What Happened? One Week Later, Nobody Knows
Now, with that out of the way, here are some thoughts.
Overall voter turnout appears to have been somewhat lower than 2008, for both parties (although there are some questions about that). Republican voter turnout in particular was either the same or somewhat lower than 2008. The Center for the Study of the American Electorate gave these estimates:
- 2012 voter turnout, 57.5% of all eligible voters.
- 62.3% in 2008.
- 60.4% in 2004.
- 54.2% in 2000.
Without lengthy analysis, which I’m hoping Michael Barone will do so I can steal it from him [Ed. note: Barone is “still thinking about it”], it’s hard to be sure, but I think a good working hypothesis is that turnout was depressed for both parties, but Democrat turnout was less depressed that Republican for some reason. In other words, Obama didn’t win the election so much as, for some reason, Republicans and Republican-leaners didn’t go out to vote.
So the question is: “What reason?”
In no particular order, here are some guesses — and remember, I just said I don’t know what happened, so don’t fixate on any of these. They’re all hypotheses, they’re all candidates to be disproven.
Anti-Mormon prejudice. Perhaps a larger number of people than expected simply wouldn’t vote for a Mormon. The obvious first group to suspect is evangelicals, but McCarthy’s look at exit polls says the proportion of evangelicals was actually up from 2008.
This analysis is problematic, however: it could be that more evangelicals wouldn’t vote for Romney, but that was submerged in the group that don’t identify themselves as evangelical but still wouldn’t vote for Romney because of his religion.
Poll tampering and election fraud. We know, at this point, that a number of districts in swing states, for example in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Colorado, had absolutely prodigious turnouts with absolutely stunning proportions of the vote going to Obama. We know some of those, for example in Philadelphia, had incidents of harassment of Republican poll watchers and election judges that would lead to sharp reproofs of a third-world country. And we know that Florida has evidence of very, very suspicious practices in some counties.
Add to that the reports of recent African immigrants being bused into polling stations; not literate in English, requiring translators to read the ballots, they could vote in Ohio because the Ohio voter ID laws were not in force due to court order.
It wasn’t Mormonism that depressed Republican turnout, it was RINOism and the complete disrespect the RNC once again showed the base.
It was the third incompetent campaign run by the RNC which failed to prove to the base why they should vote for a candidate only slightly to the right of Obama and who, based on his own record, couldn’t be trusted to roll back government.
In addition there was all the vote fraud that will never be investigated nor the complicity of the media on Obama’s side which will also never be addressed.
Mostly though the blame lies with the party elite because Romney was their man and it was their campaign.
Yup. Plain and simple. It’s like I predicted during the primaries. People looked at Romney’s record and comapared it to Obama’s. They shrugged their shoulders, said “hmmm. What’s the difference? Might as well stick with the devil we know.” The blame for Obama’s election AND his re-election lies squarely on the northeastern, RINO, liberal, big R republicans who forced their fellow RINOs on the base. Their “elactable” candidates don’t seem so electable now do they? Hell’s bells – Romney didn’t even win a SINGLE state in his own effing territory!!! We nominated a guy who got his ass kicked by McCain, who got his ass kicked by Obama. Yeah, you establishment repubs are brilliant
+1 on plain and simple. It might be Calculus for Charlie but for the rest of us it’s addition and subtraction.
White people took a hike on Romney. They did not show up to vote. Evangelicals decided not to vote for a Morman, white middle and lower class decided not to vote for Richie Rich, Ron Paul conservatives were pissed at how Romney treated them at the Convention and decided not to vote for Romney and bona fide Conservatives decided not to vote for yet another RINO chosen by the Republican establishment.
It was not Latinos. Latinos are and always have been Democrats in Hispanic clothing. Look at the voting percentages of Hispanics in the last 30 years. Democrats, hands down, every 4 years. Every 4 years. Look, I’d love to have Hispanics in the conservative camp. But Hispanics are Democrats. End of story.
It was white people. White people did not turn out for Romney.
Sorry Charlie. It’s pretty obvious. And we need you to get this right so we can fix it in 2 years.
Here is how Hispanics have voted for 30 years. 30 years folks. Better read this:
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10151099215925946
–1980 Jimmy Carter, 56% Ronald Reagan, 35% +21
–1984 Walter Mondale, 61% Ronald Reagan, 37% +24
–1988 Michael Dukakis, 69% George H.W. Bush, 30% +39
–1992 Bill Clinton, 61% George H.W. Bush, 25% +36
–1996 Bill Clinton, 72% Bob Dole, 21% +51
–2000 Al Gore, 62% George W. Bush, 35% +27
–2004 John Kerry, 58% George W. Bush, 40% +18
–2008 Barack Obama, 67% John McCain, 31% +36
–2012 Barack Obama, 71% Mitt Romney, 27% +44
Forget Hispanics. They’re Democrats.
Even with the numbers posted, the GOP should still focus on increasing their percentage of Hispanic voters. A 60/40 split of this vote usually results in a win for the GOP candidate. Moving to 55/45 means many more seats in traditionally Democratic seats.
So why is it that all we here coming from Hispanic leaders is that they are really Conservatives? (anti gay-marriage, anti-abortion, etc) What they should be saying is that Hispanics are social conservatives, but fiscal liberals. They want all the handouts that the Democrats can give them. Free stuff trumps values and morals with Hispanics. Pretty pathetic.
Republicans don’t need a majority of Hispanics. 40% will do. They need to get 40% of Asians too. Having said that, I’m already tired of hearing that the Republicans are just the White Men Party, for if white men voted as a block the way blacks, Asians and Hispanics do, the Democrats would never win another national election.
Hispanics voting once don’t win elections but when they vote two or three times and when their deceased parents vote and their dogs and cats vote, they make a difference. Wherever the voters needed picture ID, Romney won. Now can you put two and two together and arrive at four?
You ever wonder why they are Democrats? Maybe it has something to do with how White Republican’s perceive them? How they spread about hate and misinformation about them? I am a white male in my 30′s. I grew up in a very small racist conservative town. Once you move out of that echo chamber, review historical statistics you quickly realize Republicans are bad for America.
You want to post stats about Hispanic voting and treat those stats as facts… why not look at the US’s full fiscal history and compare that to Republicans in charge? Every time there is a 2 term (Conservative) Republican president the economy tanks near the end of their “Reign”. So yeah, keep wrecking America guys.
Yeh, and Hispanics/Latinos voted for Obama because the Democrats already are on the way to the ultimate Banana RepubliK!
And it wasn’t just the Ron Paul folks that were dissed by Team Romney’s coup and purge at the GOP convention. Remember that the Tea Party was angered too, the very people that Romney needed to do the GOTV activities necessary to win.
Michelle Malkin covered it real-time here:
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/08/27/floor-fight-grass-roots-activists-battle-attempt-to-rig-gop-convention-delegate-rules/
Brilliant. Just as the momentum of the Romney nomination should have brought the party together and served as a spring board to send enthusiastic Tea Party activists into the field, Romney’s braniac advisers, Ben Ginsburg, John Sununu, and John Boehner, rammed through Rules 12 and 15/16 to meant to throw cold water on any Tea Party aspirations in the future.
I had been thinking of driving up from Kentucky to help out in Ohio but after that betrayal I immediately wrote emails to friends and wrote blog comments indicating I wouldn’t lift a finger to help. I’m sure I’m not the only Tea Partier who reacted that way. The multiplier effect on the swing states may have been enough to change the outcome.
This election defeat sits squarely on the shoulders of Ben Ginsburg, John Sununu, John Boehner and the GOP establishment for greedily craving party power more than getting out the vote to defeat Obama. They assumed that we would work for the GOP candidate no matter what. They were wrong.
The third debate, for me, was a huge waste of time. The left was “energized” by captain nobody’s petulance and in spite of the “moderator” showing off her obvious in-the-tank-ness for same, it had no effect as to putting off the supposed “moderate” democrats as to why this guy should no longer represent the people.
Add to that, Romney’s failure to grab said petulant man-child by the short hairs and rub his nose in the mess he left on the carpet told me that he’s not a fighter or scrapper or one who even knows what the stakes are.
Nonetheless I voted for him hoping to at least slow down the tide of socialism.
However, though Holder may say we’re a nation of cowards, I submit that we seem to be a nation of quitters who may actually deserve to now witness the impending completion of the path of destruction.
Oddly, in twenty or so years, pundits and academics will politely debate how it all came to pass and lo, they will lay the blame for the high cost of living in the US on conservatives. The sheer contradictory nature embedded in the socialist “mind” can do nothing else.
I think you mean the second debate. The third debate was moderated by a man.
Given the behavior of the GOP leadership at the convention towards the Ron Paul supporters and libertarian-leaning conservatives, I’m surprised that Romney got as much as he did….I didn’t hear of any Paul supporter casting a ballot for Romney.
The Republican party doesn’t want the fiscal conservative/libertarian vote. We got the message and Romney got his due.
My 24 year old son, who voted for McCain in 2008, wrote Ron Paul’s name on his ballot. Paul’s appeal should have been acknowledged and cultivated by the GOP. Sadly, it wasn’t. Maybe Romney would still have lost to Obama, but maybe not.
No maybe about it … if Romney had turned out White people, he would have won. End of story.
No maybe about it. If you add the libertarian vote in the Virginia, Ohio and Florida to Romney’s total, it hands him those three states. I know a college friend who wouldn’t vote for Romney because he was “too conservative” socially (load of rubbish, IMO), so he voted libertarian. At least he was in Michigan which didn’t matter overall.
Frankly, I think the GOP voters were divided and conquered effectively by both our own efforts and the Obama campaign. We couldn’t just get a grip, hold our noses and vote for Romney. For all our griping about how big a disaster another term of Obama will be, not enough of us apparently truly believed it to go vote it. Now, we will reap what we have sown.
Before the loss there were a fair number of “conservatives” who wanted to dump (and dump on) the libertarian wing of the party. After the loss? Much more of the same. Driving away voters nominally on your own team is a sure symptom of political suicide.
Small “l” libertarians are about 14% of the electorate. Can the GOP win by drawing 58% of the remaining 86%? I’d like to see it.
“We hate hippies and we hate abortion. And BTW we are not too fond of deficits either.” Sounds like the making of a real winning coalition. /sarc
I voted for Gary Johnson (otherwise straight R). I think I may make it a habit until the Rs decide they want my vote. I figure another 10 or 20 years (should I live so long).
And speaking of hippies drug prohibition is only popular among 40% of the population. About 50% favor pot legalization. And that number is rising. Republicans are excellent at picking the shallow end of the pool to dredge for votes. Amusing.
Sounds like your son cast a vote out of spite rather than to influence how the election would affect the country. Presidential elections are, for all practical purposes, a choice between two candidates. Protest votes and spiteful votes are childish.
The protest voters (or protest sitter-outers) ask, “What do we get by voting for the lesser of two evils?”
That’s an easy one: “You get less evil. Not choosing the lesser evil makes you complicit in giving us more evil.”
As for those who think their protest vote will make the R’s become more libertarian (or more social-conservative): Didn’t you notice that whenever R’s lose, the party concludes that the electorate prefers Democrat policies? Didn’t you notice that your protest vote is competing with the protest non-votes of social conservatives in the attempt to “send a message”?
Meanwhile, we get Obamacare digging in and becoming permanent, more regulatory strangulation, more unemployment, more insane spending, more open-border policies to balloon the welfare state and create a permanent leftist majority, a federally imposed “education” curriculum to indoctrinate children even more aggressively, more deference to Islamic supremacists, more “flexibility” in favor of hostile powers, probably more radical-left S.C. justices, more attacks on the 1st and 2nd Amendments, etc. ….
Thanks for nothing, Johnson-voting libertarians. Many Communists are smart enough to vote Democrat because it’s the most realistic way of nudging the ball in their direction. Many libertarians are obviously stupider.
And so you effectively voted for the profligate fascist. Oh, that was smart.
Romney went on record as a supporter of Obama care. And that is supposed to inspire those who thought it would destroy the country?
Look up “Mitt Romney makes eloquent case for Obamacare” if you want to understand that Romney was just Democrat lite. Who needs it? Or try this “Obamacare vs. Romneycare: Is there a difference?”
I voted for Johnson to send a message. And the message: “If you can’t get a warrior to lead the pack (some one willing to put up a fight) what is the point?”
If the GOP doesn’t like it let they court my vote. If they don’t want my vote they won’t get it. Fair enough?
And so, disappointed with the choice from the primaries, you voted for the profligate fascist. Oh, that was smart.
The alternative was a profligate closet euro-socialist. In the end, what’s the difference? And before you accuse me of being part of the problem, I’m one of the few good tin soldiers out their who held his nose and voted for your golden boy (AGAIN). But don’t ever count on my vote again until we get a real conservative. Screw the party.
If People felt that Romney was no better than Obama, it would be better to just let Obama own the mess he is making. Why stick Romney with the fall of the Republic when the blame lies square with Obama and the progressives. When we end up like Greece and Spain, people will look to Obama and realize the sham President he is.
So, according to your analysis, history began January 20, 2009? I know you don’t like the way things are going but do you seriously feel it’s fair to lay all the blame on the President?
No, I’m sure some blame could be placed as far back as Andrew Jackson. Since Obama’s administration in this term was characterized by being worse in pretty much every conceivable way than Bush, yeah, I think we’re justified in largely blaming Obama.
Democrats love to heap blame on the Republican in office or on the Republican in office before their man.
The truth is that the big government mess started with the Progressive perhaps starting with Teddy Roosevelt and certainly kicking off with FDR. Every Democrat from then on expanded the welfare state. Republicans tried to rein it in, until the Bushes. Congressional Republicans made a small effort until Clinton. Bush 2 was a disaster for a Republican but moderate for a Dem. Obama, however, has topped all before him in terms of spending and regulation just in his first term. Now he has another and is already going mad. Some 6,000 regulations were put forward in just the last 90 days. That is likely to only accelerate now that he’s back in.
Simply put, Obama’s policies are slamming us into the ground and will soon bury us. That’s all on him. He could have done other things and turned the economy around and restored small government and freedom, but he wants to be god. Question is will he be an Evita or a Stalin?
I concur with many others here, it was GOP/Romney moderation.
There was a 5 point plan, but that was a 5 point plan to stave of the inevitable bankruptcy another 5 years…very weak. It pandered to fearfull looters and moochers.
Romney was also I think unfairly attacked as a rich guy who was not one of us…never mind that Obama has an interesting education few people realize is “off the beaten track”.
I noticed there are more “open” supporters of Obama now, proudly stating they voted for the winner, clinging to the idea that the economy is in full recovery mode and that Obama needs another 4 years to fix it.
Oh, he will “fix” it alright.
These voters will disappear by 2016, as Carter voters di by 1982,too imbarrassed to admit their foolishness.
