Or air those personal testimonials when they had the nation’s attention at the national convention in Florida.
Idiot Eric Fehrnstrom has already been quoted as saying the Bain attacks were ineffective “like arrows bouncing off us” in the primaries. No reason to give a full-throated defense or detailed endorsement of business success that will actually get people working again. Thankfully Fehrnstrom can etech-a-sketch himself into oblivion now.
Team Romney said they were going to buy media time and run the bio in Battleground States. Did anyone see it? I have no reports of it airing.
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/266571625485434882Here is what I wrote in a private communication on September 28 to someone involved in the Romney campaign in Ohio:
Romney’s short-coming is he has yet to make the compelling case why the country should hire him (so far he’s really just been the not-Obama candidate). In Romney’s corporate speak this is the longest job interview of his life and all he is doing is telling everyone he can [do] the job better (a losing interview strategy) when he needs to demonstrate he can do the job better (a winning interview strategy).
When the media cries for specifics, don’t dodge the question as he is doing or answer with policy specifics that will be used against him. Launch into what it was like to create the companies he names in his speeches but doesn’t talk in detail about. Talk about how many people have been employed over the life of the companies (not just the amount of employees today). Talk about late nights and tightening belts to make payroll and keep the lights on. Talk about the sacrifices made to get to the next milestone to hopefully turn a fledgling company into a great success. Demonstrate how these companies are doing great things in states A, B & C but he wants to bring that innovation and opportunity to Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin (depending on the location of the speech). Beg the Obama campaign to bring up the steel mill where that guy’s wife died of cancer. Talk about how the company was dying when Bain showed up. Tell how many steel companies went under while Bain tried to retool and save the company. Talk about how many more the years the company stayed open with thousands collecting paychecks because Bain kept the doors open as long as they could and this was 6-8 years longer than they would open have had Bain never been there. That’s thousands of people keeping paychecks and having an opportunity thanks to Bain not the other way around. Demonstrate his great success and how it touched countless lives at every stage of his career. Demonstrate how he can do that for America instead of just talking about it. We tried that last time.
Battleground Watch 
195 Comments
It was political malpractice they didn’t air the bio – Eric Fehrnstrom is destined to be another “former Republican” analyst for MSNBC & good riddance! 😉
I think this gives us an even clearer picture of what happened. I don’t think airing a panegyric infomercial about how great a guy Romney is would have helped, though. We simply had a guy with the wrong bio for this election.
Obama claimed to be the champion of the “middle class” (whatever that means in Obamese), and we didn’t really do much to disabuse the public of that notion. Romney kept claiming he was going to create jobs, but didn’t do a great job of explaining the “how” of it.
Look at the exit polls above – the Bain ads resonated with 81% of the electorate that voted for Obama – kick that down 1% and Romney is president. Republicans need to be careful in allowing the media to misrepresent what happened here – they waged on Romney, the person, to “kill him” and were still only able to win by small numbers in few states. Republicans need to improve their ability to convey + get their message out.
I disagree. Romney’s team should have countered the Bain attacks. It should have run the ads showing his charitable works for others. It should have invested in a better hands-on turnout operation. This was political malpractice. That said, if conservatives stayed home to teach moderates a lesson, we’ve got huge problems. The candidates to the right of Romney were losers, each and all, starting with Santorum–a populist who was less conservative than Romney on fiscal matters. It was Santorum who refused to campaign for Romney, who attacked him most fiercely and who was grudging after he lost. A man like that has no future in the party.
90% of the problem is the GOP’s insistence that we weren’t “conservative” enough. Todd Akin was pretty conservative and lost a senate seat we should have won. Murdoch was pretty conservative and got shelaked. Any Tea Party idiot who doesn’t realize America’s demos has shifted, deserves the failed welfare state that is coming. I AM SICK OF THE NUT JOBS WHO HAVE HIJACKED OUR PARTY. Stop being so stubborn and self righteous, and start nominating people who can win bring good.
Challenging Lugar was, in retrospect, an error.
I don’t think so. He was too cozy with the Dems–not unlike Specter. It might take another election to remedy our situation in the Senate–but purging our team of weak links is necessary.
From my perspective as a socially liberal (more or less) and fiscally conservative (more or less) i see crazies on both sides but it is the GOP crazies that worry me more today. Could change and that could change my vote.
Peter,
Kudos to your correct call as to how the race was going to play out. Mea culpa indeed. I think that is what we need to say. Get the government out of our lives altogether. The question is not each person’s personal stance, but instead what is the policy you support.
Limited government, people make their own choices. Abortion is an easy answer, my view does not matter. It is not a federal law. Send it back to the states and each state will make their own decision. I do not understand why in the hell this is such a tough concept.
And if any idiot doesn’t understand how to handle a rape question I am going to baseball bat them. Unbelievable.
“Abortion is an easy answer, my view does not matter. It is not a federal law. Send it back to the states and each state will make their own decision.”
But that’s precisely what liberals are terrified of–that Roe is overturned and abortion becomes a state issue. That is what Democrats run against.
But Jefferson, therein lies the rub. Conservative states will ban it, so what, we win conservative states. Liberal states will not ban it, and the women in those states know it, so it will be available.
That’s pretty much the deal. Let the people decide. Give unto caesar what is caesar’s, and let the rest fall into place.
Policy should be decided by democracy. Not unelected people in robes.
No, I agree Prescient, whole-heartedly. My point is that, in terms of electoral politics and ginning up votes, Democrats actually run on the idea that overturning Roe will be a disaster. That gets their voters to the polls.
Thing is, the media high lights the Republican Crazies, while giving the Democratic crazies and crooks a pass. Trust me, there are a TON of people that ran in the democratic party that would’ve disgusted the nation, had anybody actually HEARD about them!
Basically, the Republican Party cannot afford crazy. We need to be the party of personable somber individuals who are none the less solidly conservative. So, for example, Rick Perry without the Gaffs, Romney minus Romneycare and the background in venture capitalism, Pawlenty plus the ability to actually rile up a crowd.
We cannot have Gingrichs, Cains, Santorums, or Bachmans. As much as the base LIKED some of these candidates, they turned off everybody else, and turned the primary into a long damaging circus.
I’ve always considered myself a conservative but some of these guys are clearly different animals. I cringe when they answer questions from the media. They haven’t a clue as to what works politically, what wins votes outside their limited perspectives. It’s not their social perspective that’s the problem, it’s how they talk about it. It’s not their job to offer philosophic lectures on why they’re right and the other guy’s wrong–like Santorum did ad nauseam. It’s their job to get elected so they can exert influence on behalf of their perspective. The political studity is stunning.
Agreed, they don’t do their cause any good if they cannot get elected. Therefore, they need candidates that can talk about this issues without scaring people. So far the candidates the SoCons have put forth lately, have failed at this miserably!
Santorum brought up birth control on his own, and if he doesn’t do that he wins the Michigan primary, and the money guys would have been scrambling for a new candidate. That was the difference in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin primaries. He just couldn’t get libertarian voters on his side, since he wasn’t one of them.
+1
The Three million whio stayed home are idiots. It’s one thing to belive something and stand up for it. Like it or not, there are plenty of pretty smart people on boteh sides of the aisle. Chuck Schumer got 1600 on his SATs. I disagree with him and think he has everything wrong, but promoting and voting for something you belive in (large government etc) isn;t stupid, it’s just a vision whihc I think is wrong etc. But STAYING HOME in the hopes that your NON-vote will change things for the better is stupid. It just is. It is stubborn (which is sometime smart, depending on the circumstances) and idiotic.
So, what do we do about the fact that three million people are ‘on our side’ but refuse to vote for our candidate? Frankly, it’s a pretty straightforward calculation. Will pandering to them result in more votes in the right places (i.e. if a million of those people are in Kansas, they don;t help the cause much)than we lose? I’m not certain, but there’s a very good chance that the answer is NO. Someone has to look at the numbers, but my gut is that electing a Newt Gingrich would have brought those three million out to vote, and lost ten million others.
If idiots can be made to vote for our candidates, that’s great —- every vote counts. But let’s realize that the people we need to appeal to are NOT the idiots.
I say this with a heavy heart — I am on teh right, National Review sunscriber (and correspond by email with several of the NR staff writers), and I wish we coudl nominate a Ginrich and win. But the math has changed, and we just can;t do that.
Dabrisha, that’s the most sensible and the most honest assessment of what’s happened to the Republican Party. Conservatives seem different. We should learn from the Democrats for once. The Dems are not unified by a single issue. There are many issues front and center with them. HOWEVER, they work together. They don’t adhere to the rule, “if you’re not with me in my entire ideology, you’re against me. The most conservative Republicans (TP) and he Evangelicals are like this. It their way or the highway. This doesn’t work when you need to come together to further your party. The Dems are far apart on many issues, pro-life/pro-choice, pro-business/pro environment; pro-dealth penalty/against the death penalty; etc. But they all vote together. Republicans would rather cut off their noses (stay home if they don’t get their way) to spit their faces (vote to make sure your PARTY wins….The Party, not the ONE SINGLE ISSUE.
Keith, GREAT point. I have seen no reports of it airing. I had hoped that they had done so as it was a great idea when you talked about it.
We need a blue collar candidate with military experience and we need a hispanic conservative candidate to lead the ticket in the next 4 years.
I would suggest something along the lines of Tom Cotton (soon to be senator from AR)/Susan (Gov. of N.M.).
These two are the perfect candidates to bring us back from oblivion. Meanwhile, I posted this in the prior thread, but let’s get working on this NOW!!!
