided on McCain. Both are 2nd/3rd tier Republican politicians. If only we had Newt running we would be waking up to a brand new future. Newt would have changed the game on its head.

    PhillyGuy in reply to imfine. | November 7, 2012 at 9:47 am

    Oh I don’t know about that. Newt had profound weakness within the fundraising community. He is not well liked by the party. He has a reputation of jumping from idea to idea and leaving others to pick up the mess.

    I like Newt and he changed the Republican Party from also-rans to winners but he would have gotten pounded into high unfavorables well before the debates.

      JayDick in reply to PhillyGuy. | November 7, 2012 at 10:25 am

      Newt is a fantastic talker and debater. Unfortunately, he sometimes talks too much and says really dumb things.

      Romney was the best of a weak field.

      We need better candidates, and a few are waiting in the wings.

      Newt is not well liked by the party for exactly the reasons that he would have won with the electorate. He is an IDEA guy, and implements them. Do they ALL work? No. But at least SOME of them do, instead of trying failed retread ideas like Keynesian economics and economic fascism as Obama has consistently done.

      Also Newt is not well liked by the Establishment Republicans because he is entirely effective. The Establishment would rather be the party out of power so they can whine about their lot in life and how unfair it is, rather than actually take the reigns and do something about it.

        Exactly right!

        The Establishment campaigns conservative, governs Democrat-lite. Gingrich not only campaigned conservative, he governed conservative. And THAT is why the Establishment hates him: he actually delivers on his pledges.

      persecutor in reply to PhillyGuy. | November 7, 2012 at 11:36 am

      My heart says Newt would have been a better bet, but my head agrees with you.

myohmymanatee | November 7, 2012 at 9:45 am

Lesson 1. No way to bit the media machine that is in the tank for the DNC.
Lesson 2. Mitt is right. He cannot/will not be able convinced 47% of the people who thrive on welfare and food stamp to go and get a job.
Lesson 3: High unemployment is the new normal.
Lesson 4: it is okay to let your kids live in the basement for the rest of their lives.
Lesson 5: Women substituted men with Uncle Sam. Free contraceptions and abortions.

    VetHusbandFather in reply to myohmymanatee. | November 7, 2012 at 9:51 am

    Lesson 4: How about an amendment that says you can’t vote until you are off your parents health care?

    Lesson 5: You may want to change that to ‘single’ women instead of women in general. Married women trend towards Romney. Unfortunately we’ve devalued marriage and told single women that they can depend on the government instead of a husband.

    “Lesson 2. Mitt is right. He cannot/will not be able convinced 47% of the people who thrive on welfare and food stamp to go and get a job.”

    And there you have it. By the next election (hell, by 2014) it’ll be confortably over 50%. Comfortably over enough so that the small percentage within who vote non-democrat won’t matter.

    All this talk about finding the ‘right’ candidate is largely pointless. We are over the tipping point and at this point the plunder will only accelerate.

    I do not dispair. The last time this country emerged from tyranny the result was worth the price we paid. The next time it’ll be even better.

      Willy in reply to K. | November 7, 2012 at 5:55 pm

      Just wait for “immigration reform” to get the total to over 50%. And they’ll target immigrants for relocation to Arizona so that it will no longer swing republican.

2nd Ammendment Mother | November 7, 2012 at 9:46 am

IMHO, the economic depression we’re about to live through will be the least of our problems.

Congress has already failed to hold Obama accountable for his disregard of the Constitution and the Rule of Law. This is a President that declared Congress adjourned, who enacted over 900 Executive Orders, many of which conflicted or overrode US Laws, and signed thousands of regulations. Not once has the Congress or SCOTUS brought him to heel for his autocratic rule.

We still must come to terms with a looming holocaust in Israel and against Christians in the Middle East and Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia.

Do not let non Republicans vote in republican primaries. It is my understanding that’s how we got akin. And huckabee was reason we kept him. Plus idiot akins remarks added credibility to the ridiculous claims of the war against women.

    kemmer in reply to javau. | November 7, 2012 at 10:23 am

    Well, we have to control the statehouses in order to prevent non-reps voting in rep primaries. Oh, wait, we do. Oh, but silly me! we also need to develop spine transplants before we can make the rules less overwhelmingly dem-biased in states we control. Even in Texas our state reps are squishy!

    No, we have a multi-decade wilderness in our immediate future, and that’s primarily dictated by demographic fundamentals. The only good news for us (but bad for mankind as a whole) in that is that the rest of the world is in the same demographic boat: contraception and abortion, plus sufficiently advanced economies = women wait until it’s too late to be married and have children, so we have abysmal fertility rates that will beget faster and faster population aging, then shrinking, and the economic consequences of this are devastating. China will soon go to a two-child rule, but they won’t be able to get their fertility rates up. Our fertility rate is in the basement now. We are boned.