It would be nice to see conservatives in the GOP, but has anyone heard their moderation tour lately? The establishment wants even more moderation.Never mind what 2010 did for them, conservatives have been relegated to diaper changer status now within the gOP.
Watch next as Bengazi gets swept under the rug so that Con-gress can move on to important matters like raising the debt ceiling, raising taxes, and increasing funding for campaign donating interests.Favors need to be returned, frm both sides.
Q. And the alternative was…?
A. None. An electable alternative campaigning on the theme of deep federal spending cuts, abolishing programs including even one cabinet-level department, gutting corporate welfare, cutting the dole – basically an agenda of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” – doesn’t exist. Voters would run to the polls in droves to vote down that candidate. It would be McGovern in ’72 in reverse.
Try again.
I ended up liking Mitt after the debates at least a little bit, so I think I can say my vote in the end was for him and not against Obama.
But we can’t deny that Mitt burned A LOT of bridges during the primary. There are those that think he — or his surrogates– was behind the Herman Cain revelations and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Santorum voters stayed home in Ohio and Fla.
And the “no-Mitt” primary voters can fairly point out that Obamacare was not the issue it could have been as they predicted.
I read a story yesterday that in Cuyahoga County, the stronghold for democrats in my state of Ohio, there were over 100 precincts where Mitt Romney did not get a single vote. In several other precincts he only got one or two votes. When they compared these precincts with others in the same county, they found them to be totally out of whack. Not even close to being possible. The person who wrote the story actually put a link to the board of elections own numbers. It was unbelievable. My question, and what frightens me is that we have a Republican governor, and most of the state is run by Republicans. Why are they not asking important questions? Why are they not looking into these blatant discrepancies in the vote? The answer to that question should frighten all Americans, whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent of which I am one. I was in Ohio and saw the unbelievable enthusiasm for Romney whereas Obama could only go to colleges to make it look like people wer enthused for him. Anyone who doesn’t realize what is really going on here better wake up. For all you Democrats who think your vote actually counts, you sure as heck better think again.
Next time it will probably be your guy. Just saying.
I heard this, too, so I checked into it. Their county GOP office told me they still actually got a little more of the vote than they did in 2008 with McCain.
No votes for Romney also seems to have happened in a LOT of precincts in Philadelphia. It could be a programming error in the computer voting set up — ya think? In places where the “No Romney” vote is showing up media or the GOP should be broadcasting this — and if anyone there actually did vote for Romney in those ares, there needs to be a re-do or someone needs to get sued.
Please.
Voter fraud by Democrats is a given. It happens every two years. We just have to play through it. What we can’t afford are un-forced errors. Like not getting White people out to vote.
It’s like a golf handicap. You simply spot the Democrats the voter fraud and then beat them anyway. If you can.
Remember Stalin’s “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”
It’s probably “no accident” as the Communists like to say that Ohio’s Secretary of State was a Democrat from 2007 to 2011.
On the other hand, remember Hugh Hewitt’s “If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat“. This election shouldn’t have been that close! While we must fix the cheating part, I think this reveals one or more greater problems the Republicans have at the national level. For example, why didn’t this look like 1980, besides the critical fact that Obama didn’t have a primary challenge?
An excellent question….
Why was this not like 1980?
In 1980, Reagan the ‘oh noes he’s too conservative’ beat out the Establishment candidate George Bush Sr. for the nom. This time around the nom went to the Establishment candidate….and the GOP lost.
Although I’ve somewhat reliably read that during the convention the Establishment told Reagan they’d Goldwater him unless he picked G. H. W. Bush as his VP. Which of course ensured the Reagan Revolution would die on January 20th, 1989 (Bush was entirely explicit about this with his call for “a kinder a gentler nation” in the 1988 campaign, we can’t say we weren’t warned … but compared to Dukakis….)
Our ruling class plays a long game; we’ve got to as well.
MASSIVE voter fraud is the only reason he lost, plain and simple. There are plenty of articles documenting this. I wish Romney would contest this. There should be a recount, or another election with only paper ballots. We all knew the voting machines would be rigged, and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that they were.
If those vote totals are correct then racism among blacks will be an almost impoosible charge to defend against. If the votes are fraudulent and gotten away with the next election will be a farce before the first dime is collected. Either way, the phenomena bodes ill for the country.
Sorry to hear that Romney was not perfect enough for some conservatives. What is unfortunate is that they closed their minds early because Romney was a Republican governor of one of the most liberal states in the union, and decided to not pay attention what was on the going on around them:
1) Obamacare could have been repealed under Romney; now it won’t, nor will it likely ever be because it will be less urgent in 4 years. This was the most critical issue of any election that I can ever remember because the energy to repeal it will likely never be repeated.
2) Few can better espouse or exemplify the success available through free market economics than Romney.
3) Few can better espouse or exemplify the conservative philosophy of charitable giving (money & service) at the individual level as one chooses.
4) Tea party conservatives who are fighting for fiscal responsibility have gathered representation within the house since the days of George Bush. They will push back against attempts that do not seriously address spending and deficits, and would have had much more success with a Republican President in place. They have been undercut by this crowd.
5) Romney is a man who has proven throughout his life that he is serious about whatever job he takes. With the growing chorus to address the deficit, spending and the economy, he would have maintained an extraordinary focus on an issue that will now be left to a president who has been the most unserious leader in all aspects of his responsibilities.
These so called conservatives that did not vote need to think now how they are just as responsible for the damage that will not be reversed and will become more entrenched in the next four years. They need to learn how to fight for their principles and keep up pressure on our representatives, not through abdication but through involvement. Today by voting “not present”, they are no better than our current President who found comfort in voting “present” as a legislator.
“Few can better espouse….”
I think right there you’re demonstrating one of the reasons Romney lost. He’s a lousy communicator at the level needed, and he often comes across as completely insincere. Saying he was “severely conservative” alone confirmed in the minds of conservatives their concerns about his battlefield conversion from a frankly liberal/authoritarian (Romneycare)/RINO.
It’s also can’t be ignored that Obamacare was a big issue in 2010 and Romeny was the only Republican who couldn’t compete on it. Not that tried to compete on anything else but a very narrow economic message, and that couldn’t have done much for “values” voters.
Romney promised to repeal Obamacare. I don;t know what more you would want from him.
A clearer vision such that even the liberal media can’t accuse him of being a “flip-flopper”. We know what he meant most of the time when he would talk about issues. It was just too cringe worthy when he would say one thing and then contradict himself on another.
I’m frankly getting tired of the Republicans and Conservatives being entirely too trusting and naive of the media. Romney’s European and Israel tour is a prime example. I would have left those media turds at home and brought my own media company that I TRUSTED and let them filter the message out in an appropriate way. The same for the campaign. I would have ditched the liberal media and brought my own gang (on my own dime if necessary after all he had 250 million dollars) and let them show the appropriate messages.
One other thing. At least start checking patrons for electronic devices at Republican political meetings. This would at least avoid the “47%” type videos from getting out in the wrong context and displayed across the liberal media. The Democrats do this. CAIR does this. Obviously they understand why after they have been bashed in the media for public statements. Republicans and Conservatives appear to still be clueless.
“A politician promised to repeal Obamacare.”
As many like to say, “Fixed it for you.”
Now, it turns out I actually believed that pledge (although it was necessairly a lot weaker than you portray, it was “I”ll give every state a waiver and then work with the Congress”, and we know how the latter went, at least until 2014), not because I believed he really deep down didn’t believe in the general concept, but because to not would have been instant political suicide, his administration would have been over before it got started. This goes by a principle outlined by Milton Friedman thusly:
Obama’s history with gun control is a superb example of this.
However, that said, how many people read his palpable insincerity on things conservative and decided they didn’t believe him?
My greater point is that as the proud (back then) author of Romneycare, he was simply not in a position to make a big deal about it. “I screwed up then but I won’t now” is not a winning political argument, instead he choose an “It’s OK if a state does it” straddle.
Over and over and over again, he tried to convice us that romneycare was great for MA and that he would do it all over again, given the chance. Then he tries to lamely suggest that he would repeal romneycare’s offsrping? Are you really that blind to the contradiction? Do you blame anyone for, at a minimum scratching their heads and taking a pause over that?
Thanks for proving my point about making up minds early and not paying attention in the months leading up to the general election. Primaries were over. The election was Romney vs. Obama. Romney did espouse free market principles quite well throughout the debates. As to his sincerity, you may be right about people’s perception, although I do not understand why when compared to the positions of Obama and you considered Romney’s actual participation in and success in private industry.
As to the (Un)Affordable Care Act, he absolutely did offer a competing vision to Obama, both through working towards repeal and by defining the issue as one to be addressed at the state level.
I’ll admit I didn’t watch the debates or any other video during the campaign, I’m going by second hand reports I trust along with some choice, clarifying, in context quotes of Romney.
Your point about insincerity and Obama misses the third and most likely option, both were insincere. (Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama was less insincere, we got some pretty good looks at him without his usual mask, some like the vote for revenge one not one offs.)
As a son of the owners and operators of multiple successful small businesses, “Romney’s actual participation in and success in private industry” was a positive for me, but I’m not sure that was generally true. I’ve read that plays very poorly in the central north of the country. We certainly can’t ignore the effects of decades of absolutely vile propaganda against them, capitalists, etc.
The populist Republicans are all over this comments section. Pity, because they did not see that capitalism itself was on the line. See http://clarespark.com/2012/11/07/capitalism-is-on-the-line/. We are on the road to fascism, if not already there.
Or, try this one. Political language and living in this world matter. See http://clarespark.com/2012/11/13/orwell-superpatriots-and-the-election/.
We’re there. It’s over.
This whole thread is stupid, because there is no chance that the country can return to where it was. And it’s for one simple reason. obamacare. Within 4 years, the parasite will be hopelessly imbedded in the country, draining it of the last few vestiges of freedom left.
Debating the reasons for it is like the Carteginians debating why they lost while they were hanging from the Roman crucifixes.
The only realistic thing to do is to find the best escape hatch you can. You’ll need it.
I think that’s an “it depends”. If it was a conceptually simple system like the U.K. NHS people might realize too late. But it was so poorly conceptualized (mostly in terms of getting it passed against the fieriest of opposition, career ending for many Democrats), and so poorly drafted (especially since Scott Brown forced the passage of a Senate draft), that it’s sheer impossibility and insanity may force repeal.
Think of Dan Rostenkowski getting chased down the street by angry seniors. Shortly afterwards he asked his main political adviser how long before it would all die down, and got the reply, “They’ll play that video on the day you die….” I don’t know if they did that, but they did quickly repeal that bill in toto.
This may sound silly, especially right after this election, but we do have a much more representative form of government than most any other Western “democracy” (all republics, of course).
Wrong.
Big Media mis-informed, mal-informed, and failed to inform about the incompetence and malevolence of the Obama administration.
Big Media treated Obama as a saint and treated Romney and the GOP as an enemy force. (With a little help from idiot comments about rape from Akin and Mourdock.) But the low-information voter knows that something is not right with Obama, which is why voter turnout was down. Still, why vote for a villain? That is why Romney lost. The Big Media propagandists won this, not Obama.
The low-information voter is largely ignorant. Think Leno’s Jaywalking idiots. These are the people who either voted for Obama or failed to vote for Romney.
Why? For years Big Media has treated Democrats like saviors, and GOP like villains. out to corrupt the system and steal the goodies from the people.
++
The battlespace is not political. The battlespace is for the minds of the dumb masses who have little-to-zero clue. And Big Media keeps them clueless.
Big Media is the enemy. Beat them, and we not have only a chance, but truth can claim victory.
Massive vote fraud.
Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Thank you. Couldn’t have said it better m’self. I voted for Gary Johnson, though I might have sucked it up if I lived in Florida and voted for the Chameleon.
Spot on. How can you pundits miss the obvious? Romney was a wimp who did not stand up to Obama and call him what he is: A traitor to our nation. And he failed at every step of the way to tell the average American why he would make the country stronger to make their lives better. He wimped out on EVERYTHING that is important to us. He should have told the American people that he would send the illegals home the first day he took office and he would have won the election. RINO. Amen. And a dishonest political flack at that. The Republican establishment better start listening. And you too, Charlie. Your prediction was so way off base because you are out of touch with the anger out there with the Republican party. We know the Democrats are traitors. But we are starting to realize that the same applies to the Republicans. And we are sick of it.
The conclusion is, based on higher enthusiasm than in 2004, for Republicans, that their votes were suppressed. Not counted. All the data in support of this, the long lines, early voting, etc. showed a strong Republican advantage, nationally and in the swing states.
What is the likelihood, that Obama would take ALL swing states, but not the House? What is the likelihood, that not a SINGLE ROMNEY vote would be registered among 19,000 voters in Philly? What is the likelihood, that Obama would win with only 38% of the White Vote, in a suppressed turnout election with 75% or more of the electorate, White?
None at all. It was fraud. Massive, including hacking the ORCA system.
Well, two can play that game. It is a slam dunk certainty that while Republicans won’t do it, EVERY OTHER GROUP now knows that elections are up to who can fraud the most — suppress the most votes, and stuff ballots the most. That means foreign countries, domestic interest groups, and the like. All using ACORN like front groups to do the deniable dirty work.
Why not say, pick off EVERY Democratic Senator up for re-election in 2014? Why not? Simply stuff those ballots, hack those votes, discard those Democratic ballots. The voting system has been on the honor system, and it failed. SOME group will do it, and use that to impeach and convict Obama. Maybe even send him to jail.
If power depends on who vote frauds the most, then that is where it will go.
I agree 100% ,this election was stolen by massive fraud. I worked at a polling place in Tucson which was swarmed by ineligible voters, broken phones and general chaos. I believe this was a smokescreen to obfuscate the hacking of electronic voting by random algorithms that changed votes in key states. Elections built on trust only work where you have honest trustworthy people. That train left the station long ago. The left runs things by moral relativism and self interest. The American heritage of free and honest elections is over, likely forever.
I agree, with electronic voting we don’t have a chance unless we find hackers on our side and start playing like they do.
I say, do away with the voting machines, early voting, absentee voting without a valid excuse, and use all paper ballots. Oh, and Voter ID in every state. This election was corrupt to the core.
I forgot to mention: Allow the overseas military votes to be counted, even if they arrive after the deadline.
I agree that the reason was more than likely voter fraud. Heck, there were several reports of ballot machines switching votes from Romney to Obama in swing states, and heck, even in non-swing states such as Connecticut, they utilized at least 30 casts of ghost votes (ie “voters” who have actually died sometime before or by the time of the election). That’s also not getting into that picture of Indonesians wearing “I voted” stickers as well as carrying election brochures with the obvious implication that they managed to cast their votes for Obama despite being constitutionally ineligable to vote in American politics.