Nova, exactly. In the next several years, we need to use the damn money to buy VANS and get our supporters out in force. And with early voting this needs to be done IMMEDIATELY when it starts.
Two purposes, having people show up and supporting our auto industry!!!
Win-win.
Here’s a question, what commenters on here are interested in a true grass roots GOTV, which would start right now. AND I MEAN NOW.
We all heard how superior this GOTV effort was. Instead, it looks to be a miserable failure. We must change that.
Oh, and another thing that we need to do, is get out in force to nursing homes to get our supporters. Democrats troll ghettos, we need to get seniors out in force and do that big time. I fear that seniors are going to be most hurt by what’s coming down the pike.
You may be right about getting them out to vote, but no, they are not going to be hurt the most. The kids who need to pay for this will. I really don;t fear that much for today’s seniors. The degradation of the health care system will be slow and steady, taking decades. I know the Canadian model very well, as I grew up in canada, worked in Candadian hospitals and visit frequently. The biggest effect of socialized medicine is (1) longer waits for non-urgent procedures (not good, but a reasonable trade off for saving something like 40% on the cost of healthcare —- and NO, they don’t pull the plug on old people. My grandmother passed away a couple of years ago, living in a world-class facility,at age 100. Dementia for the last few years of her life, yet well-cared for. (2)AS the INCOME of doctor’s has dropped, statistically, less of the elite go to school to become doctors. A GRADUAL drop in quality of medicine due to more abnd more of the smartest kids deciding that they don;t need the paperwork of socialized medicine. Dental school costs three times as much as medical school in Canada and is much harder to get into because it has a better ratio of income to effort. More and more doctor’s kids becoem dentists instead of physicians, urged by their parents to abandon teh family tradition instead of pursuing it.
In any case, the biggest problems with the healthcare system are philosophical (lack of freedom) and SLOW decline. The trade-off, like I said, is that Canadians can afford it.
I don;t want that here. But old people — they’ll have some inconvenience, that’s for sure. But nothing catastrophic.
Preibus needs to start now…invest $20 Million in offices and staff now for 2014, and 2016…starting after the primaries will cost us.
Agreed 100%. We need to set this up. WHO IS WITH ME???
If we fail again in 2016, the country is gone.
And look at the answers given in that exit poll. MORE SHARE VALUES with Romney. Thus, there does not need to be a major rebranding per se. The messaging needs to be SMALLER government, personal freedom, and fiscal responsibility.
The rest will fall into place.
One more thing everyone. I have decided to do something. We keep hearing how all these GOTV efforts by Romney were fantastic, second to none, deep in technology, ready to go, massive.
But they were nowhere near as effective as Rove and we could make those even more effective.
We need to ORGANIZE. I am in whole hog. This is our country and our childrens’ country and they deserve much better than the massive debt and disorder that is being piled upon them.
Is it not the ultimate irony that the nation’s first black president is leading us to the path of debt slavery.
Prescient11 – how are you suggesting we do this? This is the one thing that would make me feel better about losing someone who, I think, would have been one of the best, most loved presidents in history. Feeling like I can make a difference somehow for the next time around would bring me some solace. I, and I’m sure many others, don’t know how to do that. Put out pamphlets? Billboards? Commercials? To get out the small government/individual/non-Wall Street/liberty message? Or are you saying more ground work figuring out who the voters are that we should contact next time around?
I’m with you prescient
I am saying that we need to start outreach now in two significant areas of concentrated voters, nursing homes and churches.
We need to hold policy discussions/town halls with them. We need to have their information and voting histories available. We need to send Christmas and Hannakuh cards. And birthday cards.
And when the time comes next time around, we need to be there with vans and volunteers to bring them to the polls.
This needs to start now and I am going to think over the weekend how to accomplish it.
Well John Galt and AG, send me an email if you want. My email is prescient11@yahoo.com.
These are our voters and they did not show up in a very important election. And we shouldn’t run any more Mormons for national office. Sorry, it is what it is.
I am going to think hard about how to accomplish this.
It should be fairly easy to do. I am not going to rely anymore on a party that simply does not get the job done.
Prescient11 — you wrote “We shoudln’t run Mormons for national office. Sorry, it is what it is.”
(I quote you in entirety because it is clear that your comment was not intended to disparage Mormons, and I don’t want to imply otherwise)
That may have been a factor. I know some big evangelical leader endorsed Romney the week before the elction, too little, way too late.
IN any case, if in fact it was a factor, we need to be honest here. I am not going to kick evangelicals out of the big tent, but, if what you wrote is true, we need to face a sad fact that our tent contains religious bigots. (FOr one thing, it isn’t all evangelicals, mostof whom probably DID vote). We need to learn SOMETHING from teh Democrat party, and one thing is that their core supporters accept as a tenet that bigotry has no place. Sure, there are Democrat bigots — but there is no core constituency that exhibits it to the extent that they wouldn’t vote for someone based on it.
I’m pointing this out not to get into a fingerpointing game (yeah, there are in fact racial hucksters in the Democrat tent like Sharpton, and they get a pass on that —- but they don’t say that all white people are bad, and they certainly vote for white politicians and even Orthodox Jewish politicians like Lieberman — they’d vote for evangelicals too if they were liberals who shared their POLITICAL beliefs). I’m just saying that as a party, we need to realize we DO have a problem attracting a lot of people because of the perception that we are exclusionary. I don’t know what we can do avbout it. I mean, we did in fact nominate a Mormon, so the idea that most Republicans are bigoted or that the Repub leadership is bigoted is just stupid. I just mean that (possibly) a significant portion of one of our main component voting group would NOT in fact support him.
I know all of this is a perception thing. My impression is that most Mormons are in fact Republicans, Harry Reid notwithstanding. But our big tent has a PERCEPTION that it includes a lot of bigots.
PROOF: even if prescient1 is wrong, he (or she) dis a Republican who certainly has teh perception taht many of our fellow Repubs wouldn’t come out for a Mormon. Even if wrong, it IS the perception.
we need Zombie Reagan
i don’t think today’s GOP would vote for Reagan. He actually raised taxes, and not just once, and not by a little. Yes, he cut marginal rates but that’s the point, he was willing to compromise. The GOP in 2010 could have stopped Obamacare if they had agreed to something, but they were unwilling to negotiate at all.
Oh Peter: http://battlegroundwatch.com/2012/06/13/enough-with-the-fallacy-reagan-could-not-get-the-gop-nomination-today/
Peter, we were LOCKED OUT of even discussing Obamacare. That has never happened before in history, to not even listen to the other party, and was absolutely ridiculous. So no wonder we didn’t want to then negotiate.
~ Brittany
Oh yes they would have voted for Reagan mr bad Peter. You are wrong
Brittany,
That is not true, at leas not at the end. remember, Obamacare was originally created by the Heritage Foundation! Yes, one of the most conservative think tanks. But opposition to Obama was such that the GOP was unwilling to support anything Obama proposed. At the end the Dems particularly centrist Senators who had veto power, were almost desperately reaching out to the GOP to agree on something, anything!
And then the GOP nominates the grandfather of Obamacare, Romney.
Welcome back, by the way
Keith, that’s not much of a retort. Any GOPer that supports any tax increase is in trouble. And that’s what Reagan did.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/10/dems-lock-out-republicans-literally/
“On Tuesday, the committee’s Democrats let the Republicans know that their keys wouldn’t work in the hearing room anymore. They’d had the locks changed.”
~ Brittany
Unfortunately Peter, the Heritage Foundation isn’t a great proxy for what conservative voters think. The liberal fantasy is that Obamacare was opposed only because Obama opposed it. It actually galvanized people who were trending away from Bush and the Republicans post-2006 because of Bush’s government spending and proposed bailouts.
WJ,
It was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation. It was actually passed into law in MA by Romney. Yet we are to believe that it was some sort of socialist plot? Please.
McConnell made it clear after the 2008 elections that his goal was to keep Obama as a one term president and the way to do that was to oppose him on everything.
Congress did the same thing to George H.W. Bush to make him a one term president. I don’t think anyone in either party is completely innocent, come on now.
~ Brittany
I’m not saying it was “a socialist plot.” I am saying that it was a galvanizing issue that gave birth to the Tea Party along with the bailouts proposed by Bush. Conservatives opposed HillaryCare in 1994 and they opposed Obamacare as well. The fact that Romney insituted it doesn’t change the discussion. The fact that people at the Heritage Foundation proposed it doesn’t change that.
I’m unsurprised McConnell “made it clear that his goal was to keep Obama as a one term president.” How did Democrats react after 2000? Were you unaware, until Obama’s election in 2000, that politics is bloodsport?
The biggest objection to it is the individual mandate to buy insurance. That’s key to making it work, because you need healthy people to cover the costs of the unhealthy. But that doesn’t sit well with conservatives and especially libertarian-types who don’t like being told what to do by the government.
that’s the fallacy Peter…1) McConnel’s statement was not that cut and dry that has been proven false. 2) ObamaCare was rammed through what was left of their majority house in the dead of night during the lame duck congress. Obama’s stance was “i won” there was no negotiation. Dems locked out republicans left and right. Even some dems felt left out. In the end the bill that passed was, and still is UNPOPULAR to the majority of Americans.
Yes the GOP stonewalled on things their HALF OF THE COUNTRY didn’t want…that’s their job as the minority party…democrats did it too under Reagan, Bush, W., etc.
The GOP does need to rehabilitate that imagine and be more outwardly apparent they are at the table to negotiate.
Back to Reagan I DO BELIEVE WE HAVE GONE way way PAST THE POINT AT WHERE THIS COUNTRY WOULD EVERY GO SO OVERWHELMINGLY FOR ANY ONE PERSON. 49-1 VICTORIES WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN
They did agree to something. To not have the bill read so they could go home for Christmas.