    I’ve been talking demographics and such with my daughter, hoping she’ll not delay childbearing (she’s a teenager), and my wife and I have set a good example (we married young, made it work, had kids young, are very happy). But I have a feeling it’s all falling on deaf ears. And i wonder if it’s a good idea, strictly for her, to even bother trying to follow in our footsteps: if we’re saddling her with monstrous debt, and her potential children, she may never feel comfortable becoming a mom. And then there’s my son — what to tell him?

    Maybe i’ll cheer up eventually, but all i hear today is obummer’s grating speeches, everywhere; everytime i think hey, it’s ok, it’ll be an interesting four years, i then hear that voice and become despondent. Help!

That’s all well and good in a vacume; but in the real World, the Republican Party has proven itself to be completely, utterly, and shamefully inept in every way possible. The Republican Party have made themselves worse than useless in American politics. Proof: They lost to Obuma…twice!

Ultimately, I think Obama won on turnout.

Nobody expected him to duplicate 2008. It didn’t seem realistic. But he did. We forgot that he’s a community organizer, and it’s something at which he’d excel. The lie in the polls wasn’t expected turnout; it was the energy gap — which was irrelevant, as it turned out.

And on our side, a bunch of people we were counting on to show up, didn’t. Romney grievously offended many Gingrich/Santorum supporters with his scorched-earth primary tactics, and some Evangelicals have been heard to say they can’t/won’t vote for a Mormon. Neither is an excuse for not voting.

The Democrats are a unified machine. Too many Republicans are spoiled, fractious, selfish brats. Apart from Mitt “Obama who calls me a murderer is a nice guy” Romney himself, THAT is why we lost.

Then let the lesson be learned by those who need to learn it. Some of us were clear in 2008 that Romney was a woefully unsuitable candidate to confront the vicious and dedicated Left. So of course I blame Romney and the people who promoted him. He was the candidate, the general, the man who wanted to be leader. To say there were and are “deeper issues” is of course true; it is always true. But how do those “deeper issues” rise to the surface and become real to people and how do we address them? Through the candidate. Through leaders who take risks. This is the candidate’s responsibility, and how a candidate in a troubled time becomes a “leader” for that time. Romney studiously avoided every deeper issue of Leftist intent and destructiveness and their objective reality in modern America. He did not even begin to engage the American people in these deeper issues: the historical truth of the Left, the range of Obama’s leftist depredations, and most importantly, he did not take on the leftist media in any fashion according to their power and corruption and malice. He ran a narrow and essentially risk-free campaign from a Republican time warp.

This is not to say he would have won if he had done all the things recommended here. Yes, the country may be already too far gone down the slope of decadent dependence and civic ignorance. But that was all the more reason to try, to risk. He didn’t try to take the big risks required of a brave challenger in this perilous age. He ran the “play it safe” campaign which is the only kind known to the insider advisors and RINO automatons that surrounded him. He did not run the militant campaign required of a party and country at war with a seditious ideology at its peak of destructive force and fury. There is no excuse for this. He failed us. The entire institutional structure around him failed us. That Romney is a decent and highly admirable Christian man means nothing to this cold fact. He did not run a campaign about defeating the Left, and this was exactly the job at hand.

Romney did several things wrong, but I think the biggest was he tried to keep his rhetoric and the debate lofty and positive, while Obama got down and dirty. Way too many Obama charges and ads went unchallenged; most of these charges were not true, but were not adequately refuted. In addition, Obama provided a plethora of targets for negative ads. Few of these were exploited.

In this regard, I like the Clinton (Bill) model. He challenged every single negative thing said about him and counter-attacked in the process. Carville was his spokesperson in this regard and, while obnoxious, was highly effective. He continued this practice into his presidency. It worked. Romney’s approach did not.

    Willy in reply to JayDick. | November 7, 2012 at 6:01 pm

    The double-standard would have killed Romney. He was already considered a “bully” (as successful people often are in a self-hating culture). Any aggressive attack on Obama would have reinforced that image.

    Meanwhile, Obama can speak of “revenge” against Romney the “bullshitter.” Obama is the minority victim, and by the laws of affirmative action, his conduct is normal and understandable.

If I had to identify a single major mistake by Romney, it was his selection of Ryan.

Ryan was a big turn off to moderates and women, and likley hispanics too. While Ryan was supposed to be a big draw for conservatives, based on the number of voters, it does not seem that Ryan worked as planned — the base was not overly enthusiastic and did not come out for Romney.

Rubio would have been better with moderates, women and hispanics.

But I am sure TEAM MITT thought through the issue. Can anyone point to any good article discussing the Ryan v Rubio choice?