I don’t think the GOP should go commit voter fraud in future elections. That would make them no different from the DNC, especially the current DNC. Instead, I think we should do it legally, if possible.
The answer is, in the swing states, the donkeys run the election apparatus. They made a conscious effort several years ago to take the Secretary of State offices in as many states as they could, and it’s worked, particularly in the critical swing states. In a system with honest elections, why would the party of the SoS matter?
The question about the lack of coattails is interesting. If all of these voters who voted for Obama also voted donkey down the ticket, you would expect to see a number of GOP congressmen thrown out, particularly in the swing states where the organized fraud was concentrated. The only reasonable explanation is that the illegal voters who were bussed from location to location were instructed to vote for Obama and not worry about the other races.
If so, there would be a significant number more of votes overall for the president than the congressmen. I’d be curious to see those numbers.
I have read in more than one source (here’s one: http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/did-voter-fraud-swing-election/ )that the down-ticket results bear this out.
If you think about it, there’s a plausible argument to be made that Obama’s whole career could be read as hinging on his/his backers’ success with “hiding” facts and behaviors so egregious in plain site that no one seems able to believe such things could be possible, much less challenge them.
What about Florida and Wisconsin? The so called election apparatus that you reference is run by republicans. I think it is in Ohio as well. You might be stuck in the first stageof grief, which is denial. Anger is next and some of your fellows on this message board are already there, so get going.
Play their game!
The Tea Party should ALL register as Dems for the 2014 election and vote for the weakest D candidates in the D primaries.
What goes around, comes around.
Rush, are you gong to try operation chaos again. The drugs must be causing memory loss.
Romney is a RINO – he’s also Mormon. He’s also very much like McCain. I withheld my vote for POTUS in 08 just because of McCain. I did not withhold it this time – I voted for Romney. I live in Washington State – I’m pretty sure my vote was counted simply by living in one of the red counties in the eastern portion of the state. I have doubts that each vote I cast in the many years in the blue county I used to
live in was counted. Not when the vote looked to be close for a republican. For an education on Washington vote count/recount see the governor’s race in 2004. King County especially.
I think its high time that someone initiate a serious investigation into voter fraud committed at the county and local sector levels. How the hell can 99 local voting districts in Philadelphia have 100% of the vote going to Obama? Not one vote in the thousands cast? I call that BS.
One need look no further than the Florida mess where Allan West had some 4000 ballots suddenly show up in the middle of the night that tipped the balance to his opponent – they were suspiciously weighted to the opponent – how does that happen?
Something is fishy in America – we need voter reforms – without it – and with the suspected cheating that is going on with no blow-back on the cheaters it only encourages ‘them’ (they know who they are) to cheat more.
IMO we are being ‘cheated’ out of our say in how and where America is headed and these morons are laughing – all the way into office – moving us ‘forward’ – to a future we don’t wish for and didn’t ask for – but have been ‘cheated’ into. I don’t think for a minute that Obama supporters were more ‘enthused’ over him than republicans were over Romney. I think somewhere there are ballots that support Romney and other republicans in dumpsters – shredded or just dumped. Waiting to be thrown in the landfill.
One possible “defect” a few of previously discussed here is how the large urban centers in each state are beginning to over-dominate the non-urban vote. The thought had occurred that the individual states require something very much like the Electoral College, to prevent this disparity.
I agree with you but the chances of such systems have to be adopted by each State and then you have the left who have wanted to abolish the Electoral College for YEARS. There’s no way that it would get passed in the States that really need that type of system.
Then maybe a breakup of states is needed. The rural areas need to break off from the urban areas to form their own states. I know that there was speculation that this might happen in California, and I have heard rumors of petitions circulating in Illinois that would have a large part of the state greaking away from Cook County.
Yes, that’s a practical given, that there would be those who would viciously oppose such a move. 100% on the Left. They would do so, because this is the core of where they get their votes, and they want those poor urban dwellers to dominate the vote. It’s form of “Affirmative Action” for the minority vote.
Personally, I would be fascinated to hear them defend this point of view, that somehow a poor, urban-dwelling “ethnic” should have a greater vote than anyone else.
Of course, any counter-argument will be “racist.”
“One possible “defect” a few of previously discussed here is how the large urban centers in each state are beginning to over-dominate the non-urban vote.”
With a boost from fraud and strong-arming…
Got that right, Rob. These people are so crooked, they could meet themselves coming around a corner.
You might find this of interest:
A thermodynamic explanation of politics
Are you kidding? try to not make the urban vote as valuable as the suburban vote. So make the votes count by square mile an not sheer numbers. Stupid ass! more people live in those areas so the votes add up.. How about only white landowners get to vote. That will solve the problem..
The problem with the west ballots is the same that happened with Al Franken except it was to his benefit. Every time it looked like he was going to lose a box of ballots was found. But the GOP did not even try to fight it.
For some, to vote against someone is not enough of an incentive to vote, they need to vote for someone.
Obama was enough of an incentive to get many to vote against him, but, just as with McCain, Romney failed to persuade enough people to vote for him.
At this point, I am firmly convinced that the election was stolen by fraud, and that the source and responsibility for that fraud goes all the way to a single office in Washington DC.
Well, the easiest answer for the majority of the folks here who are interested primarily in what conflicts least with what they wish to be true, is that the entire election was stolen by massive fraud*. No matter that it was a fraud* operation that must have run into the millions of votes across a half dozen states, that’s the easiest way to reconcile our personal beliefs with their rejection by the American people.
So… it was definitely fraud*. Definitely. And yes, I know what you are thinking, it’s gonna be fraud* again next election, probably on an even bigger scale than this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fraud*sters push into Arizona and North Carolina.
Awwwww.
Did the big bad conservative touch you in the Bad Place again, moron?
Show us on the Obama action figure where it hurts.
ACORN.
Let’s see – 99% turnouts (where the average is around 50%)that go 99% for Obama? Yes, I suspect fraud.
Don’t even think of trying to attempt to tell me if those numbers had gone the other way that you wouldn’t be screaming “FRAUD!” at the top of your lungs.
Don’t even go there.
Why the asterisk? And yeah, 141 percent turnout in Port St Lucie and Republican observers being pushed out, blocked, ejected, along with partial recounts that stop as soon as the vote is over the recount limit? Yeah, it does sound a little suspicious.
Great chicken dish, though.
Voter fraud: real. And lots of it.
Enough to make Romney not electable: No.
The reason Romney lost? No.
Nothing will be done about voter fraud (aka Democrats) until we get a Republican DOJ and Attorney General with a pair of balls, willing to fill the prisons with Democrats. Don’t hold our breath.
That does not mean it won the election for Obama. Obama did not win the election, we lost it by not getting our base out to vote.
The Port St. Lucie thing has turned out to be a “I can’t math” problem on the part of the county. They compared the number of ballot *pages* cast (rather than the number of ballots cast) with the number of registered voters. It was a two-page ballot this year. That’s how they got a number higher than 100%.
Stop gnashing your teeth. Obama ran ads in the 6 swing states for months prior to the election. Those ads painted Romney on the “wrong” side of social issues like abortion, “women’s rights”, health care and contraception.
Romney tried like heck to avoid those social issues, but the ads Obama ran for months prior to the election painted a picture of him that he never responded to, and couldn’t.
Obama never ran on his record. He couldn’t. He ran on class, race and gender.
It worked.
That’s what we get for nominating the candidate that Obama WANTED to run against.
The “Electable” one…and he “McGoverned”.
A “corporate nice guy” who didn’t counter-punch. I live in a swing state, and not until the last two or three weeks did Romney and his PACS run ads that even began to push back against Obama’s attacks.
For every racial or class or “Women’s Health” ad, Romney’s campaign should have run two informing Blacks that their unemployment rate was 6 points higher than the national rate, that Obama boasts of having deported more illegal aliens than any other Administration in history…etc.
And lastly, I e-mailed my Congressman early in the cycle, telling him that I was on board and pulling the oars. Obviously, this information wasn’t passed up the line to the RNC. My telephone was SWAMPED with GOP robocalls. This was an utter waste of money. What they spent calling me they could have spent on someone else.
You know how many calls I got from the Obama campaign? None. Zero. Someone did their marketing homework and concluded that my zip code would be a lost cause.
So while I voted, i was irritated from “telephone fatigue”.
And telephone robocalls…seriously? What next? Mimeographed flyers stapled to telephone polls? Choo-choo train whistle-stops?
How about a campaign hoedown with pork BBQ and barrels of whiskey?
Don’t be so hard on Romney.
He ran, and took the punishment when other Republicans decided to sit this one out.
Maybe the “A” team could have won this, maybe not. Let’s not find out.
They didn’t have the stomach to run in 2012, don’t give them the chance to run in 2016.
Romney at least had the guts to make the run for President. Give him that much credit.
Now, moving forward, in 2016 Conservatives need to run a Conservative. And they need to nominate and support someone who has shown an ability to inspire people who were not already invested in seeing the Democrats defeated.
Romney was brilliant at persuading Investors who had plenty of easier and less risky options to choose from to invest in Bain Capital, and at persuading people already committed to making the Utah Winter Olympics a success to go above and beyond what they’d already done – to the point of sacrificing material gains they had hopes of enjoying. That took skill, and hard work.
And running for President took guts. Guts a lot of people who may have a lot to say about his performance as a candidate did not and probably never will have.
Romney’s campaign should have run two informing Blacks that their unemployment rate was 6 points higher than the national rate,
Do me a favor. Show me when Black unemployment was equal.
All the above reasons are true. I would add that this US Presidency is run by a PR agency with a spokesman that reads their teleprompted lines so that he has more time to work out, play golf, watch ESPN and play his fantasy college brackets in order. The micro segments the Chicago Thug’s PR firm created as a whole was a greater force than what the GOP could muster. Bush made a huge mistake not defending himself against the financial meltdown, how CRA, Fredie and Fannie cooking the books, Democrats in HUDD, Wall Street liberals from Ivy League Schools, Derivatives, Greenspan under Clinton, killed our economy. Ronmey also did a poor job chalenging Obama on his lies and fabrications. Example: WHy couldn’t he say in the first debate that the White House was hostil to women, This is a fact based on a book and quote by none other than the Left’s favorite Mao Socialist, Annita Dunn, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/suskind-book-female-advisers-in-obama-white-house-sidelined-and-ignored/2011/09/16/gIQAAOSSXK_story.html
Also that Women in the White House were more underpaid than their Male counterparts. So who has the war on women?
Romney was a gentleman but this election needed a street fighter who would slug it out with Obama and break his glass jaw.
Thinking about it, I don’t think it’s possible for a true Conservative to run a campaign based on class, gender or race. Maybe Heinlein could figure a way to do it, but I think he might just zoom off to another planet before he had to try to deal with a foolish electorate that would be swayed by such arguments.
The kicker is that we get a media after the election that now accuses Conservatives of “pandering to the white vote” and needing to rethink “immigration policy” and social issues.
Look. Illegal immigration is illegal, isn’t it? For all Bill Maher’s writers going for laughs at the expense of reality, isn’t law something to be defended?
And aren’t blacks and Hispanics suffering under Obama’s policies even more than whites? Look at the unemployment numbers, the percentage of home losses and the number of people going on welfare. So CONSERVATIVES are saying something bad to ethnic groups?
After at LEAST TWO GENERATIONS, WHAT HAVE DEMOCRATS DONE FOR YOU, BLACKS, HISPANICS, ASIANS, POOR or ANYONE ELSE? Are you better off now than in 1988?
The numbers say no. So what are you voting for?
I’d say you’re voting for the black guy, but that would make ME racist. I’d say you’re voting for a redistributionist, socialist government, but that would make ME a reactionary.
I’d say you learned very little (nothing) about economics and history in your government-run schools, and that you should support vouchers to learn skills and truth but that would make ME elitist.
I’d say you you should spend a little more time reading and thinking, and a little less time watching American Idol. But that would make me some sort of ANTI-AMERICAN, wouldn’t it?
You’ll get the government you deserve, but the other 48% of us will suffer for your ignorance, racism, foolishness and selfishness.
Nice rant. But what’s your plan? To sit and wring your hands about how much things suck and how stupid people are, or try to do something positive? Same question for the people who are absurdly convinced that Obama won solely because of fraud. (Yes, there was fraud. No, there is no possible way fraud accounts for the margin of victory.)
As for illegal immigration, law is “something to be defended” only if it is just law. Our current immigration law is a massive violation of individual rights. If a law is wrong, the solution is to change it, not to condemn the people who break the law without violating anyone else’s rights.
“As for illegal immigration, law is “something to be defended” only if it is just law. Our current immigration law is a massive violation of individual rights. If a law is wrong, the solution is to change it, not to condemn the people who break the law without violating anyone else’s rights.”
What in the world are you babbling about? Illegal aliens DO violate American citizens’ rights. They drive down wages and abuse public institutions to which they should not have access at all.
But you’re worried about the “individual rights” of some Mexican national?
REALLY?
What a joke.
Indeed. Just for starters they:
Repeatedly drive illegally (without license or insurance)
Repeatedly get DUI/DWI’s (often without appearing in court and when arrested, are released to drive again)
Get paid in cash, thus avoiding tax-recording and withholding.
Get “free” medical care by clogging up the ER’s in the nation’s hospitals
Get Food Stamps and welfare without having to prove citizenship
Which, when I say these things to a democrat makes them believe that I believe they are not “fellow human-beings” who “deserve a chance at a better life”.
Well, let me ask you this. When I turned 18, I had to move out of my single-mom’s house because I could no longer live there and expect my mother to support me. I went into the military.
In return for laying my life at risk, I received medical care (Minor treatment, no hospital stays, occasional cold/flu, a cavity now and again) and housing and food. But out of my meager earnings, I still had to pay for my uniforms and clothing (I did get a clothing allowance which did not cover the uniforms I had to replace as they got soaked with hydraulic fluid and got holes in the knees from kneeling on concrete all the time, etc). In 1983 I took home $1,000 a month as an E-4. I was lucky enough to receive off-base rations and my rent-share was $250/month, living in a house that cost $500/month plus utilities. My vehicle payment was $212/month plus insurance/gas/maintenance. Food was ~ 100 to 150 a month. So there wasn’t a whole lot left at the end of the month.
However, I attended night-school, even used saved money and sold back days of leave to have money to attend full-time college when I was released from active duty. Had a couple small student loans. Went back into the military as an officer and got out four years after that ready to be part of the work-force in America.
Now, the illegal alien comes here, gives nothing to the nation and takes, takes and takes and expects it because they are told and believe they are entitled to it. Sure, they mow lawns, paint houses (now there’s a growing career field) and their plan is to have kids here so they now have “anchor babies” to continue to reap the rewards of living in a society free of persecution and not have to go back to Guanajuato to face being forced by gangsters to work for them, etc.