Rush made an interesting point yesterday. He didn’t think having an Hispanic on the ticket would matter. We have more Hispanic high office holders than the Democrats–but get no credit for it, anymore than Bush got credit for having Condi Rice and Colin Powell on his team. Blacks still accused him of racism when Katrina hit. Judge Thomas doesn’t count either, though Republicans backed him for the bench. We’re still the party of racists. I don’t think that putting someone on the ticket will change how we’re characterized. It might be good for peeling away a few points in an election however.
We lost in four key states by less than 400,000 votes altogether. That’s unforgivable. It bespeaks gross carelessness and arrogance. I agree Romney made a superb candidate. But he was served poorly by his team.
Let me amend what I said earlier, we need massive GOTV efforts, coordinated in CHURCHES and NURSING HOMES. How has this not been coordinated before.
I keep doing nothing, thinking that finally the repubs have figured it out. Relying on the statistical analysis and the meat of the polling data. That was a complete and total failure this time around.
As powerline stated, we should have just run mccain/palin again.
The time for a real grassroots movement is here. And it starts now. I am going to start something up, who wants to actually do the work instead of just talk on blogs…
I would vote for McCain only to vote against whatever Democrat was running. I only voted for him in 2008 because I would’ve voted for my foot over Obama. I think McCain is kind of a wuss, particularly on illegal immigration. He also sort of laid down and let the Democrats stomp on him in 2008 so again he seems weak to me.
I get your passion, I was extremely angry and disappointed following the election and all day yesterday. But I don’t think giving the Democrats their stereotypical view of us (angry screaming with guns drawn) is the best idea, either. If you look at the map from election night, the vast majority of this country is red with spots of blue. There are more registered Republicans in this country than Democrats, too. We’re hardly the underdog just because we lost one election to an incumbent President, who are historically very hard to oust.
So don’t worry, our time will come. 🙂 We have an election in 2014 and then in 2016 we very well may take back the Presidency, as these things usually switch parties every 8 years anyway. Personally I would love Marco Rubio to run in 2016, he loves everything America stands for and it is so refreshing.
~ Brittany
yeah, lots of talk in the past 24 hours that the country has changed and the GOP hasn’t kept up.
Almost like 2010 never happened.
We are there, we simply didn’t show up tuesday
So the next time a Republican wins the White House, will we all be screaming “The Democratic party is dead!!! This is our country forever more now!!!” Really, what a joke. That’s like saying a sports team is dead when they lose the Superbowl one year. As I said above, historically things switch every 8 years anyway.
~ Brittany
they do generally switch ever 8 years, true. But its also true that the minority vote share continues to rise, and the GOP has serious problems with that.
True Peter but let’s wait and see if all those minorities come out if a minority isn’t running. I have heard dozens of black people say they only voted for Obama only because he is black. But of course *that* isn’t racist…
~ Brittany
Yes, maybe it will drop a bit but Hispanics and Asians did not vote for him because he was black. The GOP has a serious problem with minorities and women (not all of them, of course).
I think Marco Rubio is very promising too. We need to make sure we will not have morons like Aiken/Mourdouck running either. We failed taking a more flexible position on Obamacare. The overall idea was not bad, the way it was financed ( or lack thereof) was the worst part about it and we could have ripped that apart. We failed offering a plan. Romney was a good man but he did not lay out much of a vision or clear alternative.
On social issues I think the party should state its preference for family and life values but state clearly that government has no role in the decision a woman should make about her reproductive life. We should offer support and understanding not interdict abortion. We should be strong advocates of gay rights and civil unions ( i.e legal equality) but preserve the name and to support institution of traditional marriage ( including by asking for tax preferences especially for families with children; we do want kids live and by raised by mothers AND fathers; one parent children are worse off in any sociological studies especially boys).
We should stress we are not against the poor but that we see helping them in a different way. We want them to learn to succeed, to learn how to fish not to give handouts and make them dependent on public dole. We should continue to pushing fight against poverty to communities and churches not to the federal government.
This was the one thing that consoled me today. I had been thinking we were a permanent minority. But the idea that people on our side wouldn’t show up still baffles me. I don’t get the Romney hate and never did. I’ve always considered him the only real shot, the only one presidential enough.
I disagree that the GOP has a problem with women in general – married women, at least, tend to go GOP big. I think it’s now evident that single women, besides almost by definition tending to be younger and thus more likely to vote on social issues and feelings (ugh), actually do respond to the Life of Julia and Lena Dunham ads, and the implication that the federal government – and by extension Obama – is a father or a husband to them. It’s a bizarre, grotesque reality, but it is nonetheless reality.
And the problem is that basically everything about “women’s health” and contraception and programs for single mothers was basically a code entitlements. Sometimes they concealed that, sometimes they made it nakedly obvious (see: the ads were the girl writes her mom asking for $18,000 to pay for birth control – it’s ludicrous but some people are stupid enough to believe it). In other words, apparently the way to reach them is, yes, more stuff. And most young people aren’t actually aware enough to realize TANSTAAFL. So Obama gets his foot in the door with “free stuff” and then seals the deal by promising abortion on demand or gay marriage or whatever it is they’ve decided is very important to them. Again, many people in that age bracket consider that more important than being able to find a job after university. I attend one of the most conservative campuses in the nation, but I still see plenty of that.
Mitt made up a small amount of ground, I think it was 5% more young voters than McCain got, but ultimately they’re going to vote for more stuff and social issues. And since entitlement reform is the hill we die on, it’s going to be very hard to win them over in a big way, because most of them don’t even realize that entitlements need reforming. I know at least one person on Facebook who said he didn’t think Romney or Obama would be any different, but thought that Obama was advancing gay rights while Mitt would ban gay marriage, so he voted for Obama. I mean, how the hell do you speak to somebody like that and convince him that you’re right?
You could peel off some by adopting a libertarian view on social issues, which actually probably would make some inroads into both young people and Hispanics (blacks are still overwhelmingly social conservative, but if they haven’t voted for us on that by now they never will). But it seems like the difference in this election may have been values voters that stayed home (note that I’m distinguishing values voters from evangelicals, who evidently did come out in force for Mitt – there’s just not a lot of them left in swing states anymore) . It’s going to be a very difficult balancing act to try and convince the blue-collar midwestern worker that you’re the party of ethics and morals while also convincing some college kid majoring in liberal arts that you aren’t some disapproving parent that wants to go back in time, and get a viable candidate and a working government out of it. Obama microtargeted the hell out of single-issue or social liberal identifying people like the above, but taken with his other blocs it’s also given him a dysfunctional coalition.
I’m a big fan of Rubio, but by 2016 he’ll have served exactly one term in the Senate. I’m afraid that we’ll just pull an Obama and nominate a guy that, while seen as charismatic and promising by the base isn’t really qualified yet to be President, mostly because of his skin color and heritage, because apparently identity politics are all this country cares about anymore.
If we’re bound and determined to run a minority, we at the very least need somebody with executive experience. Bobby Jindal has been a successful governor of Louisiana for years, and there’s nothing on his record for the base to criticize him over. If you’re going for the identity/gender twofer, if all goes well we could be saying the same thing about Nikki Haley when she’s in the middle of her second term in 2016.
I do prescient!
We have to move beyond churches and nursing homes. We are in a more secular society. Younger people have abandoned the church. So if we merely rely on organizing church-goers, we will be stuck with the same demographic voting blocs we have now, while ceding the huge and growing young, singles bloc to the Dems. Also, the problem with organizing in nursing homes is that there is no gaurantee that these voters will be around in two or four years. I’m not against these organizing efforts, but we need to move way beyond them.
Oh, I agree. Even regular church goers are become more secular in many respects. This isn’t to say that religion is doomed in America, just that its had a rough decade and needs to fight for relevance.
That however, is the problem for preachers, pasters, rabbi’s, and other religious leaders. Political parties are secular by design, even if they’re influenced by common religious morality. If we cannot sell our platform secularly, we’re always going to have problems like this.
Romney won age 18-29 white voters.
Hi Keith. All I’d like to say about the GOTV effort was that if was that disjointed on the ground, and it was, then what were the brains behind the operation doing. Whoever it was in Bush’s campaign that identified the rural truck driving guy as the VALUE voter should have been hired by Romney. I think we can all agree Eric Fehrstom is an idiot.
Romney needed help with his message and campaign. Yes the primaries were a slugfest that bruised egos and left little time for the national campaign. But there was time. Did Romney reject overtures from people like Karl Rove or Ed Gillespie,or whomever, or was there such jealousies that some of the powers that be left Romney to his own devices. Santorum didn’t step up until the last days.
Bain should have been countered and turned into lemonade, like you are proposing. There was deafening silence this summer. I refuse to believe Romney was as flawed as Kerry. But MAYBE Romney hired the wrong people for his campaign, and that is what is to blame in the end.
I still think Romney should have let smug face have it, in his polite gracious way as he unhinged Gingrich, in debate 2 and 3.
I don’t understand why outfits like Crossroads didn’t pick up the slack in the summer. They should have been out there answering attacks. It seems as if even the pacs held their fire till the last few weeks. Then there was a sudden barrage all saying the same thing–things were awful, etc. In PA during the summer
Obama had a clear field. Then it was all Romney and GOPacs 24/7. What a waste of good money!
