After the 2008 election, Jim DeMint and others cried that the reason Republicans lost is that they just weren’t right-wing enough, and they should never have nominated an iconoclast like John McCain.
It was patent nonsense, but the GOP listened, and so we got the Tea Party madness, and Nikki Haley, and Sarah Palin as a national celebrity, and a presidential nominating process that a year ago was letting the flake of the week take turns leading the pack.
It was inevitable, of course, that someone would say after Tuesday that despite all that saturation in ideology, Romney’s problem was that he just wasn’t right-wing enough (and remember, four years ago, Romney was the preferred candidate of people like DeMint). And in this release, someone did:
Now that Mitt Romney lost to one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history, the question many are asking is why?
Political pundits on the Left and Right are claiming that Romney appealed too much to the “extreme Right fringe” and was not “moderate enough.” The truth is that the exact opposite is true.
It is virtually impossible to win a national presidential election without your base on election day as 1976, 1992, 1996, and 2008 all demonstrated. Unfortunately, the GOP elites thought the pro-family/pro-life Christian base would hold their proverbial noses and vote for their candidate regardless. They were wrong!
Fast forward to 2012 and many of us warned that if the GOP once again nominated an establishment approved liberal like Romney that it would assure 4 more years of the Obama in the White House since, again, it’s virtually impossible to win without your base on election day.
But once again, the elites who run the GOP (Reince Priebus, Karl Rove, The Bushies, the folks over at Fox News, the Weekly Standard and National Review) rammed yet another establishment liberal RINO down our throats who was, from the very beginning, destined for defeat.
Obama’s base turned out Tuesday night. Romney’s didn’t. And why should they have? After all, in just the past few months, Romney did virtually everything possible to snub the very same Evangelical conservative GOP “Values Voters” base ( whose support he would need in every one of the key swing states he lost last night) by:
- Refusing to sign the Susan B. Anthony and Personhood U.S.A pro-life pledges.
- Reaffirming his opposition to bans on homosexual scoutmasters.
- Opposing 100% pro-life, pro-family, across the board conservative Senatorial candidate, Todd Akin.
- Running pro-abortion ads in key pro-life swing states.
- Stating that “abortion legislation” and Chick Fill-A was not “part of his agenda.”
Santorum was right when he said that Romney was the “worst Republican in the country to run against Obama.”
Having lost his own senate re-election bid by 18 points in 2006 by snubbing his own base (by supporting uber-liberal Arlen Specter over conservative primary challenger Pat Toomey), Santorum was all too familiar with what happens when your base stays home on election day.
The GOP elites should have listened to Santorum.
So, how do we stop perpetually repeating this mistake every 4 years you ask? Simple.
Christian and conservative leaders and grassroots citizens must make it clear that we will, under no circumstances, compromise our core moral and spiritual beliefs. We will not support godless liberals like Romney for public office no matter how many time the liberal GOP inside-the-beltway elites tell us our 100% pro-life, pro-marriage, pro- rule of law Constitutional conservative Christian candidate isn’t “electable.”
When we set the standard based on God’s authoritative Word and tell those running to represent us that if they don’t meet that standard that they will not get our support, I believe we will get candidates who truly represent us.
There are obviously millions of Christians and conservatives who don’t subscribe to the utilitarian-secular-humanist and anti-Biblical “lesser of two evils” construct and they refused to cast a vote for the most radically pro-abortion, pro-homosexual governor in the history of the Republic regardless of who his opponent was.
If the GOP is serious about reversing course in the next election they may want to run actual candidates whom the base will actually turn out for on election day.
Because, as Romney proved, you don’t win without your base on election day…
That email, by the way, came from one Annie Fischer, who appeared to be writing on behalf of one Gregg Jackson, author of a book entitled We Won’t Get Fooled Again.
But despite that title, there appear to be certain people who will keep getting fooled over and over, continuing to believe unlikely propositions despite evidence to the contrary.
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The view within the bubble is naught but reflection.
The Republican party is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan; it is the party of Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, and Roger Ailes.
You pulled that off the Onion, right? Seriously I hope these folks get there way and there will be plenty more Todd Akins, Christine Odonells, Sharron Angles running Tea Party campaigns and falling flat on their “Family Value” faces. But I guess that’s just too much to ask.
I see what you did there, Burl!
Steve, the above letter is highly critical of the likes of Gingrich, Rove and Ailes for being TOO moderate. It even took a shot a Fox News and the Weekly Standard for crying out loud! Ronald Reagan would be nothing short of a flaming Socialist gasbag to these folks.
They don’t need to go left or right, they need to stop putting square pegs into round holes.
Alec Baldwin tweeted that you know your party’s in trouble when you say A. The rape candidate lost. B Which one?
Republicans had cooperated with the left in rendering their party a subordinate, faux-wing of the Democrats since Bush I’s election.
Too many conservative voters did not appreciate Romney’s moderate politics or, particularly in the South, his unusual non-Baptist religion.
Although he had my clans votes, I see the bright side to his (the Republican) defeat. My concern now is that the lawyer-political complex will attempt to infiltrate another lawyer (conservative-in-name-only) into a durable new 3rd party.
