11:49 am Nov. 8, 201218
Here are some of the reasons Republicans are coming up with to explain their awful performance in the election: they weren’t conservative enough, Chris Christie and Sandy stopped Mitt Romney from blowing past Barack Obama, the country has gone to hell and everyone wants free stuff.
And of course there's this: Romney was a terrible candidate.
None of this reckons with the things that worked so well for the G.O.P. in the past that are now obsolete.
Appeals to homophobia used to drive turnout and win national elections. Now the issue of gay rights is a net positive for Democrats, as far more young people of either party support marriage equality.
Immigrant-bashing worked well in previous decades, but lo and behold, Hispanics made up 10 percent of the electorate on Tuesday, and Obama won the group by 44 points.
Opposing equal-pay mandates, trying to defund Planned Parenthood, and talking cavalierly about rape wasn't always a sure-fire way to repel female voters before, but it seems to be now: Obama won among them by 12 percent.
You get the point. There's not enough angry white guys to sustain what amounts to a strict demographic appeal to that group.
But Obama and the Democrats weren't unbeatable, or even close to it. The economy isn't exactly humming, and far more than half of the electorate felt that the country was on the wrong track. Exactly half approved of the president’s job performance. So there was room for the Republicans to succeed.
Supposing that, instead of a candidate who bowed to the current conservative orthodoxy, the Republicans selected a different kind of nominee.
This candidate (we'll call him Good Candidate) is not a fanatic on so-called social issues and essentially hews to the libertarian position on abortion and gay marriage. He’s not a liberal crusader in these areas, but he’s tolerant.
Good Candidate is a governor, so not only are his rhetoric and agenda non-threatening, but he has no voting record that the Democrats can exploit on these kinds of issues.
Good Candidate is not exactly a renowned environmentalist and he strongly supports lightly regulating business so, by his reasoning, the economy can thrive. But he doesn’t deny science, either, believing that global warming is something we should at least look into. It doesn’t make him less of a Republican, but it makes him harder to caricature as a denialist.
Good Candidate is not driven to be president based on any of the above issues, like, say, a Rick Santorum was. He simply wants to guide America to prosperity. Before Good Candidate got into politics, in fact, he spent some time in business, where he prided himself as a technocrat who honed data-driven methods to maximize results. His message to voters is that his business faced growing pains many times, and he has the experience, confidence, and know-how to get major enterprises back on the right course. He believes he can do that for the U.S. economy, too.
Good Candidate doesn't oppose Obamacare, because, as a fiscal conservative, he understands that soaring health care costs are handcuffing the nation, and he believes that we cannot leave our most vulnerable to die without basic preventative, medical care. As a personal-responsibility and free-market kind of guy, he likes the ideas of the individual mandate and a market-based solution.
A reasonable, experienced governor who neutralizes the so-called values questions and makes a credible-sounding claim to know how to run things. This imaginary person sounds like a pretty formidable candidate, right?
The irony is that the Republicans nominated someone who wanted to be this very guy. It’s more or less who he once was. But he couldn’t stay that way and still survive the G.O.P. primary process, and he knew it.
So he transformed himself into something many general-election voters found weird and scary, and who had very little chance of beating a president who most Americans still like.
Here is where the self-examination ought to begin.
Blake Zeff is a former presidential campaign aide to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and a former aide to Chuck Schumer and Eric Schneiderman.
Can't wait until my doctor's office is turned into the DMV. Thanks Obama and the mindless sheep liberal voters!
I have one problem with the Libertarian point of view. Show me the solution for the growing problem of free riding on the social welfare network.
The single/childless life style is becoming the norm because too many people are unwilling to undertake the time and expense to make the necessary deposits into the gene pool to keep the human race afloat. It's good and fine to say they have a responsibility to save for their own retirement and old age but let me tell you something I learned from three decades of giving tax and financial advice. People who define themselves by a trendy consumer lifestyle see themselves as forever young and productive. Hence they don't tend to plan ahead or save the vast sums necessary for the future. Upon being too old to work they will demand other people pay their way because selfish short sightedness has become second nature to them.
Also in 2010 there were 2,8 workers per retiree, down from 3.3 in 2005. The birth rate has tanked and the bulk of the boomers have yet to retire. The solvency of Social Security would look a a lot better today if the estimated 30 million abortions between 1973 and 1993 were instead 30 million young adults paying into the system.
The point is these moral issues that libertarians see as nobody's business are, in fact, the business of all of us who can see a future beyond that of immediate gratification. Across human history there have been only a few solutions for meeting the needs of the old and the infirm- families, religious based charities and the government. The burgeoning number of free riders plays both families and religious organizations for complete fools and the government is close to being tapped out.
There was another "Good Candidate." Fit every characteristic you laid out. His name was Jon Huntsman. He didn't change. How'd that turnout?
Forgive me if I don't take advice about being a good Republican from a mindless drone of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Win an election without massive fraud and we'll talk.
Acarman, I like what you said.