In that respect, I understand. But I also have a demand that they respect our laws and customs inasmuch as I’m forced to respect theirs. Most Mexicans I’ve met and dealt with are fairly nice people but they are detached and do not understand (or refuse to) that coming here means adopting a new life with a new set of rules. Just like when I was stationed abroad in the military, I was told repeatedly to “observe their customs and laws and you’ll be fine”.
But no…doesn’t seem to apply the other way ’round, does it?
I meant to add that living in the military is pure dictatorial rule. I was “on duty” 24/7/365 and was required to respond to the call to duty no matter where I was. Vacation was subject to the will of the military and as I heard all the time, “the needs of the military come first”.
I had to dress a certain way, act a certain way and even think a certain way. No criticism of higher-ups was permitted. My opinion was not required on anything.
In return for living my life like that, I was “taken care of” not so much for my benefit but as a piece of equipment for the military. Food, shelter and clothing. Three hots and a cot. What I chose to do in my off-duty time was up to me so long as it didn’t break any of the myriad of civilian and/or military laws.
But they OWNED me. I signed a contract to that effect and did so willingly. I knew what I was getting into and don’t regret it.
But when people come here and simply expect to be given everything without anything in return, there is a deficit there that needs to be addressed.
Is the out of control crime on the border somehow not a violation of other peoples’ rights? What about the jobs taken by illegals that could go to those who came here lawfully? How about the identity theft by illegals who use Social Security numbers and drivers license numbers? What about the welfare handed out to illegals?
“Our current immigration law is a massive violation of individual rights.”
Mexico’s immigration laws are stricter than ours. Why don’t you go protest them?
DH, here’s the thing: There is no plan that will work. The entitlement classes have an absolute majority. It’s over.
There were a lot of factors: Sandy, fraud, ect. It will take some time to parse them all out. Going in to the election there were reports that Obama thought he was going to lose.
As pointed out, Mormanism was not that big a factor with Evangelicals but it may have been to the other segments. I don’t agree with the LDS but Romney is a decent man and may have been a good president.
The ground game. Give the devil his due. Axelrod laid the groundwork with his targeted attack ads and his very effective (if not illegal) get out the vote. Romney’s ORCA was a complete bust. He would do it differently next time but I don’t think he gets a next time.
And there is this. Among the low information voters that decided at the last moment, Obama was more likeable. At least that is what I heard. I don’t get it. I find him as likeable as a cold fish, but there it is.
Basic three-part attack from the Democrats: 1) Turnout of their base with tested themes for that group. For example, young feminist-leaning women were hit with the “War on Women,” (while this seemed absurd to the rest of us, it was convincing to that group). “Life of Julia,”Sandra Fluke, Lily Ledbetter Act gave them equal pay, and the attack ads said Romney wanted to do away with Roe v.Wade and eliminate contraceptives. (Low-information voters, but it worked). Blacks were told that Photo ID was a poll tax, and Romney would return Jim Crow. 2) Constant relentless negative ads about Romney, and 3) the one most miss: Obama’s constant repetition for 4 years in every speech: The financial crisis was Bush’s fault. Greatest crisis since Great Depression, I’ve created 4.5 million jobs. The economy is improving, it’s just slower than we want, and I just need more time. (Pure big lie technique, repeated often enough people will believe it)
Yes there was vote fraud in the selected essential states. Yes, there are something like 80,000 military in Afghanistan and we don’t know how many never got the chance to vote, and there is some real anti-Mormon prejudice out there though I’ve assumed it is small. For what it’s worth, that’s my take. Their only goal is to win at all cost.
Voter fraud by Democrats certainly helped…
Another possibility. One that no one talks about. The American people are THAT stupid!! I didn’t want to believe it but that is about the only conclusion I can come up with. Not only that but breaking it down further, our women must be dumb as rocks!! That free birth control and abortion is the main issue to sway their vote? Stupid!
Stupid people pick stupid leaders.
I doubt it was because of stupidity. If it was stupidity, “2016: Obama’s America” would not have gotten as high of a viewership and box-office revenues as it did.
logic that is stupid.
No actually, it’s not. The film heavily advertized that it would expose the truth behind Obama’s motives for the country, so naturally people would be curious enough to find out. Stupid, in this case, is not letting your curiousity get the better of you. Heck, the mere fact that it ranked $30,000,000 indicated that a lot of people saw it and convinced others to see it. If they didn’t think it was a bother to see it, the revinues would have been much lower.
Nobody needs to be a rocket scientist to be convinced to vote in their best interests. The buyer benefit messaging needs to be tailored more skillfully to do that. Obama’s ads and messaging provide an embarrassment of riches for post-game analysis to mimic and perfect, but with one critical difference: they’d be based on the truth.
I’m a European, and before this election I wouldn’t have dared say that, as I happen to like America. But you said it. I met a man from Washington State in Paris. He said he had voted for Bush in 2004, for Obama in 2008 and would definitely vote for Romney now. He didn’t say a word about religion, the Mormon religion didn’t play any role for him at all. He said another very important thing: He said that I know more about American politics, esp. foreign policy than the majority of his countrymen. And that might be true. Yesterday I read somebody, maybe Rick Moran – but I’m not sure – who has interviewed people after the election on Benghazi, and they didn’t know anything about it, imagine. Besides they might not have listened to the debates. And if you have any internet fraud, may I ask whether it is possible to just delete the independant votes? And then, if too many people are badly educated and informed and do not know anything about domestic and esp. foreign politics, they start listening to pop-stars and Hollywood. And that’s a big problem. Then you have to start walking around and discuss with them. And if they say you’re racist and you know you’re not, say: “That’s stupid.” And if they call you bigots while you are simply religious say: “That’s dumb.” And so on. Make them feel they’re uninformed, be friendly and tell them to get some information instead of listening to those shallow jerks from Hollywood who, btw. are rich too. They criticize Romney for being rich while listening to rich people from California. Boy, that’s stupid. And that’s really bigot.
What you say is true. Drudge ends up linking to British and Canadian and Indian and even Chinese media a lot of times because the American media impound stories. The reason why many Europeans know more about American politics than Americans, is the media self-censorship that goes on here. The reverse is probably also true. Your media is more than likely spiking embarrassing stories about your “special” people.
The media is the enemy.
Mitt Romney had great momentum and people were beginning to like him as a good “Morning awakening in America ” just like Ronald Reagan . The the threats of the hurricane reported on the news as the greatest storm ever strike USA. Some people remember hurricane katrina. Why was this happening ? People on the fence began wondering is this global warming ?(we must unite with China and their crony capitalism to save the world mantra)
Then the hurricane hit and it was worse than the reports. Even people who opposed global warming were questioning their ideas. Mitt Romney was made speechless and then when he said he better speak up the words the people heard was how he was ready to enslave millions of Americans under the boot of the the rich evil man who would sell USA to China after Mitt Romney became President because even Thomas Friedman of the new York times is welcoming Mitt Romney as President to begin great romance with China
For what it’s worth. Forget positions, negative adds, fraud, etc.
Romney is a zero. Obama is not. Ronald Reagan was not a zero. Carter was a zero. Regan vs. Mondale. Right. Mondale: zero. Bush Sr. vs. Dukakis. Close. And we know Bush Sr. won. But think. Side by side. If they were both running a campaign right now into that great unknown, which one rates zero, and which one does not? Remember, this is only a comparison to the other. Because compared to most men or women on the street, both those guys are zeros. So, Bush Sr. vs. Dukakis. That’s what I thought. Dukakis: zero.
Now. Bush Sr. vs. Clinton. Right. Bush Sr.: zero. Clinton vs. Dole. Hmmmm…. just kidding. Dole: zero. Gore vs. Bush Jr.. I know, I know. But, Gore: zero. Close, aren’t they? Which is why the election was close. So; Bush Jr. vs. Kerry. Give me a break. Not even close. Kerry: zero. And finally, McCain vs. Obama. You could live in a cave and know this one. McCain: ZERO! HUGH! And finally, part two. Obama vs. Romney. Romney: zero. Need I say more?
Other than to mention a fantasy. Or thought experiment. Hillary Vs. Palin. Not. even. close. Gargantuan.
reduce Hillary to absolute zero.
How about you’re an idiot? Did you scratch that hypothesis in crayon before you posted it?
I do notice that the uniform property of your “non-zeros” and “zeros” is the zeros lose elections. Do you have anything predictive?
Ummm, don’t nominate zeros in the primaries?
By the way:
Gingrich: zero
Santorum: zero
Herman Cain: negligibly positive
Look at the ones who took themselves out of contention:
Paul Ryan (for President): maximus positivus
Bobby Jindal: maximus positivus
Marco Rubio: maximus positivus
Rand Paul: maximus positivus
the list goes on and on because we have a deep bench. We just never go to the bullpen. We let the RINO establishment pick the starting pitcher and then we freeze.
Your post is completely unintelligible. What criterion exactly are you using to designate someone a “zero” — none . . . your own subjective bias. Quite clearly a LOT of people did not see Romney as a “zero” . . . nor Sarah Palin (she was not running against Hillary, by the way. Her role was pitted against Biden, and he is a joke. If you have nothing more to say about these people, and your analysis, your conclusions are ludicrous — or “zero” as some might say.
It is the Cities that are controlling the national elections and the Senate. This is why the dummo Repubicans can win the House while the rest of DC is lost cause. States like Washington State are controlled by one County – corrupt King County. Ohio was won in Cleveland, NY State is strangled by the corrupt NYC, etc. Just a matter of time before other states follow the socialist move. Even Texas is getting closer in Houston, San Antonio due to demographics there, so not much time left there. Montana and Wyoming too light up blue in population centers. California? nuf said. Want to live in a city? Your vote should only count 1/2. Won’t happen. I know. Just for consideration when Amerika collapses and new America arises. Also do away with electoral college nonsense favoring population densities that give way too much power to California, NY, etc.
You sir, have nailed it.
On election night, commentary indicated that the Pennsylvania Legislature had considered allocating the Electoral Votes of the Commonwealth on the basis of congressional district, as does Maine and Nebraska. Pennsylvania is essentially two states, red rural, and blue Philadelphia. Non-Philadelphia voters are nullified by the manufactured win in Philly. Where the Republicans have control of the state houses, efforts should be made to allocate the electoral votes by district, not winner take-all.
Just take a look at the red-blue map of the U.S. Republicans have lost the urban areas, but own the vast suburban-rural areas.
We are still using a 19th century strategy of choosing governance. We have set ourselves up to be hornswoggled out of one-man one-vote equity.
Getting hung up on underwear isn’t confronting reality, now is it?
Neither is contending Romney was insufficiently pro-life.
Or running around saying ‘I don’t know’.
Maybe spend a moment to glance at the big elephant in the room: the GOP is a mass of contradictions presided over by mediocrities who are not fit for purpose. The party is inherently unstable and ripe for collapse.
The biggest reason the GOP lost is the GOP.
Doubt that? Then gather together the RNC, hoist the Republican banner over Boehner and see how many summon the call to rally around the Republican flag. A three-time loser party says ‘trust me again’. Yeah, that’ll fly.
I’m sure many here will disagree, but I have to second the idea that the reason the GOP lost is because of themselves, and I don’t understand how this isn’t clearly visible to those who wonder why the election turned against them. Step outside for a moment, and look in.
What do we see?
Blaming media and the excuses of fraud to bandage the wound.
But what examples of untainted leadership have we been shown lately? Flaky flopping, language decidedly offending a voting population, quackery disguised as scientific fact; deception and distraction all more representing a gallery of buffoons than a mindset I trust to lead the country.
Now, that *should* have also worked against the President and his company in his bid, but we know many were voting for him out of concern for themselves specifically, or as a vote against Romney.
Yes. The dark allegations of fraud, often served up with furrowed brows like in those old parodies of Nixon, are the worst. Fraud has been an issue for decades and became critical during the FL recounts. Yet where were all these outraged innocents, now so numerous? Smugly under a rock, deep in denial, it seems.
I’m betting many voters have had it with the GOP and the prospect of yet another choice between lousy candidates who do well only in the presence of focus groups of their dopey peers. It isn’t called the Stupid Party for nothing. The rest of the world is ready to move on.
Thanks for your concern, Some, but we expect our parties fortunes to change radically for the better when your party crashes the economy in a way that the world has never seen before. Though you’ll probably never hear of it as your MSM will fail to report on it until they figure out how to blame it on Bush.
Ever since the 1980′s I’ve been reading that negative advertising works by depressing the turnout of voters who would naturally be expected to come out and vote for their type of guy. That is, they think there may be something wrong with “their” guy but that doesn’t mean they’ll vote for the other side — because they still dislike that way of thinking — so they stay home and don’t vote at all.
An unusually depressed turnout of Republican voters then becomes exactly what you would expect from Obama’s negative ad campaign. Since Romney didn’t go anywhere near as negative on Obama in his advertising, there was nothing extra to depress the Democrat turnout beyond the amount naturally expected from Obama’s presidential record of basic incompetence. Hence an unexpectedly depressed Republican turnout and only an ordinarily depressed Democrat turnout — and Romney loses.
Now that I think of it, Romney’s refusal to go as negative on Obama as Obama was going on him is a really good example of why “nice guys finish last”. The right-wing pundits missed this Romney mistake while it was going on — and still don’t really see what’s right in front of their eyes — because for them, political experts that they are, Romney’s ads about how badly Obama had handled the economy **was** extremely potent negative advertising. But for the voters Romney wanted to reach, his ads just prompted the reflection: the economy? that’s numbers, Ugh! Romney’s negative ad budget would have been much better spent pounding home the suggestion that Obama was a secret Muslim who was hiding his bigotry against whites, that sort of thing. That would have depressed the turnout of naturally Democrat voters the extra amount needed for Romney to win.
In a way, Romney — this time with the support of right-wing pundits — made the same mistake McCain did. By not seeing this mistake while it was going on, the right-wing pundits have proved themselves to be as out-of-touch as Romney.
Here’s an example of the sort of negative ad Romney should have run, done Lee-Atwater style.
Open with a voice-over:
Barack Obama, an unusual name for an unusual president. How is Barack Obama an unusual president?
Follow with a sentence or two showing how unprecedentedly bad his economic policies have worked. Mention that he is unusual in refusing to enforce civil rights laws against whites (dismissal of New Black Panthers case last election).
Mention that we don’t know his academic records, which would show who funded his college education. Was it Arab oil money? Show Barack Obama bowing to king of Saudi Arabia, and other foreign unfriendly heads of state — mention how unusual it is for a president to do this.
Then at the end of the ad the voice-over says something like
Is it fair to hit someone for the name chosen for them by their parents? No, of course not. But Barack Obama was given the name Barry when he was born and went to school under the name Barry Sotero. He choose his name as an adult because he liked the way it sounded and what it stood for.
Barack Hussein Obama (pause) an unusual name for an unusual president.