“Nice guys finish last.”

In the Primaries, Romney was definitely NOT a nice guy. In fact, he was something of a moral savage (lies, innuendo, misrepresentations). He won easily.

In the General, Romney was Mr. Nice Guy. He lost decisively.

Too bad he couldn’t have reversed those. But like all RINOs, he has this horrible moral failing: he respects Democrats, no matter how horrible and vicious, far more than fellow Republicans, especially true-blue conservatives.

I’m honestly pretty down this morning. And the saying that comes to mind is, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

The sheep were on parade last night, and if they are going to rule, I want my piece of the pie too.

I know I’m being cynical, but what hope do I have? Hope isn’t a method, and I don’t want to dwell on the past. How do we honestly move on? Please, help me Obi Wan Kin-LI-ers…

    I had pretty much the same thoughts last night. I didn’t sleep a wink. Today – I’m thinking we all need to invest more of ourselves in getting the Republican Party back on track and I think we need to start volunteering at election headquarters and start a True the Vote in every state. I’m going to do some soul searching today and tomorrow I’m finding a Tea Party group in my area, even though I’m in Idaho! Oh, and I’m buying another gun. I have a feeling those will be attacked next just as soon as Duh One is finished killing the coal industry.

Romney wasnt the true loser last night that was the very ideals our forefathers created with the birth of America. We have replaced self reliance with increasing gov. handouts, individual choice of healthcare in the private sector with a eurotrash state healthcare system that has never worked in any nation its been tried and its only highpoint is to successfully bankrupt a nation without truely covering those it was created for, increased union control in how much taxpayer $ is earmarked for them, crony capitalism with taxpayer $$ investing into false green energy companies (as long as their chief investors are major bundlers for the president).

We are done as a nation, our forefathers ideals are intentionally forgotten, the US Contitution is no more…the U.S. electorate voted for more goverment handouts instead of righting an ecconomic disaster.
The only thing I see as of right now is the rumblings of a second American Civil War…between those that only want to suck on the tit of the taxpayers dime and those who want to stop the ecconomic cesspool this administration and its oblivious supporters continually push. Its not morning in America, its a sad day in America.

    The solution is to secede somehow. Split the assets and land between two groups. Give us the big bad corporate CEOs, the fiscal conservatives, and the religious people you hate so much. Their side can keep the illegals, free birth control and the laws about 20-ounce beverages.

    But you know what? Their economic model doesn’t work. It would fail hard, and we’d suddenly find ourselves living next door to a nation of entitled deadbeats with nuclear weapons.

To celebrate Obama’s victory, Playboy says it will feature a “Girls of Occupy Wall St.” spread in the coming months.

Don’t be down. We’ll win the next one.

    “To celebrate Obama’s victory, Playboy says it will feature a “Girls of Occupy Wall St.” spread in the coming months.”

    Nekkid womyn with third degree mange. Oh, be still my beating heart.

CBS “would have been pressure to release” the video clip? Really? Like the LAT was pressured to release the video of Obama at a radical Palestinian banquet? That worked, didn’t it?

If there would have been “pressure,” why wasn’t there the same “pressure” to release it right after the second debate? It proved the President and Candi were lying. Yet, it wasn’t leaked then.

The media allowed Obama to run away from his record and every responsibility. Nothing Romney said would have changed any of that.

Every armchair general claims the battle would have been won if only HIS strategies had been followed, but it is just hypothetical hindsight, nothing more.

Those who place blame on the “RINOs” are just ignorant. Those were with us. The LP and other fringe nuts were not. They pretended to be to get seats at the table in our primaries, then deserted as they ALWAYS do. They are undependable allies, and we need to stop rewarding their treachery.

    Willy in reply to Estragon. | November 7, 2012 at 6:14 pm

    It is clear that the media gave Obama the couple of percentage points that he needed to tip the balance in swing states. The strategy was to keep talking about the gradual “recovery” and black out the big scandals.

    Can you imagine if Nixon was a democrat today? Waterwhat? Wasn’t that a Kevin Costner movie or something? I heard Nixon’s guys broke into a building in pursuit of a terrorist. Very heroic.

    We didn’t elect our president. He was chosen by the MSM.

“…he appeared much of the time—as did Paul Ryan—to play not to lose.”

EXACTLY! Romney ran a slick, smart, professional SAFE campaign. He took no risks, attempted no bold moves. He made his case as reasonably as possible and then waited for the people to decide.

When are the republicans going to learn to stop nominating SAFE candidates for president and start going for someone who’s actually willing to fight? Even in losing, we would have been better off with Newt or Michelle Bachmann.