By now, any Republican or Conservative knows what the "soul
searching" by the Republican establishment is all about--making the Republican Party more liberal, like th democratic party.
We now know, after yesterday, the main reason Mitt Romney lost the election. From the mouth of his own son, we learn that Mitt Romney did not want to be President. Like his campaign consultants, his campaign was a fake.
Mitt Romney actually wanted someone else besides himself to run, so why didn't he have sense enough to step aside in the most important Presidential election since 1860?
Republicans lost because they didn't have a candidate. That's why they lost. And that's why the country lost. Mitt Romney was a liberal, and I think he is quite happy at Obama's re-election. He just couldn't bear to be the guy to defeat our first black President, because his dad had walked with Dr. King, you know.
I thought this article was very thoughtful. Many people were turned off by Romney because of his changes in his positions...the real "etch a sketch" man. The GOP is being high jacketed by their "base" of ultra conservative tea party nuts who want to send us back to the 1950's. Until the GOP start to weed these people out of the party, they will continue to lose elections. Since I am a strong Democrat and Obama supporter, I am happy to see this problem they are dealing with and it will be interesting to see how it will be resolved.
2016: President Hillary Clinton/ Vice President Julian Castro will be in the white house and Texas will start to turn blue.
CG, I think Republicans would be super fools to try to make people like you happy and follow your advice. But I think your predictions about 2016 will certainly become true if amnesty for illegals goes through--and the Bush family are among its strongest supporters. Jeb is working the Republican side of the aisle for Obama on amnesty.
But if the Republicans are foolish enough to nominate Jeb Bush, I assure I will vote for Hillary Clinton.
I am, by the way, a former Democratic State Representative and a member of my local Tea Party. Obviously, you did not follow the Primaries. The Tea Party fought Romney at every turn, trying to make people understand the was a loser-and a liberal. Now we learn from his own son that Mittie didn't even want to run for President. It took him and his mom to convince Romney to run, a very bad deed for this country.
Romney deserves all the derision, contempt, and even pity he is likely to get trhe rest of his life--which is hope is very long.
'Back to the 50's.' You don't say what about the 50's was bad. Economically, the weakest part of the Democrats and Obama's regime, in the 50's we were THE pre-eminent world economy. We had the lack of socialist program's like LBJ's Great Society to thank for that. Also, no EPA, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Energy, etc., to corrupt the US bureaucracy and strangle entrepreneurs with their over-regulation. Repubs/Conservatives believe in health and strength for both people and the environment. What we don't believe is the supremacy of environment over people, but working together in harmony.
Society issues? It was Republicans that championed the civil rights legislation, and the Democrats that have kept minorities shackled to the public dole for their survival. Martin Luther King was a Republican who believed in the values Republicans espoused. Democrats were those that expanded more welfare programs so that the Dems can be in the position to either hand out the goodies to those welfare ensnared folks, or threaten them that Republicans might make them learn how to be independent and stand on their own feet.
Generally speaking, conservatives (not all Republicans) believe in more self-independence and liberties, but the Leftists (Progressive/Democrats) are all for taking your money from you (Clinton - "We don't think you'll spend it the way we think is most important") and spending it on what THEY want. Usually means more government salaries for taxpayers to support for generations, while making it harder and harder to live a life of freedom and liberty, while maintaining an economy that provides jobs and opportunities for people.
Any sane person can see who has the better approach to government.
Please show me these "vulnerable" who are dying "without basic preventative, medical care." Can't be found. Straw man, meet Mr. Zeff, slayer of straw men.
It seems to me that what you described is the perfect Democrat. One who will promise more to the dregs than the actual Democrats will. What you described has been tried numerous times and the word for it is communism. Thanks, but no thanks.
"Romney was a terrible candidate." Indeed. And after all, our public school-educated, pop culture-obsessed electorate needs only a good candidate to garner its vote in our national quadrennial popularity contest. Substance, principles, reason, leadership, character; all likely to be liabilities when stacked against platitudes, pandering, emotional appeals and the promise of assuagement of the guilt born by all liberal closet racists. Let the oft-repeated experiment continue-- at least it's new for These United States. As I once read, I think posted on a porta-potty wall; "I am happy to see this problem they are dealing with and it will be interesting to see how it will be resolved."
Sir, you know nothing of conservative voters or the Republican Party. I would invite you to come to Texas for a short period, and I could show you why folks on the right feel the way they do. We don't oppose Obama care we oppose the irresponsible policies of both parties to spend more money than the government takes in. What we support is a reduction of government spending - particularly regarding the payment to individuals. What the left fails to realize is their policy choice come with a day of reckoning that both parties (but particularly the Democrats) seem to blithely ignore.