This is the sort of ad that would have matched the nastiness of the Obama anti-Romney ads and kept all those white union members home on election day. If you want to channel Lee Atwater, this is how its done. Afraid you’ll be called racist and bigoted? That’ll happen anyway, so you might as well do what works.
OK now that the great one has won. Where the hell is “his” plan for fixing the problems we face. Here we go again. This lazy SOB will do nothing for 4 more years and then Hillary will do public relations and our dumb ass citizens will believe them. Perhaps it is time for conservatives to stop caring and let this ship of state sink with all on board. Like a drug addict you have to hit bottom before you can recover.
So screw them. I want to see his plan. Where is it??
The apathy will continue until the spending stops.
That’s backwards.
Well if there is was Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and perhaps in Florida, then the clear answer is that Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans should only compromise on the debt ceiling if Obama AND Reid agree to pass a national Voter ID law.
I don’t think Obama would care…he can’t run for a third term.
Good point!
National voter i.d. laws won’t prevent hacking into electronic voting machines.
Itty-bitty steps, my friend. As long as they’re on the right path.
The issue isn’t “hacking” as we understand the term, but when the offices of the Secretary of State become politicized, all manner of other monkey business becomes possible. I think the chicanery is further up the chain of custody.
No, but Michelle might.
A fond Farewell to the Vanished World of Wonder Bread, Sealtest Ice Cream, Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix, Borden’s Milk, the Sears Roebuck and Co. Catalog, and All That
—————————————————————-
Election Day, 2012, will enter the history books as a seminal date in our History. For on that date, a fundamental transformation of the America character took place, a change long since in the making, with the resounding and embarrassing thrashing of the Republican party (the party of the old guard) by the party of the future.
I remember looking at Romney during the long campaign and I kept asking myself: Who is he representing? Who is he talking to? I could never figure that answer out.
Romney and Cia. went down in ignominious defeat precisely because he was representing an America that no longer exists – even in the Midwest. (After all – and just as an example- our first “openly gay” senator just elected to Congress is from Wisconsin – as “heartland” a state as you can find. Not only that, she’s a woman to boot. (Talk about a double whammy).
But it was more than that. I remember those scallywag Republican leaders plainly stating things like “Our main job is to deny Obama a second term” and “We will not cooperate with them at all” and so on. They should have been forced to resign if that was there attitude. People like me clearly remember all that and vowed not to forget it and let no one else forget it either.
The 30s, 40s and 50s are over. They simply are. It’s a new ball game with different players. The sea change that has taken place is now a permanent part of the American panorama. Those who refuse to admit it and to adjust to it are simply living in the past and becoming more irrelevant and inconsequential as time goes on.
I agree the old America may be over, but I don’t agree this is a good thing. There is a lot more at stake than Wonder Bread, etc. There are things like the rule of law becoming a corrupt third world thugocracy, prosperity and economic opportunity becoming continual and cataclysmic decline and Pax Americana becoming a world of chaotic war and madness. Laugh on Piper, but your world is headed off a cliff.
Hippies like that will start caring when their iPhones stop working. Note I didn’t say “if”. Go to the Rockaways for a prevue of this moron’s future.
Rule of law? Care to show me the Drug Prohibition Amendment?
The Right doesn’t give a durn about the rule of law. Look up who voted against the Harrison Narcotics Act. Republicans. Why? The didn’t think the Fed Gov had the power.
Now a days? Rs cheer drug prohibition.
Thrashing? Hardly. Romney garnered almost 59 million votes.
We may not know exactly what happened. There will be a lot of analysis in the future, and most likely we’ll find several factors were at play, not just one.
But here’s something we know did NOT happen.
Sorry, conspiracy theorists. It’s impossible for Obama to have stolen this election. Voter fraud could account for a few hundred or even a thousand stolen ballots in some precinct somewhere. But Obama beat Romney by over 3 million votes, and won every state that he won in 2008 except Indiana and North Carolina. You can’t steal 26 states from coast to coast and not have it become glaringly apparent.
We used to laugh at the left when they blamed “Bush’s Diebold voting machines” for his 2004 re-election victory. Let’s not emulate them and wallow in our own fantasies.
Obama didn’t steal this election, he won it.
They’re not conspiracy theories, actually. Brietbart, for one, actually mentioned that several of the people in the swing states reported that most of their votes despite being cast for Romney, had inexplicably changed for Obama. Their sources were from the voters themselves, which they described as being “dozens.” Another article on Breitbart indicates that the other Swing States had something similar happen, based on what voters stated. Heck, the fact that Breitbart and Sean Hannety stated, respectively, that Connecticut had dead voters still registered with the most likely result being that they voted for Obama, and that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was recorded to have a 100% voter turnout for Obama and a 0% turnout for Romney (which, even for a Liberal community, is extremely unbelieveable) further supports this. Not to mention, there was a photo on breitbart’s article about how the world is celebrating Obama’s victory where it showed Indonesians wearing stickers on their cheeks stating “I voted!” as well as one Indonesian even carrying an Election 2012 pamphlet. Yes, sometimes people might sell them for a quick buck if they had more than expected, but I doubt they’d do it overseas, and especially sell them to people who obviously could not vote in American elections, and that’s not getting into pamphlets. The only reasonable conclusion is if they voted illegally. Also, in case you’ve forgotten, Obama and most of his ilk are from Chicago, which is well known for several types of voting fraud. Heck, Chicago is also where the phrase “Vote Early, Vote Often” came from. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable that he would have pulled every trick in the book to ensure he won re-election. Heck, Boss Tweed did it all the time.
It’s the widespread disbelief that anyone could successfully add millions of fraudulent votes or delete millions of legitimate votes that makes the successful commission of such a crime possible.
I agree. And if you think about it, it’s not even that unbelievable. Heck, in the first season of Heroes, Nikki Sander’s son actually did that sort of thing with the electronic booths under orders of Lindermann and his minions to ensure that Nathan Petrelli won the election. Granted, he largely did this because he was a technopath, but still…
Dude. Go google “electoral college”.
we was cheated is counterproductive nonsense. Yes democrats cheat, just as the mainstream media lie . What can be done for us to win anyway ? new elections are 2 years away .
I would think that States should start splitting up in the name of fairness. We have become a Despotic Nation. I would like to see, Southern NY splits from the rest of NY, West Penn from the greater Philly area, eastern CA from Western CA, Southern Texas from the rest of Texas etc. If you look at the Blue/Red voting heat chart, the country is 75% more Red than Blue, it’s just that large voting blocks on the west and Northeast coasts and major cities, all tied into free stuff and hand-outs will always vote blue. The country is going to fail, go into default once nations show we can’t balance our budgets, keep Trillion dollar deficits. They’ll stop buying our securities and drop the dollar as the lead currency. Then what happens. All these liberals will be living in shanty towns, without jobs, unable to pay the rent, but they will have access and be surrounded by boxes of condoms and ”the pill ” dispensers, be married to their gay partners, will burn Koran and bibles for heat and cooking…just one happy voting family. Liberals you haven’t won anything in the long run except winners of ruin. From that great American political philosopher, Al Sharpton, ”Resist we much”
Agreed that it would be difficult to manipulate the voting machines.
However, for the same hackers that took down Iran’s nuclear computers the Siemens server systems software that ties all of our voting machines together would be child’s play.
They do work for the President you know.
START: Every 4th or 5th click for Romney reassign value to Obama auto reconcile percentages repeat until Obama tally equals 303 – STOP!
The Washington, DC 2013 Hackers Convention ought to be a real blast.
I am ASTOUNDED at the number of people who use computers to post stupid things like “Agreed that it would be difficult to manipulate the voting machines.”
Electronic voting machines are merely touch-screen computers. Any reasonably competent programmer can cause a computer to display one thing on a screen and record something else in memory.
Any reasonably competent programmer can write an algorithm to change the proportion of votes recorded for two candidates without changing the total number of votes — and THERE WOULD BE NO WAY TO CATCH THIS, as the only “auditing” done of electronic voting machines is on the total number of votes cast.
Add the fact that voting in many swing states was under the control of partisan Democrats with Republicans excluded from meaningful oversight, and we have a recipe for such massive fraud that otherwise intelligent people refuse to even consider the possibility.
Without paper ballots there is NO way to have free and fair elections with verifiable results.
This is indisputably true . Voting methods are determined at state level, I believe by the secretary of state. Changing them and mandating voter ID is doable .
I can’t speak for other states, but I can speak for Florida, and it’s not a mystery what happenned.
We do not have valid evidence of vote fraud yet because we’re not looking in the right places — and are being prevented from looking by threats of lawsuits and criminal charges. But the voting mess in South Florida, and our incredibly lax (yes, lax) voter ID system makes fraud likely.
But the main issue was turnout. Republicans simply do not have a machine to get out the vote, and that means starting with block captains six months before the election. Of course we don’t have the built-in population on welfare that dems use for their machine. If this sounds harsh, I suggest you do some poll watching on election day — I used to joke with the precinct leaders in Atlanta that they could easily get paying work with their skill sets, and I meant it, but why work if you can just play activist on our dime, and get treated like somone important while rarely answering to anyone and showing up a few days a year?
Republicans do have retirees who could do this. So, clean up the ID requirements, get some of the wood (that gave us the disgraceful Connie Mack for senate candidate here) out of the Party, and make sure you have everyone on board way before the election.
It ‘s important to note that the dem machine is abetted by scores of well placed activist lawyers who are either living off us by teaching one class a semester or suing the government and others for discrimination. This type of activist turned out in droves in Florida to prevent us from cleaning up the voter rolls; the Party didn’t help because they’re frankly fat and lazy here, and the relentless racism charges by the media and democrats left the arnc of
It’s looking like the Democrat voter fraud machine stole this election. The Constitutional Republic is dead. Secession Yes. Upside down flags Yes. Boycotts Yes. Screw Obama and Leviathan D.C..
Just remember that the 2014 election begins next July. Candidates have to start filing applications to run. There will be lots of Senate and House seats available. But, and this is a very big “BUT”, we must not nominate more Akins, Mourdocks, O’Donnells, Allens, and Angles. Yes, social issues are very important to 15% to 20% of the voting population, but that won’t elect anyone to anything.
If we want to win both houses of Congress, the first step to victory in 2016, we must focus on smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and individual freedom.
Won’t work. If the candidates don’t do anything to embarrass themselves, the media will just make something up, and it will stick. How many people believe that Sarah Palin said that she can see Russia from her house? How many women believe that Romney said he would ban birth control? It’s a lost cause.
then go away and whimper and die, we dont need to listen to cowards and deserters.
I can’t speak for other states, but I can speak for Florida, and it’s not a mystery what happenned.
We do not have valid evidence of vote fraud yet because we’re not looking in the right places — and are being prevented from looking by threats of lawsuits and criminal charges. But the voting mess in South Florida, and our incredibly lax (yes, lax) voter ID system makes fraud likely.
But the main issue was turnout. Republicans simply do not have a machine to get out the vote, and that means starting with block captains six months before the election. Of course we don’t have the built-in population on welfare that dems use for their machine in urban areas with the highest turnouts. If this sounds harsh, I suggest you do some poll watching on election day — I used to joke with the precinct leaders in Atlanta that they could easily get paying work with their skill sets, and I meant it, but why work if you can just play activist on our dime, and get treated like somone important while rarely answering to anyone and showing up a few days a year?
Republicans do have retirees who could do this. So, clean up the ID requirements, get some of the wood (that gave us the disgraceful Connie Mack for senate candidate here) out of the Party, and make sure you have everyone on board way before the election.
And build a damn offensive machine. I can’t count the groups that illegally did election work without reporting it as such. The vast nonprofit infrastructure of the Left –their shadow party — won the election. Either we emulate them, or we accuse them of breaking nonprofit tax law, or we lose.
It ‘s important to note that the dem machine is abetted by scores of well placed activist lawyers who are either living off us by teaching one class a semester while being activists, or suing the government and others for discrimination. This type of activist attorney turned out in droves in Florida to prevent us from cleaning up the voter rolls; the Party didn’t help because they’re frankly fat and lazy here, and the relentless racism charges by the media and democrats sent the RNC running. If it were not for the Tea Party, they would have had no GOTV. They need to grow a backbone.
And they need to stop pandering to the race theme, Hispanic vote, in the aftermath. If they had listened to their base and mobilized their base, they would have won. So the RNC needs to start listening to the Tea Party and stop listening to leftist newspaper editors who will never, ever like them, no matter how much they pander. We saw one county turn Republican this election, and the Tea Party took over the Party there and really mobilized the registered Republicans and independents.
It has nothing to do with underpants. The pollsters were way, way off, and it wasn’t a surprise to me. The dems get out the vote, street by street, house by house, then call us racists until weaker sorts in the Party get defensive, then they threatened us when we try to true the vote. The usual, in other words.
Obama received 7 million fewer votes than in 08. Mitt received one million fewer votes than McCain. Democrats control the media, which is not just biased or incompetent but corrupt. Democrats also control the entertainment industry and academia. The country is culturally Democrat. It is very hard for a Republican to win in this environment.
I think Romney ran a good campaign and would have made an incredibly good POTUS. I do have a couple of criticisms of him. He should have challenged the false narrative that Bush drove the economy into the ditch. The economy collapsed because of the sub prime mortgage debacle – a pet project of the Democrats. Romney should also have demolished the claim that Obama ended the war in Iraq. Bush’s Surge ended the war in Iraq. I assume that Romney’s polling indicated that any mention of Bush was toxic.
The lesson for Republicans is to ferociously attack Obama every day. The topic of the day is Petraeus – who lied about the cause of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. We now know why. He was susceptible to blackmail.
Romney spent too much time responding to scurrilous claims broadcast by the CMA (Communist Media of America).
Romney had ample ammunition and material to attack Obama, but shriveled up when he thought about attacking such a petulant juvenile.
1. They stole it.
2. Never let Karl Rove anywhere near a Preidential campaign again. He consistently under-performs.
3. The GOP’s ‘get out the vote’ operation was utterly incompetent.
The GOP supposedly has loads of money, how about a one million dollar reward for persuasive evidence of organized voter fraud
on a large scale in swing states?
Yeah, I’m amazed at how few people realize that he consistently under-performs.
On the other hand, in his days the GOP’s GOTV function was not just competent but legendary. Don’t know about 2008, but in 2010 the RNC didn’t even bother (Michael Steele had better things to do with the money and the Republican Governors Association took up some of the slack, but obviously not in every state) and this year was an unmitigated disaster (pun originally not intended).
If the party can no longer do the basic blocking and tackling of this essential function, I can’t see much future for it, at least at the level above Congressional districts.
If you want an answer to the question then you need to include the two Senate seats that the GOP also lost. The Beltway Wizards wanted Romney as the nominee because he supposedly gave them the best shot at retaking the Senate. They lost ground in the Senate and they lost the Presidency. Coincidence? Hardly.