The the two-party system has been a corruption of good men and women who have tried to serve their constituencies as stewards rather than lawyer-political power brokers.
Consider the opinion of Jeff Connaughton, a lawyer and Biden Senate staffer turned lobbyist, author of “The Payoff”. http://vigilisa.blogspot.com/2012/10/inside-lawyer-political-complex.html
Let them run a candidate that meets their specs. We’ll see which view is correct. Hey, Hillary would make an excellent prez in 2016.
Elizabeth Warren, Karen!
Would Hillary even be considered if she keeps falling on Obama’s swords?
Speaking of which, what ever happened to the Benghazi attack subject. Did the White House finally get that swept under the rug?
If the GOP thinks they need to move further to the right they will never regain the White House.
President Obama tied with two of FDR’s records Tuesday night. He became the first president since FDR to win reelection with an unemployment rate above 6 percent. And he became the first Democrat since FDR to win reelection with a majority of the popular vote despite the afore mention unemployment rate.
Any political science student can tell you that FDR’s election marked the beginning of the fifth party system, where the Democratic Party replaced the Republican Party as the dominate national party after nearly 70 years of domination. And Obama’s reelection marks a similar shift in the electorate.
Sen. Demint sounds just like Sen. Robert Taft did in the late 1940s, he too enjoyed hocking outdated ideas while being oblivious to the then changing electorate.
Kathryn, Ms Warren has excellent domestic credentials, but Ms. Clinton has those plus outstanding foreign experience. But either should win over whomever the extreme right might pick.
Everything is national politics is relative except the persistence of personal ambition. Trying to take the long view: the “FDR Cycle” lasted from 1932 to 1968, the “GOP Revival” cycle from 1968 to 2008. The years since 2008 may be the start of another cycle (bad news for the Republicans) or just a breather between long electoral cycles.
He became the first president since FDR to win reelection with an unemployment rate above 6 percent.
-ddf
Not true. Reagan won when it was at 7.4%, not much different from the current 7.9%.
Hillary has said she does not want to run. Of course, as we know, things change.
Elizabeth Warren is pretty awesome, and I think that republicans might regret their “implacable opposition” to her nomination as consumer advocate. It resulted in a Senate loss that was self-inflicted. I think she’ll be a great senator, but she’s not likely presidential material.
Warren’s first post-election press conference was a train wreck according to the Boston news media.
From the Boston Herald:
“A jittery U.S. senator-elect Elizabeth Warren gave one-sentence answers, ducked questions and even passed one on to Gov. Deval Patrick in an awkward first press conference since the election.
Warren spoke for a total of less than four minutes during the 11-minute press conference — the rest was taken up by Patrick and reporters’ questions.
After being asked her first question — how she’d protect defense spending — Warren was silent as she turned to Patrick.
“Defense spending is you,” Patrick prodded Warren.
“Oh, that’s mine,” Warren replied.”
I haven’t been all that impressed with Sen.-elect Warren.
Actually, I’ve been slightly NEGATIVELY impressed, the few times I’ve seen or heard her. (It only took her a few seconds on election night to turn me off, saying, “I’m going to FIGHT for you.” I HATE that kind of rhetoric, perverting the deliberative process into a bogus imitation of war, and perpetuating the “us” vs. “them” conflict paradigm.)
But many of my friends of the liberal persuasion seem to love her.
Warren is not a politician, and isn’t very slick yet.
The US vs THEM conflict paradigm — I guess you have to be outside the South Carolina bubble to see where that springs from.
Also, it seems that the Implacable Opposition is not calling a truce. Nice production values, though:
Well, she hasn’t cried yet. So, politically, that’s saying something.
Sadly, if we could combine Warren and DeMint we still wouldn’t have a fully-formed Senatorial force. But there is still the chance that she will surprise me – I surprised myself voting for her.
But many of my friends of the liberal persuasion seem to love her.
-Brad
Count me among them. Come on Brad, what’s wrong with a politician using a bit of election night rhetoric to demonstrate how she’ll work to make a difference. The dems DO need a fighter to counter the insanity of the GOP.
No, that’s the very last thing we need, is more people who go into what should be a deliberative process thinking they are at war with people who disagree with them.
People with that attitude should shut up and listen — a LOT — before trying to do or say anything.
Of course, that would make for an awful lot of silence in Washington. Which might be a good thing. Maybe the whole 24/7 TV “news” apparatus would implode for lack of garbage for its mill.
… the very last thing we need, is more people who go into what should be a deliberative process thinking they are at war with people who disagree with them.
-Brad
But we already have one party who is waging war. Mitch McConnells number 1 priority was to make Obama a one term president. What was he suppossed to do, agree to just serving half of another term? Seriously Brad, wake up. The GOP is crazy. Look at the nuts they nominated to run for Senate. Look at the ridiculous nonsense they peddled during the primaries. Go back and listen to some of the stuff their standard bearer said during the stump. The Dems can try to be reasonable and did in 2009 and look where that got them, a shelacking in the 2010 mid-terms.
No, compromise is not what the dems need to do if the GOP simply will not bargain in good faith. Don’t start the fight but the dems won the election so the GOP has to give some ground. I just hope good people like Elizabeth Warren are true to their word and actually FIGHT!