Hatred and jealousy is why Romney got beat. Romney is everything a person should be, he is a good man. Obama is a phony, hate driven, jealous, envious mess. This is what people are today and they voted for someone they recognized as themselves. To accuse Romney of flip flopping when Obama has changed his tune so many times is mind boggling. Worse, he doesn't even care because he doesn't ever have to defend himself with the corrupt AG washing away for him and the media spinning it to be "evolved" while they call Romney a flip flop. It is always sugar coated and adored by the blind media worship who actually make excuses for him. They are part of the ugly nation we live in now. Hollywood sets up the moral code and prey on the very young to form opinions. They glorify everything evil and now we have the constituency to prove how successful that was. Evil overcame good in this election and I am not sure what to think about that.
Just another trash job on Republicans.
Oh dear poor Republicans! What a crock! As a person who would not belong to either party here is what I gathered from situation:
1) Republicans - At any cost get the money including farming out jobs to foreign countries, create an elite social caste for the wealthy, use the majority of this country's resources but don't pay for the privilege, hate and punish those of us who don't fit your narrow description of an acceptable citizen, but offer no solutions for solving the massive problem of finding educational solutions for those who can't rise up from their impoverished situations. Impose fear based values on a population that would not accept that kind of rigidity, and polarize the country. Select a chameleon as a presidential candidate - You sicken me! By the way, I am a senior citizen who worked a full career and am now receiving social security money I paid for, as well as a pittance of a teacher pension. Am I one those on the dole?
2) Democrats - Cowardly wiggling and squirming and dancing around serious issues like very poor educational performances in this country, or environmental abuses; being too willing to compromise values just to please a few folks. Instead of blaming teachers for poor student performance maybe the government should really make a commitment by placing a focus on the roles and responsibilities of citizens of any age in this country and using its considerable media power to draw attention to the issue. Neither side has engaged in meaningful discussion other than to make standards for teaching more unreasonable but not matching it with commensurate pay. The latest push was by the President's wife - more exercise, less fat; thinner high school dropouts. It's always the same -Democrats - Take a stand and then waffle.
3) You cannot blame either side for creating an entitlement atmosphere in this country. We have not demonstrated to our younger generations how incredibly lucky we are to have lived here. Unlike some other countries we have no draft and we have no national system for providing young Americans an opportunity to pay back their good fortune with some kind of service. They get the beneifits but they don't know why. This is a disconnect which leaves people unable to see that privilege comes with responsibility. By the way, I did enlist and do my time. Ok, I am done
Sorry Blake, AMERICA missed out on the BEST NOMINEE- ROMNEY- in politics today.
His mistake was believing that the high road would WIN against the low life OBAMA.
The head of the RNC Priebus??? was an IDIOT
- They allowed the Dems to create the mythical WAR on Woman, gays, Illegals.
-They allowed him to get away with Iran, Syria, and Benghazi!!!!!!!!
-They NEVER MENTIONED the fact that OBAMA had more casualties in 3 years than BUSH had in 8 in the Afghan WAR becuase he changed the rules of engagement!
ITS all BS and now we are stuck with MR BIG TIME SPENDER and a SENATE that is useless.
Romney could LEAD us through sequestration with his eyes closed. THE way he saved the Olympics is a perfect example of management practices required in government today.
We could have a leader that turns this economy around but what we have is "free birth control", BS high cost healthcare, a weakened Military, and a glass foundation on a collapsing economy.
Thanks America for your stupidity.
the republicans are the real problem they like the over tax the poor and working class while the rich upper class keeps getting richer and richer, increased taxes on the rich then we wont have no problems and mitt romney is not nothing but a scum, he is a racist arrogant piece of garbage who had everything given to him growing up, he does not know the struggles the poor and middle class face, he is really ignorant about alot of things,. stop hating on obama, he rose up from nothing and became a president, while mitt romney had a silver spoon in his mouth, he can go to hell. he only cares about the rich those rich. people hardly pay taxes at all and he wants to stop college loans and health care and stop giving social security to senior citizens. what is wrong with him? and do not blame obama for something george bush. (a.k.a that silver hair gorilla did.) he destroyed the country with those 2 wars he got us into. mitt romney deserves his defeat hahahahaha. and this is for all you ignorant republicans growing up having a silver spoon in your mouths being spoiled by both parents. i laugh at your fustration :)
@Demo typical liberal rants : note I'm neither a rep or dem....and you are just misinformed , Bush Tax Cuts actually helped everyone and since it ended and Obama new taxes raised on 70% of Americans .. Now the Americans that got hit the hardest are the middle class who makes 50K - 200k ... Which Obama did say he won't raise a single dime in his campaign .MIT was almost identical to Obama both supported bills such as NDAA, HR347 the use of Drones , his healthcare bill in Mass. Is identical to Obamacare Marxists plan.... Also the more involved a Gov is in our school system or medical the higher the prices Subsidies!!!!! Simple !!!! And yes I hate Bush for the war in 2 War in Iraq and we were in Afganh before that in Clinton days ... Wait what were his last words as President .... He told Bush go straight after these "terrorists" in the Middle East.....
The only people that could save this country and our great freedom are liberatarians ....other then them with liberals dems and these fascists rep n neos we will be like Orwell 1984