The greatest motivating factor against Obama was ObamaCare. I’m sure you recall this particularly devastating Romney ad against ObamaCare: “”… the biggest threat to the economy, our lives and freedom and we don’t have a bullet, a knife, or even a paper clip to fight with. By championing Romney the Beltway Wizards conceded the election. The GOP voters wanted change… Romney started weak, built some momentum with the Ryan pick and then faded away as the voters said “either way Bronco Romney wins”. The only chance Romney had was a strong Conservative case but the Beltway Wizards said “Hey, that Scott Brown has some great campaign ideas” and Romney went down in flames.
Picking Ryan was rather pointless, except in that we’ve learned Republican VP picks must always be major well established national figures who the MSM can’t suddenly re-write.
Otherwise, he picked a strong policy figure, then muzzled him and assured the nation he wasn’t going to follow his policies.
the abysmal stupidity of those voting for obama
the stupid minorities, who are really and truly stupid
they actually voted for obama, that proves it
circular reasoning, you squawk (I read minds, I do)
blacks, he’s their enemy, jews, he’s their enemy
round and round it goes, and the stupidest
of all are our most highly educated intelligentsia
Voter/Election fraud is a known factor in the US since years. Manipulation of the stock exchanges, balance sheets of companies (banks, finance, insurance, large corp ect), university inflation degrees, cheating on every level is all considered a fraud. I’m not even entering in the territory of broken families, values, morals, education. The Fed printing $Paper called money….America starts to see in front of its eyes the horror it has created in the course of the last decades. Other countries in this planet have the same problem, some to a degree lower other higher. A correction is coming, not a stock exchange correction, a spiritual correction, which inevitably passes through another war. Our generation, even those in their 50ies haven’t experienced a WW, I’m afraid we’ll have to go through hell before it gets better. If WW, than the second one was the size of an appetizer.
I didn’t vote for either candidate and I am proud that my vote cannot be used by anyone to claim a mandate for business as usual.
There you have it. Daphne’s no match for Julia. And proud of it. Obama thanks you for your service. You did vote for business as usual.
Yeah, except not voting in this election essentially means voting for the guy in office.
So I had a choice of which twin to vote for? Thanks.
Your apathy shows you are happy with the status quo.
You may now use the “blind exemption” on your tax return for the next 4 years.
You think not? Obama’s claiming your vote as a mandate for business as usual. With your vote you said “I’m just fine with Obama.”
You voted for it. Now you’re gonna get it.
At some point, every man would vote third party. For some, they may have to wait until 2074 when the GOP puts up Zombie Jeffrey Dahmer vs. the Zombie Mao Tse Tung, but at some point, everyone has a ‘No’ point, a gag reflex is engaged, and projectile voting ensues.
Others have a more sensitive gag reflex and refuse to vote for a RINO. So the RINOs need to ask themselves….do I want to lose the Presidency with a RINO, or win with a Cpnservative?
I think we’ve had enough examples that RINOs would rather lose with a RINO than win. Starting with 1964 at least, although of course both parties were less polarized back then so Nelson Rockefeller could not be a RINO per se.
Very good, Lina Inverse.
And yes, that is why we need to play the long game, and deal the RINOS out of power. Things cannot change until we either get a new third party (I heart the Constitution Party) or seriously reform and purge teh GOP.
The best place to reform is to hit the libertarians. Not because they are the true problem, but because given a choice between a Real Conservative and a RINO, they pick RINO. They end up getting in teh way, and we count them as allies, but when push comes to shove, suddenly they’re not on our side.
So clear the field of the Little Yapping Dogs so that we can come to grip with the Dark Lords and show them our righteous fury and our love of the Constitution.
Fraud, bigtime. Those New Black Panther Party guys evidently were very effective, with virtually nobody voting against Dear Leader. It’s like North Korea, but with food. Of course, even that is subject to change!
This comment stream is moronic. Obama, a president with loathed policies and a down economy, beat the Republicans fair and square. As much as the Rachel Maddows of this world would like it to be the case, this is not because economic liberty and small government are losing issues. It is the socially conservative wing of the Republican party that re-elected Obama. Opposition to Gay Marriage is as dead an issue electorally as immigration is. The Republican party needs a bigger tent, and it wont get it as long as telling women, gays, and Latinos what they can and cant do remains a part of the party platform. The Republicans used to be the party of freedom. It needs to get back there, or we all really will end up living in a socialist state.
Best comment of the thread. The Declaration of Independence reads, “…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” That is, the sole purpose of government is to defend the individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Let’s push the Republican party to adopt the Declaration as their platform, and leave the social engineering to the Democrats.
” Opposition to Gay Marriage is as dead an issue electorally as immigration is. The Republican party needs a bigger tent, and it wont get it as long as telling women, gays, and Latinos what they can and cant do remains a part of the party platform.”
You’ll pardon me if I point out that we should not take advice from our political enemies.
Stop beating the “Gay Marriage” drum. People have every right to resist an amorality being legislated down their throats, and if you think that that’s not fair, then take a hike. That game doesn’t even hold water with most DEMOCRAT constituencies…what makes you think it’ll float here?
Deporting illegal immigrants and securing the border is absolutely essential to a free and fair democracy. If you don’t like it or disagree, then hike yourself and your peculiar notions to Guatemala or Ecuador and see how warm a welcome you get.
Despite what many people feel, the act of getting an abortion is settled law. What is actually being argued is who will pay for abortion. We know what the Sandra Flukes and their ilk desire, but this would be analogous to buying toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss for people and then having to pay the dentist bill when these products were not used regularly and correctly.
You are not a Conservative, and you’re hardly even a Libertarian, since failure to support the Party of lesser government is effectively supporting the Party of nanny-state Big Government Socialism.
You’re a crypto-Democrat. Why not just admit it?
Bilgeman- you will note that I was not talking about morals, I was talking about electoral chances. It is impossible to ignore that gay marriage has quickly moved from a problem for the Democrats to a problem for the Republicans. The fact that as devious a politician as Obama has now come out in support of it should tell you that. I think the reason this transition has happened so quickly is because it is an issue that at the end of the day you are telling people what to do with their lives. There is no other life at stake here. Being pro-life can be seen as about love of the unborn. Being anti gay marriage can only be about hate. So if you dont like gay marriage, please feel free to be against it. Just stop bringing it into politics, because all it will do going forward is elect socialists.
I am less sympathetic to the Republican Immigration obsession. You are arguing against a phenomenon that is finished. Last year more Asians came to the US than Latinos. Like Arabs in Europe, you just have to look at the demographics. In 1970 every South American woman had sıx kids, now they have two. In 10 years Arizona is going to be paying Mexicans to come. We are militarizing a border and alienating a generation of voters to absolutely no purpose. Big government at its worst.
Have you looked at the out-of-control violence that is going on at the southern border lately? Are you aware of the identity theft (especially Social Security numbers) that illegals participate in? What about overcrowded, crime-riddled schools in border states? Or the use of welfare by illegals? Yet your plan is to open the floodgates so that millions more potential Democrat voters flock across the border.
Sometimes nations become too stupid to survive. Comments like yours are a pretty good indicator that we already have.
You have assertions. I have numbers. Go here and learn some things. http://www.gapminder.org/
Our drug laws, big government again, have made the border dangerous. Giving the government more money, to send more guns down there, will not fix things.
The outsize immigration of the 90s and the 00s certainly had negative effects. There is no flood of pent up demand below the border. It is over. There are more jobs down there, and less people to fill them.
Also, Latinos will only be Democratic voters if fairly tales like yours continue to be the dominant narrative of the Republican party.
“Bilgeman- you will note that I was not talking about morals, I was talking about electoral chances.”
I say to you that before we were a rich people, we were a free people.
Our wealth came from our freedom.
Before we were a free people, we were a moral people.
Our freedom came from our morality.
That morality, whether it be embraced or despised, was given to us from Mount Sinai and modified by Jesus Christ, tempered through scores of centuries of the various forms of human strife in Western Europe…and nowhere else…and transplanted here.
If your politics are not moral, then you might as well be ruled by a machine.
” It is impossible to ignore that gay marriage has quickly moved from a problem for the Democrats to a problem for the Republicans. The fact that as devious a politician as Obama has now come out in support of it should tell you that.”
That only works if you ignore electoral results like that of Prop 8 in California, where the Black Democrat constituency that voted for Obama ALSO voted for Prop 8, which limited Marriage to an exclusively heterosexual privilege.
And I would remind you that marriage IS a privilege, since you need to secure a license from the State to practice it. They can CALL it a “Right” all they want, but it doesn’t make it so…
As for why Obama and his allies are all of a sudden Gay friendly, that is easy…less than 4 out of 10 White voters voted for them, and Whites being still the majority of voters in this country means that Obama and his Party need to pander to every voting bloc that they can.
“I am less sympathetic to the Republican Immigration obsession. You are arguing against a phenomenon that is finished. Last year more Asians came to the US than Latinos”
Actually the calls to enforce the Immigration laws and secure the border are more from the Conservative Goldwater end of the Party than the wing from which McCain and Romney sprang from…and this issue reaches across the partisan divide to Blue-collar Blue-Dog Demcrats…it is at the lower ends of the economic hierarchy of the Democratic Party where illegal immigration is most keenly felt.
Great inroads can be made here, if the GOP Rockefellerians realize, as Henry Ford did, that their payroll IS their market, and act accordingly and lawfuylly.
BTW, Obama boasts that he has deported more illegal aliens than any other Administration in history, and yet “Hispanics” voted for him 7 out of 10.
All this aside, I can reach no other conclusion that the election results of 2012 was about “Revenge”…racial and ethnic hatred for White people. Obama sounded the dog whistle so loudly there that even more than a few White people heard it.
And so the intellectual and logical and moral arguments are out the window as irrelevant. This is the opening of the overt American Race War.
To Arms!
Actually you have it completely backwards.
We are still a(mostly, not me)Christian nation because we have always been free in matters of religion. Every European country had an established church. Morals and religion were imposed from above. People were not allowed to read the scrıptures for themselves, or if they were, they were forced to accept the interpretation of the protestant theologian that their king or bishop most admired.
In 1776, when the 1st amendment forbade the establishment of religion is this country, every European priest and Bishop looked on and swore the US would become a den of wickedness and atheism. Instead the opposite happened. Christianity is strongest in the United States, where people were trusted to go their own way. Why is this so?
This is because you cannot impose the good news on anyone. People who come to Christ( or Allah, or Snoopy) from a direction of their own choosing do so the strongest. If you seek to promote religion by force you will get rebellion. In the 19th century European governments had detailed legislation on Christianity and morality, we had nothing. Europe ended up with an amoral socialist cesspit. We are more religious because we are free.
If Christian conservatives are wondering why we have taken such a sudden turn away from their vision of morality, they have only themselves to blame. By trying to tell people what to do over the past 30 years they have inspired rebellion. And Americans are nothing if not rebels.
1789 not 1776! D’oh! That is embarassing.
Also speaking as someone who has comfortably lived among people of different creeds and colors all my life I can only say that your race war theories are contemptible, and un-American. Feel free to hold them, but dont expect me to take them seriously. Obama is working for Wall Street, not some mythological black klansmen.
Maybe you’ve forgotten that Obama allowed known race-baiter Al Sharpton, who BTW was also the mastermind behind the lynchmob calling for George Zimmerman’s head after he had to kill Trayvon Martin out of self defense, or how about how Eric Holder refused to look into a case of voter intimidation by the Black Panthers, despite obvious evidence that they were committing it against old ladies, because he doesn’t want to prosecute “my [Holder's] people”
Ludicrous. Al Sharpton is a clown, but dangerous? He is a demagogue who tastelessly capitalizes on the awful history of abuse of black people in this country. Until we are out of living memory of actual lynch mobs against black people, I think we can give their less responsible leaders a pass for some over-heated rhetoric. Eric Holder is more problematic of course. What troubles me about him is not his race however, but his love of Federal Power. That is what we should focus on. By putting these questions into a racial frame, you instantly place yourself beneath any conversation worth having about the direction of this country.
I say to you that before we were a rich people, we were a free people.
Our wealth came from our freedom.
Before we were a free people, we were a moral people.
Our freedom came from our morality.
But when we were a moral people, we weren’t a free people. Remember the Puritans? Jail time for not attending the right church? Burning witches and hanging heretics?
Bilge indeed.
Mr Martin;
I think that I already answered that. We became free BECAUSE we were moral.
That you have to reach back 500 years for your example is telling, is it not?
Interesting that Obama got many more votes in Washington State than the gay marriage initiative. How’s that square with your crackpot theory about people voting for Obama because of GM? Hell, they can’t even get a majority of Californicans to support it.
Idiot.
Awww. You think you know math. Obama is doing a better job slicing off pieces of the electorate than the Republicans. Gay marriage supporters are one slice among many that gave him his socialist victory. Thanks to people like you.
Polls have consistently shown that a large majority of blacks oppose gay marriage; the gay-marriage initiative in CA a couple of years ago would have passed if it had been up to the white vote. And yet, those same blacks voted for Obama 92%. So explain to me again about how social issues are killing Republicans.
Do you read what you write?
“Polls have consistently shown that a large majority of blacks oppose gay marriage; the gay-marriage initiative in CA a couple of years ago would have passed if it had been up to the white vote. And yet, those same blacks voted for Obama 92%. So explain to me again about how social issues are killing Republicans.”
My argument is that gay marriage is a losing issue for Republicans, and you respond by telling me that people who never vote Republican are against it? You sir have failed at arguing on the internet. That is a low bar.
Oh and Bilgeman, the Republicans are absolutely not the party of lesser government.
http://hammeroftruth.com/2012/the-republicans-are-the-real-socialists/
You are a socialist buddy. Get used to it.
Social issues aren’t dead. Actually, social issues are what’s key to the morality and survival to the country. As long as there is a high amount of morality in a country, the economy will prosper. Don’t forget, Gay marriage and all of that are very much supported in Europe (Western Europe at least), and look how that group of countries are doing financially. They gave up on God as well, and you can pretty much guess how they’re doing right now. Unless we get our Judeo-Christian morals back, we cannot hope for a permanent recovery. Yes, the economy’s important, but what good will being fiscally conservative do, assuming we do fix the economy, if we don’t fix morality as well? Even if we fix the economy, if we don’t focus on morality as much as, if not more than the economy, the recovery would only be temporary.
I think the fix was in. We could see it in the giddy expressions on Diane Sawyer and George Stephanapolous before one vote was in. They sure seemed to know exactly what was coming that night.
Since when is “fixing morality” the business of the Federal government? Or of any political party? Individual citizens are first and last responsible for their own values, their own moral judgments, their own conduct. It’s why families are vitally important. And churches. And other institutions, as well as traditional teachings of all kinds that connect us to the past and that should link us to the future. To suggest that a party or the national government should direct the nation’s moral life is to suggest that we the beloved people have already lost the battle. Are we a self-governing republic or not?