Nice to see you back fab4gal. I think you and I are the only “gals” around here
I am too!
related — http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/333005/conservatives-terrifying-message-david-french
Dabrisha is right. I am a young conservative independent living here in NY. However, they is no way in hell I would admit this in public. Not when you have nutcases like Bachman, Allen West (yea I said it), Akin, Mourdock, Angle, Santorum, and O’Donnell getting the spotlight. These people are self-righteous clowns and are impractical. They make the Dems job too easy. Everyone is not poltical diehards like we are, so they look at these people as representative of conservatives and Republicans everywhere.
Both parties have crazies. Pelosi hurts the Democrats, too. Our standard-bearer this year was an affable businessmen and it wasn’t enough.
This speaks to another problem we have as a country. Twenty years ago, there were enough Republicans living in places like New York, that campaigns couldn’t get away with calling Republicans or democrats monsters. People had friends in each party, and simply wouldn’t believe that all republicans or all democrats were crazy.
Since then however, Republicans have begun moving out of states like New York and California, while democrats have moved out of traditionally red states. This means that, in New York, while everybody likely knows a closet conservative, very few people are likely to be close friends with an open Republican. This makes it a LOT easier to demonize Republicans in general and run against them.
Totally agree. The image problem is huge. Santorum is a classic example of what’s wrong. The guy thinks he’s moral as hell. But he’s actually grudging and spiteful–not unlike Jimmy Carter, another holier-than-thou moralist. Bachmann is not spiteful, but she was clearly in over her head. I don’t get these people who want to be president but have weak credentials. Cain was another one of these–illiterate on foreign policy. What I most admired about Romney was that he had a potential for greatness. He seemed to suit the role perfectly in terms of speech and demeanor and background. I never got the Romney hate. I never got the rejection of half-a-loaf in favor of nothing at all.
The center and the left minded voters hear the extremists talk, get scared half to death that there are people with those views in the republican party, and want nothing to do with the party. It completely undermines trust and suppresses any moderate message from a centrist candidate. Democrats seem to filter their primary candidates. You don’t hear them going aroiund saying I want to raise taxes on everyone so that we can start 6 new entitlement programs for the poor. The more entitlement programs the better. 70% taxes rates would be about right if I were president. You don’t hear that. Hell, I don’t recall even public healthcare being talked about all the much in the last dem primary. The republicans need to decide what their message is (the conservative stance on issues that reach out to the widest swath of the electorate) and then find candidates that have views around that core message and keep the extremists away. The other side is listening. They need to find candidates that have reaonable backgrounds (i.e. not Michelle Bachman’s) that won’t be seen as theatening to the center and right leaning dems. The GOP needs to filter who they allow a visible platform to and present to the world as a GOPer. The GOP is a brand and like any brand it needs to be managed.
Have you guys seen this:
2012 Election
Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
Notice the Argentinian flag in Obama HQ. We’re in trouble people. And I’m not kidding
Geeze, I did not even notice that.
The flag is for the City of Chicago
UN F-ing BELIEVABLE!!!!!!
I think Romney’s people probably had a lot of high-tech stuff as well. It probably wasn’t as sophisticated or as battle-tested as Obama’s, but it was certainly better than 2008. When you have a shrinking base to appeal to and the other guy’s base is expanding, marketing becomes increasingly difficult. Also, Romney confined himself to only one type of appeal, “The Obama economy is lousy, vote for me”. There was never any attempt to expand on this theme. Therefore, expanding into niche demographics would prove almost impossible for Romney. Obama, on the other hand, raised all sorts of different little snarky messages. Each was designed to appeal to one of his niche groups, and backed up by the data of his field operations staff. In 2008 and 2010, the Dems and the liberals had much more resources than the GOP, especially money. Romney and the new RNC did a good job in closing that gap. However, the Dems raised the bar. They won because they took advantage of the wider potential base for their appeal, got just enough people to show and vote for them, and won even though organic intensity was clearly with the Republicans.
It is easier to get by with those snarky messages when you are marketing to juveniles.
Well, that’s the advantage of running a campaign without an agenda and mainly designed to discredit the opposition and make low-info voters stay home. You can talk about Bain, Big Bird, and Binders and give every little segment of the base something or whip up some frothing hatred for Mitt, even if it might not appeal to another part of the base – because odds are they won’t know about it. Microtarget those niches and sluice them to the polls.
You’ll have a broken mess of a government and a broker mess of a country, but hey, at least you won an election!
So does anybody know what to do from here?
At first I thought amnesty is a no brainer but Hispanics lean to the Left naturally all amnesty does is increase their share of electorate.
Abandon social issues? Ok I for one care little about them but a large part of the base does and contrary to initial suspicion evangelicals did turn out. They won’t if the GOP becomes pro-choice
Or do we simply carry on for all Romneys supposed faults he lost by 350k votes in four critical states?
Well, first old and middle-age white men need to quit talking about abortion. Why can’t intelligent conservative women lead on that?
TRUE!
Sure, I’ll lead on it! Abortion is murder. End of story. 🙂
~ Brittany
I’m tired of losing. The social wedge issue ploy worked for about 6 years and it has been a consistent loser since then. Kudos to Rove for getting us those wins, but it’s time for something new. The social issues need to stop characterizing the Republican party. Only in that way can the party have national reach. Right now, being a Republican is the kiss of death across the blue part of America. The red part does not have the votes anymore to win.
couple of thoughts — some technical, others not.
1. you build a campaign apparatus that exceeds Obamas. The NFL is a copy-cat league. so look at what Obama did and duplicate and improve it. Talking GOTV efforts. Romney pulled 57 million votes. We need and OFA equivalent. I get that politics isn’t life to most conservatives (and certainly not to me — a libertarian). tough. we have to get over that. the left embraces it and so should we.
2. read the NRO piece i linked above. we need to argue that economic freedom is important across the scale. and we need to make that case to everyone. and not just BS them. our way gets you out of being wage slave and into a career. theirs keeps you locked in. and we need to stop looking down on them — even if we really don’t, they sure think we do. and perception is reality.
3 enough with the self-inflicted head wounds. identify and fund credible candidates at the state and local level. build that farm team so that the best are ready for the big leagues. and cut them off when they screw up beyond repair. Akin isn’t new. he’s been a House member. but the fact taht we put him up for Senate, knowing full well he was capable and willing. but he was protected in that House seat. we need to drop that dead weight early in their careers. not in primetime.
*knowing full well he was capable and willing the crap the bed.
That’s the problem isn’t?
I know the abortion issue keeps many people voting Dem even when their views aren’t really aligned with Dems.
Part of me says that for all the pro-life presidents we’ve had, over 40 years, it has not made a bit of difference. It’s something that should be from the ground up, like the civil rights movement or gay marriage, not forced from the top down.
So maybe the party should become agnostic on abortion- we welcome and recognize all views, no litmus test..
Maybe that would gain us centrist support, but will it be enough to offset what we lose from the right?
I don’t think we need to change one single thing. I’m certainly not changing any of my views.
~ Brittany
i’d fight abortion not through legal efforts and campaigns, but by reaching out to women in trouble. don’t fund candidates to talk about it. fund day care centers. give those women diapers and food through charity, education, not scorn. but if pro life organizations mean it, stop protesting clinics and build nurseries and schools next to them. so when they park the car at that clinic, there’s a real choice and a helping hand.
novahockey, I disagree. A condom costs next to nothing and is available everywhere. It’s not rocker science to *prevent* pregnancy.
~ Brittany
LOL rocket science. Ironic typo…
~ Brittany
no argument here — i get what you’re saying and lord knows I agree with you — but we’re getting crushed to the point where I think tactics need to be reconsidered.
Listen, there was a movement once that “won” in the short term. It was the temperance movement and it has a lot of resemblances to today’s anti-abortion crowd. Well organized and on target. Politically connected. Co-opted the Republican Party. The problem is that once people got a taste of a world without alcohol, no one wanted it. I don’t think the anti-abortion crowd is even going to get that far. By the early 1930s, people could see the writing on the wall for temperance and Prohibition. So it will be with the anti-abortion crowd. Today, the best that the WCTU – the pressure group that championed prohibition – can manage is things like MADD and strict blood alcohol limits. Yeah, that’s them. Incidentally, that 14 years out in the cold for the Republican Party from 1932 to 1946 was not entirely separate from the fact that most all “wet” politicians were Democrats.
Something to think about.
Not saying we need to change our personal views.
But as a nation, we are rapidly heading towards bankruptcy, The economy has been in the crapper for 4-5 years with no signs of any significant growth around the corner. Instead we keep hearing talk of a new recession.
That should have been what this election is about, it’s the most pressing thing facing the country–
And yet they tried to make the election about social issues… and WON???
I am pro-life. But I don’t see that the strategy of electing pro-life presidents has changed anything over 40 years. It just seems to divide us rather than bringing change.
fab4gal – while I agree with your stance on abortion, don’t you think that’s one of the problems with our party? Democrats will rally behind their candidate regardless of faults, but in the Republican party, if our candidate doesn’t come out “strongly” enough against abortion or doesn’t say something just right, we turn on them ourselves. Republicans yell about whether or not they believe in exceptions to abortion or not on talk radio and we pull down a perfectly good candidate ourselves. I think if we were to take a less stark view on abortion and say it’s the job of the state instead of mandating a change from the federal level it would actually be a lot more consistent with the views of small government for our party.
When we take stances that we won’t vote for someone if they say one thing we don’t agree with about abortion, that typically leads to a net gain vote for the democrats which leads to tax-payer funded abortions and even partial birth abortions, etc. Wouldn’t it be better to be a little less neutral and at least win half the battle than to lose the whole thing?