    Willy in reply to irv. | November 7, 2012 at 6:17 pm

    The problem is that when we fight, we are portrayed as racist extremist bullies. Look at what happened to the Tea Party. When I look at them, I can’t imagine a nicer group of people. When the press looks at them, it’s an entirely different story.

I’ve listened to and read a number of discussions today about who &/or what is to blame for Romney’s defeat.

I don’t blame Christy, or Sandy, or Romney’s campaign team, or the beltway Republican Consultancy, or Axelrod, or Plouffe.

On reflection, the country’s death warrant was signed June 28, 2012. Most of us were too stunned to take in its real significance at the time. To consciously understand what a blow to the enthusiasm engendered by the 2010 elections and Tea Party it would turn out to be. How it would rob the movement’s sails of any further wind and assure the death of liberty as we’ve known it.

As sure as George Washington was the Father of our Country, John Roberts was its executioner, euthanizing the greatest experiment in self-government in history with the stroke of his pen. I blame him, and will never forgive his treachery.

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to Daiwa. | November 7, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    Yes . That could definitely contribute to the malaise on the R side & vindication of the other.

    But Roberts basically ruled that this was not the Courts role- that it should be resolved legislatively.

    And it really is back to Sq one.

    SCOTUS should be legal rare & safe not a goto or every bad date rape not just rape rape .

      There were 4 other justices who strongly disagreed with that position & felt the law should be voided in its entirety. It was perfectly within the Court’s purview to so rule.

        BannedbytheGuardian in reply to Daiwa. | November 7, 2012 at 8:49 pm

        Yes but it took 2 !/2 years to get to the Supremes.

        If it is deemed a mjor category One Constitutional issue then it should be mandated to within 6 months.

        There should be issue ratings like storm categories. Why not – a simple 3 man panel could decide.

Joel, even though Obama’s total vote is way down from 2008 (about 13% using current stats), his liberal base over-performed enough to pull him across the finish line.

Gallup’s figures of self-identified liberals is 21%, but exit polls showed self-identified liberals at 25%. Whereas conservatives are 40% according to Gallup, but were only 35% of voters yesterday. That’s a 9% difference (-5% conservative/ +4% liberal). If Romney had fired up his base the way Obama did, it would have added about 3.7 million votes to his total giving him about the same million vote lead over Obama as Obama currently has over Romney.

    BannedbytheGuardian in reply to T D. | November 7, 2012 at 7:44 pm

    He told Republicans to vote for America. instead of revenge.

    Republicans did not listen. They had their choice & their chance.

    No candidate or campaign is perfect but Mitt did well enough to be leading at some points & certainly led Obama to cry & Michelle to talk in past tenses at Iowa.

    In the morning people stayed at home – most likely evangelicals – sitting there with their survival packages waiting to be funnelled off into the sky.

    Apocalypse Syndrome.

      Why, because Romney is a mormon? hmmmm, could be. I hadn’t considered that. Maybe it was a mix of that and the pro-choice Rs. It’d be nice to have data, but you can’t exit-poll those who stayed home 🙁

      Can i curse here? I so badly need to let out some awful curses. I’m surrounded by liberals, at a conference, and i’ve been struggling to hide my despair… I mean, surely this calls for dropping f-bombs and such on tv and anywhere else. Curse: because there are no non-curse words to adequately describe the disappointment, the sadness, the dejection, and the desire to just let it go, give up, assume the position, and take this. Personally i’ve resigned myself to the upcoming wave of bad upon worse consequences for all of us; today, still, there is no fight in me.

        BannedbytheGuardian in reply to kemmer. | November 7, 2012 at 9:08 pm

        Just know that this will not end well for them either. Start reading some history books & spot the dynamics & if they apply to USA 2012.

        At Babi Yar a man looked up into the sky & yelled . There is no god. All the struggles of jews for 5,000 years were for him over.

        We are not there yet.

As long as Karl Rove is around and appearing on Fox News we’ll never get any farther than we are today. There really is no GOP except a few guys who are determined to keep conservatives out no matter what. They didn’t want the people we gave them in 2010. You need a big engine to defeat a democrat today. The engine of the GOP isn’t focused on beating democrats, it’s focused on beating conservatives. They don’t care if the GOP dwindles down to 2 people, they don’t want us. This extremely so for the Bush family. Both Georges and Jeb have sold us out when they’ve had the spotlight and the power. Jeb cannot contain his contempt for us. The Bushes will never stop sabotaging us and this country. The hideous Jeb ran a shadow campaign all summer including at the RNC convention in Tampa which had to undercut Romney’s confidence. No matter what Jeb says, such as he was just trying to help, the Bushes undermined Romney every chance they got. Bush 43 is even reported in Oct. 2012 NY Mag. to have criticized Romney’s campaign and been skeptical of his chances. The point is we don’t have a party.