Hear Hear!
Also, legislating morality will always backfire. Do you know why the Defense of Marriage Act still exists? Because 5-10 years from now it will be used to force every state to recognize gay marriage. This is due to the Rick Santorums of the world that got that law made. Family law was strictly governed by the states until the social conservatives made it Federal with DOMA. That is what you get for ignoring the founders.
Interesting to read you pontificating about how morality can’t be legislated, but you support legislating gay marriage — or even worse having it crammed down our throats by executive order and judicial fiat when we refuse to legislate it.
Uh no. I am a federalist, and support the right of each state to make their own choices. There is, however, a sad irony to the fact that social conservatives invented the tool that will be used to crush their own policies, and I have too dark a sense of humor not to take some grim pleasure from it. Santorum and Co. foolishly brought the issue to the table.
Got that? Morris doesn’t like to legislate morality. His morality states that gay marriage is okay, so laws that forbid it are bad. But laws forbidding it at the state level are ok, just so long as the law doesn’t happen at the federal level. So if the US consisted of two states, one with 99% of the population, it would be okay to forbid gay marriage in that large state, because, well… it’s a state after all. But it’s not okay to legislate morality at the federal level, for some arbitrary unexplained reason.
I’m always so confused by people who have such a simple take on “morality.” The irony is that they always end up speaking in terms of universal moral rules that they’d like to apply to everyone. I suppose they have some kind of chip on their shoulder about religion. So any morality that comes from religion is a bad kind of morality, and in imposition on their “rights”, but anything they pull out of their own a** is just fine. I hope they don’t discover that bit about “Thou shalt not kill”.
Willy-
Your confusion is an indication of how far we have fallen. What I am arguing for, The simple principles of of Federalism or state’s rights, would have made sense to every American for most of our history.
That you can claim to be, I presume, a conservative, and not understand those principles is depressing.
I support federalism. I support individual rights. Don’t try to change the subject when you cannot defend yourself. What I don’t support is nonsensical, self-contradictory blather.
We will now ask you the question for the third time: What, pray tell, should we legislate, if not matters of right and wrong?
And if a federal government should not “legislate morality”, why would it be acceptable at a state level?
How far we’ve fallen is demonstrated by feel-good moral relativists masquerading as intellectuals. This is what liberals do. Conservatives have concrete ideas of right and wrong, and we endeavor to make our laws reflect those ideas.
Let me give you an example. Slavery is wrong. It is wrong in the US, it is wrong in Iowa, New Jersey, Arizona, even if those states were to write laws that support it. It’s even wrong on other continents, regardless of what their laws might say.
Considering the fact that far too many individual people are supporting such immoralities such as abortion, gay marriage, or the like, I’m doubtful that humanity even has what it takes to maintain morality. Heck, the porn industry is still booming, even moreso thanks to the 70s feminist movement, and far too many shows are being shown of common immorality and are somehow still popular enough to be shown, which leads me to believe that 50 percent of Americans, at the very least, are in support of it. At this point, the only way to reintroduce morality IS to have the government do so. I don’t like the option any more than you do, but constant instances of people wanting several amoral things and amoral things constantly being churned out leaves us with no other option. I wouldn’t even be surprised if kids these days are going to be exposed en-masse to this sort of thing and treated as “normal.”
As an addendum to the above post, it should be noted that this sort of trend started either as early as Woodrow Wilson, or as late as when that atheistic commie mother tried, and succeded, in banning prayer from school.
You should move to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. That is what legislating morality looks like. I prefer liberty.
Re: Robert Morris: We have the ten commandments posted in front of at least one courthouse in Alabama, a large amount of our laws were derived from God, so I doubt that morality was not supposed to be legislated. If it wasn’t we’d be an anarchist country right now, if we even still existed by now. You want an example of that type of liberty? Look no further than to post-Revolution France (specifically the period before Napoleon took over). It was a hellhole like no other, with lots of riots, lots of christians being persecuted all for their being christian, and religion being crushed (churches being turned into stables, and even removing religious holidays from the calendar). Heck, God himself legislated our morality. Why do you think the Ten Commandments, or the laws in the Books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus even existed?
Actually no. Our law comes from the British Common Law Tradition. It is made up of Judges deciding what the right thing to do is according to precedent and the situation in front of them. The whole idea of settling all disputes ahead of time in codified law is a very Continental European one. Napoleon established that. We have been importing more and more of that, and with it socialism and tyranny. I am sorry to hear you are for the European way rather than the American one.
Actually, I’m not for the European way. The European way was the way of the French Revolution and the disaster that resulted from it with Robespierre, where they massacred religion for the sake of Atheism. The European Way was that of Karl Marx, of the Bolshievk Revolution, of Communism.
Also, if it was the British Law system, that’s European in itself, and don’t forget that even our founding fathers had Judeo/Christian beliefs in mind when they stated that we had freedom of religion, not Islam, not Hinduism, not Buddhism. As a matter of fact, Islam and its threat was the reason why our Marines were even created in the first place. Heck, even God himself was against absolute freedom of religion, or have you forgotten about what happened to Israel under King Solomon’s watch when he allowed several religions that weren’t Judah to be practiced freely in Israel? The mere fact that we even have the Ten Commandments outside courtrooms, and that Jefferson himself stated in the Declaration of Independence that our rights were endowed by OUR FATHER indicates that religion plays a very large role in our country. And if we’re very much still religious, why is it that all of that immoral trash like Two and a Half Men is still being cumulated in the airwaves?
Also, during the early stages of America, there were in fact a lot of bibles that were directly issued by the government for schools and other things, and heck, our office even had to swear an oath to God when elected. In fact, a certain place at Texas even has several copies of these bibles that dated back to that time. This was made clear in a documentary that I watched, called Monumental.
You sir have been led astray. You think your teachers serve Christ but they only serve power.
Thomas Jefferson on his Virginia bill for Religious Freedom:
“It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
Also, our marines were founded to deal with piracy and slavery. And they did a kick ass job doing it. The problematic Islam of today was built by the Saudis with our oil money.
Don’t tell me about whether my teachers were serving Christ or power. I already know, and am reluctant to actually heed, my teachers advices ever since they tried to demonize Christians by making it seem as though all christians were misogynistic and all of that, even calling Saint Augustine, of all people, the founder of misogyny. I realize far too well that most of the schools, even the so-called christian schools, are no longer actually serving God. I’ve dealt with this nearly my entire school career, certainly since Elementary school where they implied that christians tried to force religion on the natives. My college years and my Sophomore year of High School didn’t help, either.
And BTW, I AM a devout christian, devout Catholic, in fact, and I’m definitely certain that God himself wanted to impose morality on people. If he didn’t, he obviously wouldn’t have created the Ten Commandments, and possibly wouldn’t have created Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Heck, even with the freedom of religion of the Constitution and our founding fathers creation of it, letters indicated that they were only intending to allow freedom for the various sects between Christianity as well as Judaism, and certainly weren’t anticipating on Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Satanism, or any of that to actually be adopted as religions.
Actually, the Barbary Pirates were full practicioners of Islam. They even stated that they were doing exactly what the Quran stated they should do. That’s what I was referring to.
I was referring to the teacher that lied to you about the Christian foundation of this nation.
The Founders knew their bibles. Most were Christians. They also had a wealth of knowledge from classical Greek and Roman times, and centuries of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Instead of watching Youtube videos and reading blogs that told them what they wanted to hear, they sought human knowledge wherever they could find it. They started a tremendous experiment that we owe it to our ancestors and children to continue. If you only look to the bible to do it, we will fail.
The Barbary Pirates were thieves and slavers. Their religion was Islam but who cares? Few of them could even read. Its like arguing about what the Carthaginians thought. Completely immaterial.
I don’t recall ever mentioning that any of my teachers stated that Christians were responsible for our founding. Actually, if anything, most of my teachers who were in the history and literature department tried to bash Christians whenever they could, with only few exceptions.
In fact, I learned of several of the parts about what my founding fathers stated from posts on PJTV. I think one of them was either Dadmin or that “There will be National Repentence or there will be National Death” guy, and I think there are others.
QED
“Since when is “fixing morality” the business of the Federal government? Or of any political party?”
Since the beginning, when government began establishing laws and exacting punishments.
” To suggest that a party or the national government should direct the nation’s moral life is to suggest that we the beloved people have already lost the battle. Are we a self-governing republic or not?”
I think that you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. It is people and their morality that should direct the government…and that through law.
With the “Gay Marriage” issue, you are witnessing,(if you have eyes to see), EXACTLY what you are advocating against. It is the GOVERNMENT legislating the immorality of some upon the many.
Proposition 8 lawfully PASSED in California by the vote of the electorate, but the Will of the People of that state has been thwarted by a panel of Federal judges.
This is democracy?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. -1st Amendment
When they said religion, they were referring to the Judeo-Christian religion. And don’t forget, Isreael under Solomon allowed literally all religions in all forms to be practiced freely with no restraint. That ended badly.
To force Christianity is to kill Christianity. It happened in Europe and you are trying to make it happen here.
They’ve forced Atheism onto us as well as several religions onto us, that’s killing us right now.
And BTW, I also intend for Jewish People to be dominant in America as well, alongside Christianity. I take it you haven’t read several letters made by the founding fathers where they explicitly stated that the religion they had in mind was Judeo-Christian principles.
Heck, if you read your Old Testament, King Solomon allowed for massive, virtually limitless amounts of freedom of religion in Israel (in other words, he let religions besides Judah to be practiced in Israel). It led to Israel being conquered, by God’s will, by the Babylonians and thus to the Babylonian Captivity. That alone makes it very clear that he does not support Judeo-Christian principles.
Sorry, that was supposed to be “that alone makes it clear that God does not support freedom of religion.”
Certain founders may have thought that way. Please provide links. Educate me. Jefferson indisputably did not. Nor did Franklin. We are talking about hundreds of men. And we have the words that they chose to make the law of the land. Those words say nothing about the Bible.
I am afraid there is little about our modern way of life that squares with the bible. The only way there is to join the Amish or similar sects, certain orthodox sects of Judaism, or the Taliban(certainly not the Saudis, eye of the needle and all that). I am open to the idea that the bible contains the true word of Jesus. He was certainly a great teacher. Unfortunately, I am too much of a historian to accept the bible on its face. It has been corrupted by 2000 years of Emperors, Kings and tyrants. Faith in God is good, faith in those men is impossible.
And this whole thread sums up a reason why people grew tired of America and want it to be over. I’ve talked to people, they are fed up with being The Light and The Way for the rest of the world. They want this mess wiped up and to get on with the rest of their lives. Quite a few people voted for the incumbent for precisely that reason, to bring the empire to a close whatever the cost. We had Bush II the Decider, we finish with Obama the Concluder…..’>……..
Hey Liz, if your homies voted for Obama to bring America down, you deserve the third world hell hole it will become and the Zimbabwean econnomy in your future.
yeah….. alla that fun and no heat…..;>………
social issues are incredibly contentious. They are the leading cause of war, and can lose elections but rarely win them . Fortunately we can be the tea party or the libertarians here and cry “Sates Rights” . The federal government must be neutral in matters of religion. Let the states deal with gay rights, abortion and any and all such issues. Our candidates shouldn’t discuss these issues at all. The media will kill them no matter what they say and no position will satisfy all the voters who are economically conservative , enjoy freedom or approve of wealth and free enterprise (and that is a lot of people) .
Exactly.
The abandonment of the party by women in particular was over-rated in terms of exit polls. And I don’t recall hearing anyone ‘tell Latinos what they can and can’t do.’ The party bent over backwards for Latinos, but it doesn’t support illegal immigration, and it doesn’t support affirmative action, and it doesn’t support government dependency — end of story. Calling that oppression — particularly of Latinos — is just untrue.
Gay issues are a different story. Pro-life is a core value. Nearly or more than half of all women are pro-life, last time I checked the numbers.
Thank you for making an actual argument.
Yes, Bush and Rove tried hard to cater to Latinos, but as you will recall, they failed utterly to bring about comprehensive reform. Broken promises do not make friends. Bush and Rove were derailed by a grass roots movement in the party that grew up in response to some real issues from the old days of mass migration. Unfortunately figures like Joe Arpaio and Tom Tancredo have become the face of the Republican party on this issue. They have shaped a narrative that you are validating.
Latinos are an incredibly diverse group, most of which are natural Republicans (conservative, moving up the economic ladder). However, they think the Republicans exclusively think of them as welfare cheats. This is exaggerated by the mainstream media, but you guys, as your comment itself shows, make it easier for them.
Gay Marriage is finished as an electoral issue. It will only get worse for the Republicans, if they hold on to it.
The right to life movement may continue to be an electoral winner, or even grow in popularity, if you can get more of those women to speak up for it. Nobody wants to listen to old white dudes talk about it.
STREETFIGHTERS VS. GENTLEMEN, SLUTS VS LADIES, TAKERS VS MAKERS, GIMMEDATS VS REPUBS, UNION THUGS VS WORKERS, 99% VS 1%, PUBLIC SECTOR VS PRIVATE SECTOR and lets not forget women, hispanics, blacks, muslims vs whites. REVENGE!
All Posters,
Several above have put the spot light on voter fraud. When I hear that there are wards where every vote went to Obama, that tells me what I need to know. If we can’t have a fair election, then that leaves us with an alternative the Marxists won’t like one bit.
Electronic voting machines can be rigged and it looks like they were last week. The GOP had better do something about the fraud as a top priority. They control most of the governorships and many of the legislatures.
If we can’t have a fair process, that means that our republic is at an end. If there is disenfrachisement on a mass scale, then that may leave the disenfranchised with no peaceful alternative to effect change.
That is a very dangerous outcome for the oppresssors.
Amen to that.
However,
1) Most of the states don’t matter, and
2) Most of the states that matter have Republican governors and legislatures, but separately elected donkey secretaries of state. The SoS runs the elections, and the gov and legislature have very limited power over them.
The donkeys are now reaping the fruits of their push to elect their Sos’s. They didn’t do it for no reason.
It is suspicious that such crowds turned out for Romney and so few for Obama with the end result.
Another thing that is suspicious is Obama’s performance in the first “debate”, where he just showed up and acted as if he didn’t need to be there. I suggest arrogance in knowing the outcome.
Precincts where there are ZERO votes for the opponent? Nah; That can’t be crooked.
And Florida had over 4000 votes pop up in the last minute to save a Democrat over one of the fastest rising Conservative super-stars? Heh, yep.
Why was Harry Reid so easily re-elected when he looked defeated until the end? Musta been his suave and debonaire personality.
And how were Conservatives able to take back the House in 2010? Was that just a gracious act by the regime to dispel suspicion?