I know things don’t always translate well in text so I want to clarify that I am genuinely asking questions here based on my observation, I’m not trying to pick a fight. I really would love a response. 🙂
As we look back on this election, and looking ahead to the next four years, the central question will be the economy, and mainly the debt question. Not to be dramatic, but we won’t have to worry about social issues (abortion, gay marriage) if we lose our country to debt.
I hate to say it, but I’d give up on the social issues if it meant we’d be able to get our fiscal house in order. Particularly gay marriage – to me, we ought to adopt the libertarian view anyway
to clarify, I meant to say that we should be “MORE” neutral, not “less” neutral.
I’m confused AG…where did I say I didn’t vote for someone because their abortion views didn’t jive 100% with mine?
~ Brittany
I agree with exe, we did not lose the election because of social issues. I think everyone is just freaking out and grasping at straws as to why we lost and abortion is way down the list of reasons.
~ Brittany
fab4gal – not sure that’s exactly what I’m saying. We may have indeed lost the election due to social issues….issues that were not worth losing the election over.
Even though the polls all said in terms of what people really cared about in the election, abortion was always at or near the bottom? People cared about the economy. The people who voted for Obama believed his “it’s still Bush’s fault! I just need more time!” mantra. All polls had the economy as the #1 issue for everyone.
~ Brittany
I guess when you said “I don’t think we need to change one single thing”, to me I thought you were referring to the fact that factions of the Republican party has been pushing to overturn Roe v Wade on a federal level. Maybe you weren’t implying that you wouldn’t vote for someone who’s views on abortion differed from yours, but I still think it’s a problem in the Republican party when it comes to abortion: we have to fight against each other about whether or not they want exceptions, whether or not it’s state vs. federal, and so we put all these asterisks next to a candidates’ name within our own party. I think if we could just let the conversation die and put it at state levels it would make for a lot less side stepping by our candidates and many less gaffes from our party.
I also have to disagree a little bit – I think that social issues unfortunately did play into this election. It’s how Democrats painted Romney as a flip flopper, even though his record was squeaky clean. It’s because as a party we sometimes require someone to talk out two sides of their mouth when it comes to abortion if you want to be elected in the primary.
I also think that abortion truly scared a lot of women away from Romney as soon as Murdouch started letting his mouth run about his own philosophies on rape. The media ran with it. And, in my opinion, that slowed a lot of momentum in the suburban white women’s camp toward Romney.
Just my thoughts and observations.
The number of women that I personally know who were scared to death of Romney winning over abortion and other social issues concerns me. These are people who are otherwise economically conservative, but social issues push them into the Dem camp.
Maybe it’s just my peer group, but it looks like it is hurting us from where I stand.
AG – exactly on point with the second paragraph. We lost a lot of votes we desperately needed due to the fact that women were scared by the Obama campaign’s characterization of Republicans (not Romney) views on abortion.
Again – to me the election was not worth losing over these social issues.
especially because I don’t think Romney would have done anything about abortion. The economy and budget are his issues. So the amount of fear over the abortion issue is way out of line, but I think it was a factor.
Stuckinmass – exactly correct. So, play out a scenario in which RR dropped it as an issue by saying there would be no litmus test on Supreme Court appointees. The argument is neutralized, and the Obama team now has to talk about – gasp – the economy. We win.
right. It may turn out that many pro-life voters didn’t turn because Mitt wasn’t committed enough to the issue.
And the Dems had pro-choicers whipped into a frenzy over the abortion issue, and we lost because of abortion at a time where there were more pressing issues
…or because Mitt was a Mormon. Hate to say it, but can’t rule it out as a possibility.
That’s true too, it will be some time before we really know what went wrong with our base.
i agree ag let the states decide on the social issues and get them out of the fedral goverment. It would be one way of uniting the party at the President race level.
uniting the party at the President race level.*
Abortion is like Race…here is the unvarnished truth.
When a black republican pops up they are blasted as sell outs, not really black, wanting to be white, etc.
When women come out against abortion, etc they are blasted by the left and the media as some sort of faux female that is selling out her own well being to the EVIL WHITE MEN OF THE GOP. Considering abortion is NOT a majority issue it is so odd how it is a dominant political issue again despite being supported by a minority of the population.
I have to admit the reproductive health tag line makes me want to vomit…it is the dumbest friggin thing left wingers every came up with to hide their infatuation with abortion and contraceptives. Much like they have rebranded themselves supposed progressives despite their aversion to anything that actually makes the country better,
Lefties are geniuses when in comes to using language to obscure truth. It’s interesting The Affordable Care Act actually makes everything more expensive. And watch out when lefties start talking about “investments.” Means they want higher taxes.
The good news today is that we’re not permanently outnumbered. The bad news is that we didn’t get out our own voters in sufficient numbers. Some of us were enthused–but some were turned off. We need to know why. But the problem’s fixable with the right candidate. This should have been like 2010. Instead it was 2004 in reverse.
Two things we can take away from this debacle. 1) we don’t have to move left and start pandering to Hispanics and women. We can stick to our principles since the vast majority of Americans agree with us–smaller government, less intrusion in our lives, a balanced budget, lower taxes, etc. 2) we need the right sort of candidates to run for office. Charisma counts. Ability to articulate counts. Political sophistication counts. Experience counts.
In short, when people like Mark Levin start grousing about “rinos” we need to respond with, “Okay, show me a conservative who is seasoned enough for high office and not dumb enough to give the media rope to hang him.” Ideological purity isn’t everything. It’s only half of everything.
Hi tony. I think we all need to dig deep and say who we are and what we stand for. I am a reformed liberal who keeps my mouth shut at work because frankly, I’m scared I will be black balled by my co-workers. I’m not doing it any more. That is, keep my mouth shut. I’m not going to go on a soap box, but I will explain to others why I have rejected D party. there are people out there that would feel comforted to know its OK to trust their underlying feeling that the democrats do not get them. There’s nothing to be ashamed of being a conservative, even though the MSM wants us to feel ashamed
Republicans are also much more quiet than Democrats, too, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t there. As I said there are more registered Republicans in the US than Democrats right now. The majority of the country is red with splotches of blue. We don’t scream from the mountaintops or wear rude t-shirts mocking the other party (like Democrats do), but we’re not going anywhere and not backing down. It’s always been that way with our party because again, we’re not loud-mouthed like the other party.
~ Brittany
Remember back in the spring when Rush Limbaugh kept repeatedly saying that the Democrats wanted to run against Romney. This was when Romney and Santorum were in a close duel. Someone once said years ago that the only Republican candidates who do well are the ones that come from nothing (i.e. Lincoln, Nixon, and Reagan) or appear common (George W Bush). Wealthy Eastern Establishment Republicans struggle (and lets face it Bush 41 was a Reagan 3rd Term). This election reminds me a lot of 1948. Republicans were so sure they had Truman beat, but once again wooden candidate Dewey and trouble with the rural voters.
Completely True. In the same way that for anti-communists only Nixon could go to China, only an “up from poverty (and still seems to relate)” candidate can get those votes from people who want to beleive in capitalism but have faced the conflicting evidence in their own lives as to whether it will work for them. Log
Only “Progessives” can survive at the national level coming from the well heeled elites (Teddy, FDR, Kennedy). People want confirmation that you understand and relate to their average lives, conservatives have to lived it, liberals can “buy in.”
Mitt certainly needed to do a much better of connecting to people, this is where he got killed. However, he was not the bad campaigner some people are making him out to be. Out of 33 Senate races, Romney outperformed the GOP candidate in 22 of them, 7 were essentially tied, and only in 4 did the GOP candidate perform better (3 of them were GOP incumbents). In Governor’s races, Romney outperformed the GOP candidate in 7, while the GOP candidate outperformed in 4 of those. My point is that this was not a close election, Republicans got beat all across the country. The only reason they held the House was due to favorable redistricting and the advantage of overall incumbency. Mitt Romney, for all his faults, made this election close, and even winnable. My other point is that the GOP has some serious problems with not being able to appeal to an increasingly expanding portion of the population. This is the real lesson of 2012.
Hey, we lost by less than 400,000 votes. People on our side stayed home–mostly blue collar workers in OH. That’s Santorum’s crowd. Imo Santorum went for the jugular even when it was clear he was not going to get the nod. He was all slash-and-burn for quite a long time. Both Newt and Romney had sharp elbows too–but they backed off after a short while. Santorum held a grudge, refused to campaign, and hurt the ticket. Christie was another egotist who hurt the ticket. His keynote speech was all about himself. He too hurt his own future in the party.
Check out the Argentinian flag in Obama HQ in link on post from dizzymiss
did you know the Argentine flag once flew over CA? Crazy but true.
Oh sorry. I’m getting paranoid! That’s Illinois flag. SORRY !
LOL! I’m sorry, I honestly don’t blame you for thinking it was a foreign flag, it wouldn’t surprise me. But that was funny 😀
~ Brittany
If you live in Illinois, you’d recognize there is little fiscal difference between Argentina and Illinois!
That is a good point!
That personal communication is spot on. Other than some half hearted WSJ Op Ed that he did. He should have had a fully throated reasoned rebuttal the Bain MSM narrative. He could have done exactly what the message says. Talk about how Bain saved companies and therefore jobs. Even if he created one job at Bain, that’s more than this president. Americans wants jobs. Growth. Shying away, being afraid totally ceded an opportunity to bolster his private sector experience. I’ve been screaming this since the primary. That exit poll shows the damage this non defense did
I expected Staples’ CEO to give a testimonial or ads bragging how many people got jobs thanks to Bain. I expected more creativity in the ads, more folksy stuff to warm up Romney’s image. I also expected Romney’s team to reveal how the charge about the woman with cancer was a fabrication. It was a terrible hit and needed some response, if only from one of the many pacs out there.
Some more Monday (now Thursday) morning quarterbacking…
Romney’s 5-point plan was very milque toast and gained him little traction and even fewer votes Consider:
1) Energy independence through an all-of-the-above energy policy (Gained few votes because this is same thing Obama has been saying but not doing)
2) Trade that works for America and label China a cheater (Gained few votes because nobody understands this or the impact of it)
3) Provide Americans with the skills to succeed through better public schools, better access to higher education, and better retraining (Gained few votes because again this is the same thing Obama has been saying but not doing)
4) Cut the deficit, reducing the size of government and getting the national debt under control so that America remains a place where businesses want to open up shop and hire (BINGO – but most people tuned out after #3)
5) Champion small businesses (gained few votes because small business was fully with Mitt anyway)
So in the end this simple 5-point plan was highly redudant with Obama and not as simple as Romney probably thought for folks to understand (especially #2).
Romney’s point #4 should’ve been the centerpiece of the campaign IMO but came across as an afterthought. THIS was the supposed reason Ryan was brought onto the ticket but it really wasn’t emphasised. Finally, where is Obamacare. Polls (and we all know how extremely accurate they are now :-)) showed right up to the election that 54% of Americans want it repealed, yet it couldn’t make Romney’s Top-5. In fact, Nowhere on MittRomney.com/jobsplan does the word Obamacare even appear = missed opportunity.
John, obamacare being left off is not surprising. It could have easily been countered by Romneycare. He would then be defending that when he was Massachusetts governor. I’m not sure if he should have had a mea culpa, that’s another story for another time. His past necessitated that the obamacare issue be off the table. I agreed with Santorums thoughts we’d be conceding that opposition with a Romney nomination
Perhaps but Mitt could’ve framed his position as a state’s rights issue which resonates with both conservatives and independents. I still think it was a lost opportunity by not talking about it (people notice that).
The fact that none of us know the difference between Romneycare and Obamacare is shocking, and TELLING.
They are night and day. They are nowhere near the same thing.
And if Romney had done nothing, then any veto would have been overriden and the shit bill they had drafted before would have gone into law and crushed businesses even more.
HIS INABILITY TO DEAL WITH ROMNEYCARE, AND THE FACT THAT EVEN HIS SUPPORTERS DON’T HAVE THE MESSAGE, IS JUST SHOCKING. HOW MUCH WOULD WE HAVE GOTTEN CRUSHED WITHOUT THE DEBATES…..
The best news is that the Obama vote was really a base vote after all. We can survive that. The “new” Obama voter poaching of GOP blocs did not take place a second time. Good.
Basically very few people have TWO tatoos. They have one or they have three and planning on more. Once is a product of a moment when they indulged a notion (often in response to peer pressure or cloudy judgement). Twice is a move toward a “culture of ink” where their identity is not just informed by having once gotten a tat but is now immersed in the subculture. That’s how political socialization works as well. People who vote twice in row for a party/philosophy/identity tend to stay as permanently fixed in their alignment as the ink under the skin coming home from Spring Break.
So far it looks like just one tatoo – no realignment. Good.
Iran is wasting no time testing our President elect…http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/08/first-on-cnn-iranian-jets-fire-on-u-s-drone/?hpt=hp_t3
Sorry this happened last week but was only released today (I wonder why?)
“The problem with Socialism is you run out of other people’s money” Margaret Thatcher
Let the financial depression we’re headed towards deal with the the morons who voted for Obama – they’ll be conservatives soon enough.
I expect higher inflation. They’ll print money instead of growing the economy.
There certainly will be consequences for the people who voted for Obama, but unfortunately there will also be consequences for the people that didn’t!
Only silver lining if there is one, is that the spectacular screwup of Obamanomics, will result in a Republican Senate in 2014!
But that still gives him 2 years, including the possibility of new Supreme Court nominees! (UGH)
Another way of saying – cultures only change through crisis or incredibly charismatic leaders like Reagan. If we don’t have the latter – and we clearly don’t – bring on the former. May the strong survive.
Well I am just catching up with everything and the more I read about the GOP GOTV, the more disappointing it seems.
I was just listening to Rush Limbaugh, he had a caller that basically was saying that some conservatives did not vote, because they did not see Mitt Romney as conservative enough.
Now I am going to take that on face value and assume it is correct and run this by you.
The Early Vote operation was based around low propensity voters, they were not including many if any high propensity voters. So lets take the example above, of someone who is conservative who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. They would be classified as a high propensity voter. However, they are not enclined to vote for Mitt Romney because they have doubts about his conservativism. But because of the way the GOTV operation was working, this voter would not of been banked early.
I even took the mickey out of the Democrats for banking early high propensity voters (canabilising), but actually they are correct, a banked vote, is a vote, and that is all that matters, and in all likelyhood this voter I described above (if a democrat) would of been banked early.
There may be many other scenarios that this would apply to but I am just using this above as an example (may be a poor example but you get the gist)
It would also mean that it was not so much Obama won (he was down millions and millions of votes fom 2008), it was more a case that GOP GOTV snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
It seems to me that the GOP GOTV was fundamentally flawed, and if so, that is beyond stupidity.
So all the money, effort, ads, debates, volunteers, rallies, donations you name it resulted in a GOP GOTV performance that under performed John McCain!
This is not only depressing but is quite frankly beyond belief that they could of screwed up this badly.
Who the heck was running the GOP GOTV?? Laurel and Hardy!
The Torch, very good information. Here is my rule. BANK EVERY VOTE YOU CAN AS EARLY AS YOU CAN.
END OF STORY!!!!!
I am going to make it a mission to do so.
Well to add to this. A caller on the Michael Medved show, just said he voted for Bush in 2004, and John McCain in 2008 and in 2012 he voted for nobody…
A guy that should of been banked early but would not be because he is a high propensity voter.
My god what have they done!
I agree. NEVER AGAIN will I trust the idiot GOP into finally coming up with a great GOTV campaign. I mean come on. How difficult is this???????????
We need to plant the seeds now, in every battleground state.
If 2004 was a great GOTV campaign as they say.. Why can’t they use that as a blue print?
Whichs begs the questions why they didn’t!
@stuckinmass @TheTorch – My reason is why they didn’t use the Bush 2004 GOTV campaign, or use it as a blueprint is precisely it would be borrowing from Bush. Those conservatives unhappy with Bush for whatever reason would say, “We can’t use it because Bush spent too much money, and we need a clean break from Bush policy because the Democrats say we’re running for a third Bush term.”
It would’ve been better to keep using that 2004 GOTV model and keep using until the Democrats can stop it.
I was always skeptical of the line “The dems are banking high-propensity voters and we are banking low-propensity voters”
how do they really know who the other side is banking? It sounded they were just saying so people wouldn’t be concerned over the dem early vote leads.
If the GOP was really saving their high-propensity voters for election day, why didn’t they show up??
I think the GOP were the ones who cannibalized their voters, not the Dems. Everyone I know voted early.
The long primary apparently hurt us bad. And a lot of the talk shows took sides. Rush was whipping up opposition to Romney until Romney finally won the nod, then his tone changed. But he excited some of the base. The resentment was apparent on some websites. People held grudges. In other words, Reagan’s dictum about not speaking ill of other Republicans went out the window and now we’re paying the consequences. Romney’s triumph in the first debate went a long way to healing that rift–but apparently
that was not enough. Unbelievably stupid.
Freaking Rush did not help at all with his comment about Fluke. That started the whole war on woman meme.
Reince Priebus and the rest of the “GOP Hierarchy” bought into the MSM narrative that Palin was a “drag” on the ticket. Make sure you have a VP nominee who does no harm. But the flip side of that is you get a VP nominee who gives no help. No Republican was going to win in 2008 after the financial crisis in Septmber of that year. Everyone on these talk shows keeps talking about appealing to the Hispanic vote. That’s fine, but what about the white blue collar vote? They aren’t going to vote for Democrats at the Presidential level, but you want them to show up and vote Republican. Palin did that. Big time!!! This in my opinion is a path that was totally ignored. In some ways it is easier than altering your platform in a big way for Hispanics and then losing other votes in the process. And just how many Hispanics can the GOP actually hope to get anyway? Big difference between the Cuban-American voting bloc and other Hispanic voters.
Some Philadelphia neighborhoods outdid themselves in Tuesday’s presidential election.
In a city where President Obama received more than 85 percent of the votes, in some places he received almost every one. In 13 Philadelphia wards, Obama received 99 percent of the vote or more.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20121108_Vote_was_astronomical_for_Obama_in_some_Philadelphia_wards.html
No comment
Would you want enter a polling place where the Blank Panthers are serving as ushers?? Voter intimidation!! Oh sorry, that only happens to minorities.
My thought is that they cheated. What keeps them from voting for people that don’t show up?
California Democrats won super majorities in both the state legislature and senate to go along with their Dem Governor. Same goes for Illinois with Dem super majorities in both state houses. Any bets on how long it will be before these bankrupt states come crawling to Obama for a bailout?
Meanwhile, in my state (Nebraska) thanks to the election of Deb Fischer to replace Ben “Cornhusker Kickback” Nelson in the senate we’ll now have all Republican congressional representation and a Republican Governor for the first time since 1976. Our state ran a $100 million surplus for FY2012 which is a lot for a small state. The Governor is considering proposing abolishment of the state income tax like some of our neighboring RED states (S. Dakota, Wyoming).
So the blue states keep getting bluer and the reds redder. Life in RED states is good and you Blue staters should give it a try 🙂
Yes I think that is a pretty good summary on why half of america will go bankrupt…
Hopefully no matter what other concessions the House repubs might feel they have to make, they will not ever bailout the states. The problem with the economy now is that it is just good enough for a lot of folks but heading downhill under the debt burden in the future. But people don’t really believe something like that can happen until it does. We need a couple object lessons than it can, and CA and IL are top contenders. People need to see you really can’t have it all for very long.
Except that the Red States live off of the Blue States.
Here are the states that receive more than $2 from the Federal Government for every $1 they give to the Federal Government:
New Mexico
Mississippi
Here are the states that receive more than $1.50 from the Federal Government for every $1 they give to the Federal Government:
Alaska
Louisiana
West Virginia
North Dakota
Alabama
South Dakota
Kentucky
Virginia
Here are the states that receive more than $1.25 from the Federal Government for every $1 they give:
Montana
Hawaii
Maine
Arkansas
Okalahmoa
South Carolina
Missouri
Maryland
Tennessee
So… yeah. Let’s divide the country down the Mason Dixon line and see who goes bankrupt.
So you are saying red states need to bail out the blue states so blue states can keep sending money to red states? What if we just want to stop now while we’re ahead?
And hey, why don’t you break down those figures to indicate share of those dollars returned that goes to minorities receiving entitlements and correlate with populations of same by state?
It is all a big game of musical chairs to some degree and when the funny money runs out the music will stop.
No! Do NOT invite blue staters to come live in red states, unless you want your nice red state completely ruined! They leave those blue states because of the high taxes (that their votes made possible), come to a red state with low taxes, then proceed to vote for democrats who want to raise taxes.
Or the immigrants come to the red states and vote for politcians like the kind they wanted to escape and those guys turn those red states into blue states anyway. AZ has the right idea.
Something just doesn’t pass the “smell test” here in Hamilton County Ohio. In 2008 McCain received 187,862 votes. In 2012 Romney received 188,653 votes. Bill Cunningham was on The Sean Hannity Show stating that several of the Hamilton County suburbs were reporting 85% voter turnout. This is what I witnessed and all of my friends witnessed, longer lines than ever before and a huge voter intensity. So how is their only a voter turnout increase for the Republicans of 0.5%? Their was no intensity or enthusiasm at all in 2008. This makes no sense!!!
Romney couldn’t garner enough votes in the burbs of Philly as he needed, so probably same there. The extra repubs he needed stayed home and extra democrats were the ones showing up.
I’d agree, but he was close. He ran 2-3% better in my county (bucks) and he needed to run 3-5% better and hope for turnout in Philly\Pitt to fall. He lost the state by 250K (2008 margin was 600K), and lost Philly by 460K (480K in 2008). A drop in Philly turnout was always key to a victory in PA and it just didn’t happen.
Interestingly enough, Mitt did about 20K less in 2012 than 2008 in Philadelphia. Black Panthers, anyone?
Well, Obama won your county by 20,000 votes this time but even he was down about 15,000 from 2008.
shock and awe, well what was the total number of votes last time in hamilton county? And break it down by voters. And what percentage of the registered voters was it in 2008?
And then compare those numbers with the numbers from 2012.
I get this feeling as well that something just doesn’t feel right. Why would Romney get less votes than McCain? Maybe I’ve drank too much of my own Kool Aid, but I think a thorough post-mortem of the results needs to be completed after the data is all available. Wards in Philadelphia with 99% vote for Obama? C’mon. The data’s not available yet there, but I’d love to compare precinct by precinct results 2008 vs 2012.
I am not a conspiracy theorist by a long shot however the more I read the more there is something not right with all of this. I will accept a defeat that was fair and square but there just seems to be a little too much coincidence with some of these things.
I would love to get my hands on the source code that runs the voting machines, the compiling segments and the transmission elements of the election data.
Lets just say I made my living by — legally — breaking things that other didn’t want broken and I can tell you that it would not be hard given the right “pinch points” and control areas to skew information. Also remember it didn’t have to be broken much.
It still bothers me the reports of a selection for Romney showing Obama — the answer given to these problems was “there is nothing wrong here — we checked it.” The real questions are — why were the hot spot calibrations off by so much in the first place and why would they allow an overlap matrix to even exist?
All it takes is time and money to take control of any computer system and make it do what you want it to.
So people say — well they used paper ballots — how do you think the numbers were added, stored and then transmitted to the collection points?
I am just saying…
LOL. Guys they cheat. It’s that simple. The more you dig into it the more you realize Obama was installed. CA had some funny business too. The tax increase the governor wanted was losing most of the night until a couple counties around San Fransisco reported an unusally high percentage of Yes votes and that was just enough for it to pass. What a crock.
2012 Ohio by County
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Ohio,_2012
2008 Ohio by County
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/states/president/ohio.html
Pcts for Republicans and Dems virtually the same in Hamilton County 2008 and 2012
The whole argument about GOTV being the critical element is itself testimony to the weakness of both Obama and Romney and the political gridlock we have been in for some time. GOTV advantage can get you 2 points. That only matters if we have politcal parity. That’s what we’ve got. We are not fighting between the 40 yard lines but between the 47 yard lines. We will need events or charisma to create the opportunity for a breakout. Romney did not have the charisma and events did not break his way. Reading more than that into the election may actually cause more harm than good.
That said. We need a good GOTV. But the best GOTV is a candidate who inspires enough for you to get yourself to the polls. It aint that hard. They aren’t showing up because they just don’t buy it. The good news is they aren’t really buying the other guys much either.
Maybe I’m just missing a huge bloc, but I’m not certain how one could be more inspired by McCain than Romney.
I find that hard to believe as well
Vets. Romney’s military vote was poor. But importantly, McCain actually was very attractive to when it came to national security at a time in whcih national security for hawks at a time in which it was way more central to the public debate. McCain also was seen as having grit and backbone. Republicans generally like that.
What I don’t understand, is what happened to all those people that said all year, “I’d crawl over glass to vote against Obama!” or, “I’d vote for a turtle than for Obama!” Surely THESE people showed up, and they seem to be the Republican base at the moment.
So, who didn’t show up, and why? Why were some Republican precincts seeing record breaking turnout, while others were abandoned?!
you know..part of me wonders how many republican voters stayed home because the polls showed that despite the crowds on TV, the debates, etc Obama was winning. They figured Romney was boring, Obama was up, no chance he was losing so whats the point. I think the republicans are still bruised from 2008. I think Obama intimidates the hell out of people. Because you can’t dislike him publically or you are a racist. So there is this quiet…just apathy of why try.
And if we don’t have a MONSTER candidate, we are talking truly Reagan-esque in his appeal…i can honestly see a lot of republican cross over to vote for Hillary.
She is hawkish, she is not a ragged left wing liberal and she has the balls, pardon the pun, to say when asked about the war on women, womens politics, women not feeling like politics focuses on them enough “women need to quit whining the world doesnt revolve around them. They need to stand up and fight for what they want and stop expecting the world to come to them” She will be a force to be dealt with…and by 2016 Bill will have been gone 16 years. A lot of hard feelings have faded and many many true conservatives woudl kill to have Clinton back after 8 years of spendy spenderton Bush and liberal whacko Obama.
Yeah, and I’m one of those guys that would welcome the Clintons back after Obama. Thing is, I’m not convinced Hillary will run.
As for your first point, I don’t think there’s any denying that apathy and fears of racism played a role in the base staying home. I came to really like Mitt, but the fact that he was the best we could do, and came out of a field of Bachmann, Santorum, Newt, and Cain while lots of other prominent Republicans stayed out should have been a warning sign.
I don’t mention Ron Paul because while I’m a big fan, he’s not really acceptable to the base as a whole – Rand is at least more acceptable to the defense hawks. And I don’t mention Perry I do think he could be a candidate if he cleaned himself up a bit – for all his faults he’s done good by us in Texas.
Elections have consequences…
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49729998
Let them eat cake.
I think what people are missing is that a lot of voters left the GOP late in Bush’s 2nd term. When the economy went downhill many people wrote off the Republicans for good. I know people that say as much. They were conservative Republicans back in 2004. These are my friends. Some of them voted for Obama in 2008 while some voted for McCain in 2008. The ones that voted for Obama in 2008 are disillusioned. They gave up on Republicans long ago. Now they’ve given up on Democrats as well. The McCain 2008 voters say that Romney and Obama are essentially the same. I think that’s part of it. That explains the low turnout. Just look at the polls on the right track/wrong track questions. Huge majorities believe we’re on the wrong track. Many of them just didn’t vote because they don’t believe that the Republicans are any better.
Most blame Bush for causing the mess and say Obama hasn’t done much to fix it. Some give Obama a little credit, but people still don’t trust Republicans.
Another issue is that dependency and poverty has increased substantially since 2008. People dependent on government for their job, income, food, housing, education, etc are much less likely to vote for a Republican. The welfare state is pervasive. Even the purchase of a home is subsidized by the government. This is a big reason why Republicans are struggling with blacks, hispanics, etc. Many of them are very poor and want government help. Look at history in the 1930s. When people are struggling they want the government to do something about it. The welfare state is collapsing in Europe, but the lesson of history is that people will hang on to it as long as they can.
I agree that people were disillusioned after Bush and republican numbers dropped, but the party id numbers show that it’s rebounded since then.
I agree that dependancy has increased, but I don’t believe that everyone on government assistance automatically votes Dem. Many remember how things were and would rather have a job.
The party ID numbers have not gotten better. The election was D+6 with an enthusiastic Rep base compared to a D+7 with a depressed Rep base in 2008. A 1 point improvement despite swinging independents our way by 12 points is a really bad sign. I know it’s human nature to look for the good signs, but this is not good. Had this been a re-run of 2008 with a revved up Dem base, depressed Rep base, and independents going to Obama by 7% (like 2008), then Obama would have won by 10.
Should this trend continue into 2016 and independents split evenly, then the Democratic candidate may very well win by 5-7%. Something needs to be done to cut into their base. Convert their voters or adjust our positions to match the changing realities. It’s not the Hispanics are growing blah blah blah red herring. It’s that people are becoming poorer and more dependent on government. Even people that aren’t poor rely on the government for a lot of things. If Democrats are the party of government and Republicans are the party of austerity, we’re going to lose. Anyone advocating austerity in Europe is being thrown out of office.
I’m not sure what the solution is, but I would do everything you can to protect your family. The welfare state is going to go after rich people first, then everyone else just to pay the bills.
Yup, just look at france.
And how about this? The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA
http://ace.mu.nu/
When I first heard of Orca I was concerned because it didn’t sound like it had been tested!
Please everyone read what Hestrold has posted above.
READ IT AND WEEP.
I have said it before today, but I will say it again:
MY GOD WHAT HAVE THEY DONE!
Digitizing the strike lists is probably a good idea, BUT, this is something that absolutely had to be field tested BEFORE a national election. Additionally, if somebody tries this again, rather than using a centralized system they should set up an independent system for each state. That way, if such a system crashes even after real world field testing, it doesn’t affect the GOTV effort everywhere.
Also, if they try this again, they need an back-up plan for quickly going back to paper, if something does fail.
Again, I still think the basic notion is a good idea. It just wasn’t a good idea to try to implement such a system when the stakes were so high.
Let’s face it. Republicans, with few exceptions, appear to be incapable of running good campaigns. With the exception of Scott Brown in the Mass special election, it’s very seldom to see a Republican winning in a blue state. On the other hand, Democrats do it all the time. Sure, changing demographics hurt, but white America still accounts for 72-74% of the electorate. So, to blame it on that is wrong. Sure, it plays a role, but the think tanks will just find another reason to gouge Republican candidates for a “revised” losing strategy. Democrats are just plain better at: 1) finding reasonable candidates that aren’t gaffe prone that can win in red states 2) GOTV efforts that dwarfs any Republican effort and 3) formulating winning strategies and a willingness to win “ugly.”
I think Obama was an aberration–the permanent alignment is not here, not at least yet. My guess is that Republican strategists go overboard in catering to the Hispanic vote and in turn see even less white support in the next election. They will fight the last war, and unless we get some strong candidate in 2016–I see none right now, not Rubio or any other, we’ll be back here discussing how our Hispanic outreach failed. Focus on GOTV for 2014, and carry it over to 2016, by using some of the money we’ll waste on ads that help to pay Brian Williams salary–use free media like Obama did–brilliant to go on MTV, black radio shows, Ellen, along with the View. Bush II went on Oprah and “killed.” Romney refused to do any free TV, and instead wasted money on ads no one paid attention to because they had literally seen hundreds of Obama ads by then. Jimmie Carter won with the very young Pat Caddell and Jody Powell. Obama won with the young crew he had. The Republicans hire the retreads who haven’t had a winning campaign in 20 years. Go young–hire some young guns who can relate to the youth. If you want to continue losing, do as McCain and Romney did. The next in line Republican way of nominating has to end, or we will forever be here complaining what we did wrong.
strategist who actually
To me there’s no question that 2008 wasn’t a realignment election. Those aren’t generally followed by their winner getting ~9,000,000 fewer total votes and fewer electoral votes with relatively little change in demographics (the number of minorities that turned out only increased a little – the real issue being that the white voters that were out there stayed home). Once the first black president isn’t running anymore, I think that even as their overall numbers continue to increase, the minority share of the vote will either go static or drop back for a little while. It’ll be hard to get them out for Biden or Cuomo the way they did for Obama.
Gonna have to figure something out real quick, though, because historically we’re due. The last round of realigning was either in 64-68 or 92-94, depending on your view (or both, as the case can be made).
2008 wasn’t a re-alignment. You’re right, those aren’t usually followed by mid term bloodbaths, nor by a drop in voter participation in the following election. My guess is that the electorate is looking for somebody to run things they way they would actually like, but, isn’t particularly enamored with Republicans or Democrats. Obama was able to hold together his personal coalition better, in part because of the cult of personality, the media, and his ability to dominate minority voters. However, Independent turnout was down sharply from 2008, and those that did turn up voted Republican.
THAT should be a big red flashing warning sign to Democrats. They’ve lost the center, and only won because the GOP performed poorly. If things continue like this for them, the strain may eventually fracture off one of their core constituencies, particularly if Republicans ever run the right candidate.
If that happens, THEN we’ll see a true re-alignment. Until then, both political parties will continue growing weaker.
Here’s what we conservative Republicans need to understand. Things have changed since a decade ago.
Back in 2004, Bush and Kerry turned out their bases roughly evenly. That election had even parity. Independents went to Kerry by a small margin, but Bush won more Democratic votes than Kerry won Republicans.
In 2008, some Republicans became independents and some independents became Democrats. The Democratic edge in the election was D+7. This was probably exaggerated due to very low enthusiasm for McCain and high enthusiasm for Obama. The real party ID was probably around D+4 / D+5 if enthusiasm had been equal.
In 2012, Republican enthusiasm was higher. Independents went to Romney by a small margin. The election result was D+6. This is probably a favorable result for Republicans. Many Democrats stayed home. The real party ID is probably somewhere around D+7 to D+8 like some of those polls showed.
Here’s the reality that we need to face. The Democratic base has GROWN since 2008, primarily due to the expansion of the welfare state. People dependent on the government become Democrats by and large. The Democrats know this. They’re going to try to expand the welfare state even further over the next 4 years. Party ID in 2016 might be something like D+9 or D+10.
Republicans have to rapidly change course and attract new voters. They have to find a way to break off a portion of the Democratic base. There are components of the Democratic base that can be peeled off. Republicans have to be creative and adapt or we’re looking at a re-run of the 1930s. This is the reality. We are the minority party. In American history it has been very common to have one of the two parties be the dominant party and the other the minority party. Up until the 1930s the Republicans were the dominant party. From the 1930s to the 1980s the Democrats dominated. Recently they’ve been pretty even. That has changed over the last 4-6 years. The Republicans of the 30s didn’t adapt. Don’t follow their example! Adapt and change or watch the Democrats keep winning!!!
I’ve begun to wonder something else. Remember in the 2008 campaign when Bill Clinton was poking around about Obama’s college transcripts and birth certificate. Supposedly he had the dirt. The story goes that Axelrod basically threatened Clinton that if he brought anything up on Obama, they would bring out a story on his supposed illegitimate child. A good friend of mine works for a big Republican Super PAC. All summer he told me that they were preparing a massive hit campaign on Eric Holder and all sorts o scandals involving him (some known and others not yet) and the Justice Department. This was before Libya even hit the news. I’m wondering if Axelrod had something he threatened Romney and the Republicans with. Look I know that Romney is a boy scout, BUT what if there was something”Team Chicago” had on his boys or Ryans family or his wife. I put nothing past this Chicago crowd of Axelrod, Jarrett and Plouffe. They make Sam Giancana and Al Capone look like altar boys. The fact is after the first debate Romney backed off substantially and did nothing in the third debate. I don’t buy this garbage that it was to reassure the womens vote and not appear too hawkish. It follows a pattern. When the Obama crowd get a little threatened, they react behind the scenes and then the problem suddenly stops.
Would you guys support Rick Perry in 2016? We are fighting the liberal media as well. We need to channel another outlet. The Tea Party is starting their own tv network. I think Akin and Mourdock were well intentioned but made huge gaffes. Obama played it right, he used social issues to his advantage to distract from his dismal record. 50 million people are just dumb in this country and there is no getting around that. At least we will have the House of Rep for a long time due to record GOP houses/senates and governorships. We need a new speaker of the House, squishy Boehner is not the answer.
WOULD YOU SUPPORT RICK PERRY in 2016? I would with all i have.
No.
Eric Fehrnstrom …the Bob Schrum of Republican campaign managers…
For once I see some rather rational Republicans on a Conservative website. I’m pleased to see that. If there’s a will, there’s a way to compromise. There has to be good will, though. The Dems gave in a LOT to get Obama care to where it was. Trust me, the majority of Dems wanted a single payer, single provider system. That’s not what we got. We really did get a “free market” system. The insurance companies have had a free ride bilking the public out of billions of dollars that went to a middle man. I know for a fact that the “Dealth Panels” that were supposed to be in Obama Care, really do exist. But they exist as the INSURANCE companies as they approve or deny treatment. Case after case, I’ve read where people, even children were denied treatment….and they died. Their parents or spouses would be fighting the insurance companies every step of the way, to have them stonewall the patients. Obama care brings doctors into the “decision making” process. To have a clerk at the end of the phone, with NO medical training, or perhaps on a good day to have a nurse deciding on treatment is just not acceptable. For Romney to say “we have ways of taking care of poor people. They have a heart attack, we’ don’t let them sit in their apartment and die. They’re taken to the emergency room where they’re treated”….Isn’t THAT whay increases cost so much that the average person can’t afford the premiums? Doesn’t he know this? For someone to have passed that health care law in Massachuettes, should he have embraced it (since the majority of people now like it), and told it like it was, instead of pandering to the extreme right wing nuts, who have no idea what they’re talking about, and will believe all the stupid lies that were being told…Death panels, ridiuculous!