Why are the military votes being screwed with like never before?
If you want to steal an election and not look suspicious, taking it with a small margin would be the most stealth method, and thereby look legitimate enough to silence the naysayers.
The United States already has a communist government; It is operating under the “Democrat” umbrella.
We already have ample proof what this regime will do for their agenda. Nothing they do is above suspicion.
Yeah, I agree. And if that picture on the Breitbart article “World supports Obama Win” is anything to go by, they may have even gotten people who obviously do not qualify as American citizens to vote in the election, meaning that a large amount of votes are suspect.
Obama won by more votes in 4 cities than he lost by in the rest of the country combined; New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. That’s a win.
I disagree with all those who say that Romney wasn’t “conservative” enough and that he was too “close” to Obama’s positions. Ridiculous.
Although a number of items contributed to the loss, more and more I am convinced that the reason Romney lost – and many other Republican candidates, too – is that Republicans no longer are the party of freedom all around. They say they are with fiscal issues and “small government.” Yet, when it comes to the bedroom, they are mired in another century. Increasingly, more of our voters do not agree with social conservatism. So, it’s one thing for the party to have a “big tent” that allows for various views within the party on social issues. Yet, they will not vote for a party that they fear will work to make abortion illegal, birth control tough to get and demonize gay people.
I am not telling my friends who are social conservatives that they must give up their beliefs. I am, however, telling them that if they want these beliefs in the Republican platform, then prepare to go the way of the dodo bird. We need freedom in the marketplace – and in our religious/social beliefs.
I’m all on board with the “freedom” thing, but when you take a human life, you’re actually depriving someone of freedom. I suppose I’m not very hip, and I’m going the way of the dodo. But then, so is Western Civilization, so I’m in good company.
Peg, what in the hell are you talking about? There was not one single social-conservative position that was advocated by Romney. Not one. He made it a point of avoiding the abortion issue. And no, he did not at any point advocate restricing access to birth control. Why do so many women believe that? Can you dig up a quote? No, you can’t, because he never said that. It was a media lie from start to finish. Did Romney advocate segregation? A huge marjority of blacks say that he did. Do you believe that too?
The only time Romney got anywhere near a social issue was when he made the 47% remark. And look at the pile of crap that got dumped on him for saying that. He learned his lesson and never brought it up again.
I can’t help it if you believe the MSM. Romney advocated for none of those things. However, abortion is not and never should be birth control. A child born or not has a right to his or her life the same as every other human being, jsut because his or her life might be inconvenient for the mother is no good reason to allow for summary execution. As to birth control, no one was ever talking about banning it, the argument was over who should pay for it. I don’t think your birth control is my responsibility to pay for as a tax payer. Sex is not a right. I don’t want to stop you from having it, but you need to pony up and pay for it same as I did when I was young, poor and stupid. Somehow, I was never quite stupid enough to think I was too poor to pay for birth control. Let’s be real here; if you’re too poor to pay for birth control, then you’re certainly too poor to afford having a child, and since no birth control is 100% effective, maybe you shouldn’t be risking sex, now should you? And as for gays, they don’t deserve special rights any more than anyone else does. They shouldn’t get to redefine a word that has meant one thing for all of recorded human history. Let them have the legal bennies, but don’t let them force their version of the word down everyone else’s throat. They can call their union a marriage on their own without needing a law to force the rest of us to do it, too.
I voted, as I always do. I never miss an election, not even a primary. I did not vote for Obama or Romney. I voted for Tom Hoefling the America’s Party candidate. The two elections before that I voted for Alan Keyes. I didn’t leave the Republican party, it left me. I stopped continually asking myself why the Republicans in Congress never get rid of the bloated bureaucracy when they are in power, why the Constitution isn’t upheld – even when they have the White House – and realized they are just as corrupt as the other party.
My vote is a sacred trust and I cast it carefully and thoughtfully. It isn’t a card to be played in a game of chance, nor is it a chit to be cashed in for my benefit. I honor God in all I do and that includes casting my ballot. It was paid for by the blood and treasure of great men and I will not cast it for those who disdain the very Republic they desire to rule.
Yea; Washington has a deep respect for voters like you. There’s even a monument there for you people somewhere, but it keeps getting swept up every couple days.
” A man may imagine things that are false,but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.” Isaac Newton
I wonder if Newton knew that people have died from their tribal voodoo doctor putting a spell on them?
I’m somewhat similar in that I’m an independent voter. I’d vote for whichever party agrees most with my beliefs during an election cycle. As long as one of the candidates fielded were pro-life and supported God and Israel, I don’t care what party they belong to. In a way, I’m somewhat of a mercenary regarding politics. Heck, I’d even vote Democrat if it turns out their candidate actually supported Pro-Life issues, God, and Israel, and if it turned out the Republican candidate supported Pro-Abortion issues and was against God and Israel. Not that it’s a likely option to occur, but still. I’m not the kind of guy who would sacrifice his own moral compass to vote the party line.
It’s a lot simpler than all this foo-faa guys and gals. American voters are never going to elect somebody named Mitt president. There is just no way for a Mitt to be a regular guy. Unless he’s a person of color and then it’s iffy.
Yeah, you’re right we need a candidate with a good old Anglo Saxon name like Barack.
…. One Week Later, Nobody Knows
Really?
Obama’s victory had been bought with the gobs and gobs of unaccounted-for Stimulus money, the Clunker money, and you-name-it money. ACORN and the likes did not disappear, they went underground.
This is the first ever election that was openly ‘manufactured’, and we the citizens accepted it as legitimate.
There’s another possibility here. Some of us ‘hard-line’ conservatives realize that there’s inevitable economic pain due to the decisions of the past.
Interest rates are at zero and the economy is stagnant. Interest rates must rise to attract new investment but current malinvestments will need to be liquidated.
This will happen whoever is in the White House. So for one, what’s the point in turning out to vote? And second, we’d rather the other party be in the white house for the meltdown.
Now, I voted for Romney, but this calculus did go through my mind. I’m sure it went through others.
Charlie,
You omit the “personality cult” component of this past cycle. No matter what you think of him Obama is the handsomest, most telegenic, most “chick magnet”y presidential candidate we have seen this side of JFK. I have no data but I’ll bet that was worth just shy of a percentage point in the popular vote total. In a close race, combined with the other factors you mention, that will do it.
Maybe, but the problem is that we’ve been exposed to a lot of corruption and bad policies of his administration. A “cult of personality” will mean absolutely nothing if his policies are causing a lot of people to be out of work, if his foreign policy issues were an unmitigated disaster, and all of that. Heck, more and more things were unveiled about him recently on online sources, and since most people today have a computer, it wouldn’t have taken that long to expose some of his shady past. Heck, it would have been shattered completely from “2016: Obama’s America”‘s $30 million at the box office. At least back in JFK’s time, there wasn’t an internet to turn to, or heck, even FOX News. Heck, in The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent possessed a “cult of personality”, and it was pretty clear that the very instant his shady past was exposed (ie, Bane reading Gordon’s planned speech for the eight-year anniversary of Harvey Dent Day in The Dark Knight Rises) that it all crumbled.
What you are saying SHOULD be true. However, don’t underestimate the propensity of people under a cultish thrall to do self-destructive things on behalf of “Dear Leader”. Or the tendency of some people in bad relationships to work overtime to “make things right” rather than call it quits. It is a small minority, to be sure, but may have been just enough.
Yeah, well, tell that to Harvey Dent and how that worked out in The Dark Knight Rises. He had a cult of personality, and yet as soon as one bad thing about his past (specifically the truth behind his death) came to light, his image irrepairably shattered, and it resulted in all the criminals imprisoned under the Dent act being released enmasse. If it worked, Bane’s plan would have failed horribly.
Eric, someone did mention to you that that’s fiction?
I know it’s fiction, but it still applies.
I can also cite at least one real life event where such was the case: I remember watching a documentary about Stalin in my 9th grade literature class (note: my teachers did not actually like Stalin), and the documentary stated that, around the time of his death, people fought to give flowers to his grave. The documentary then stated that Khrushchev revealed that Stalin was behind a lot of the atrocities in the Soviet Union, to which it then led to several uprising and trying to tear down several structures pertaining to Stalin. That shows how, the very instant at least one imperfection of someone they basically looked up to is unveiled, the entire “Cult of Personality” crumbles quickly.
One thing is certain: The MSM gave Obama a few percentage points by their pre-election coverage. This was enough to swing it his way. A related issue was the whole “rich” thing. We have to accept that we now live in a country where being rich and successful means, to many voters, that you are part of the Bernie Madoff crowd.
Nobody knows?? It is simple: This election has shown us that the American people were presented with a choice between taking the Blue Pill or the Red Pill. The majority have chosen the Blue Pill.
No, the majority of the population most likely took the red pill, given the fact that a majority obviously saw “2016: Obama’s America” in theaters (why else would they have gotten $30,000,000 at the box offices?), which is about as exposing of the dark truth about Obama and his plans as one can get. What we have is voter fraud. Don’t forget, places such as Philadelphia were stated to have 100% Obama votes, which even for a liberal community, that’s not actually probable. Also, there were reports that the swing states, and even regular states, had several of the voters votes inexplicably changed to Obama, hinting that the voting machines were rigged, and in the case of Connecticut, there was even a report that at least 30 people who voted in the election were actually dead. I also recall hearing a story where a Greek immigrant who just got her right to vote and went to a polling place in California, and discovered to her shock and disgust that the polling place kept her husband’s grandmother’s ballot even though she had in fact died at least a few years earlier. Why did they keep it? They usually kept dead voter ballots until ten years after their death, that’s why! Heck, the headline picture on the Breitbart article regarding world celebrations of Obama’s reelection had several Indonesian natives adorning stickers stating “I voted!” and even carried pamphlets relating to the election, despite obviously not being American citizens, which means they may have voted illegally in at least Indonesia, if not across the globe.
Is everything really that simple? Could it be that a few million people took no pill at all because they were misled about the side-effects of the red pill? Could it be that some people took 2 pills, since there’s really no effective way to control that? Could it be that some people who intended to take a red pill were really given a blue one?
I’ve got a simpler, if more distressing, suggestion. Romney lost because Americans vote for the candidate they feel more comfortable with. If you look across the last century, how often has the more charismatic candidate lost? Ever? The last wooden winner I can think of was GH Bush and he beat an arguably less likeable Michael Dukakis. Republicans were blessed with Al Gore and John Kerry in the past decade. If there is a lesson, its probably that Americans are pretty easily swayed by likeability. Try running someone who is actually charismatic and lets see what happens.
What I don’t understand is why so many people are so ‘comfortable’ with a narcissistic, hate-filled bigot like Obama. But I’m beginning to understand the seduction of the German people 80 years ago a little better. After watching how some of my countrymen react to this character, I no longer judge the Germans.
If more people were forced to read what he said instead of being able to listen to him or watch him, it would make a big difference.
Evidence is for a court of law. Out in real life, it is intent and opportunity that count.
With Bronco Bama, you’re not connecting the dots so much as connecting the lies.
Mr. Martin,
I have an alternate theory of why the election turned out the way it did. It’s an alternate theory only in the sense that it is probably obvious to everyone who doesn’t get their information from Fox “News”, MSNBC, talk radio, or the blogosphere. My theory of the REB losses is twofold: First, the “Southern Strategy” used by the GOP is no longer capable of maintaining a nation party and second, the numbers 53%, 87%, and 628. Those numbers represent 1) the percentage of the vote that were women, 2) the percentage of woman that support accesses to abortion/contraception, and 3) the number of bills passed in the last legislative session by REB controlled legislatures to restrict access to abortion/contraception.
In the short-term the REB’s can still win some elections with only older white men but not without support from women.
why do sites parse articles into three pages and require an additional click to view the entire piece? This is the age of broadband data not the 900 baud modem where every character is dear.
A cynic would say that it affords additional opportunity to present banner ads. Is the cynic correct?
Your request will follow this brief advertisement; Click HERE to skip this ad.
Its odd how often realism is mistaken for cynicism. It is worth recalling, however, that showing those adds to people is what pays our princely salaries.
Those conservatives who failed to show up at the polls because Romney was Mormon or just not quite conservative enough, should be tied to a post and horsewhipped.
This is a comment much made by liberals, and conservatives typically laugh at such for they know who has the weapons and the skill in using them. Its not that every RINO is a wimp, but if a 100 RINOs got locked in a room with a 100 Conservatives, most of the fighting would be between Conservatives as each one wanted more than one RINO to one punch K.O..
I will give you my take from Florida, on Florida
Romney’s ground game was better than I have ever seen from a Republican, but Obama’s was even more determined. I know Obama voters that received at least three visits at their home. They didn’t merely want to know have you voted, but what time do you plan to vote.
We had a slew of amendments on the ballot that many voters did not bother to read until they were voting. This slowed lines like you wouldn’t believe. We knew lines were very long in areas where Romney would do well on election day, but I fear too many people gave up and never bothered to vote. In other words, the long lines were more about extra time required to wade through those amendments. Most of those amendments were designed to bring out ‘values voters”. They merely succeeded in clogging lines.
I saw no evidence that Mormonism stopped fundamentalists from voting for Romney. The truth is they were strongly motivated to vote against Obama based on issues like gay marriage, which no doubt they heard about in the sermons at their local churches for weeks on end.
And of course there was certainly some amount of fraud, particularly in South Florida.
As for those who didn’t vote, I have nothing to say to them. By not voting they as good as voted for Obama and his ever-growing centralized government And Kerry at State and whatever Supreme Court Justices we get out of this disgrace. They are the equivalent of the soldier who walks away from his post at night because he doesn’t really care which side wins the battle. They helped to give us the next four years and they have richly earned my scorn. I have more respect for the people who showed up, even if it was merely to write in Mickey Mouse.
Was, it’s worse than that… Rumor has it today that Kerry will disgrace the office of the Secretary of Defense.
The deal about voter turnout being so low seems off to me. In Oklahoma, at least the metro area, everyone I talked to said you had to wait at least 1.5 to 2 hours in line to vote, all day long, because of the turnout. People who had lived in neighborhoods for years looked at their polling location and said they had never seen this much turnout. So to me, the numbers don’t jive with what I saw on the ground and heard others say about the turnout.
Did anyone else have a similar experience and were surprised the turnout numbers were low?
I can vouch for that: I went early to vote at the Dunwoody Library the day of the election (around 7 AM), and there was a huge line of voters that were piling in to vote. Heck, it continued to grow by the time we left. So no, voter turnout, at least here in Dunwoody Georgia, was not low. Heck, it was actually higher than it was in 2008, which my mom was touched at.
In my part of Texas—West of Houston—early voter turnout was huge all the way to Election Day.
It’s likely that Romney lost for a number of reasons, but voter fraud probably tops the list. As invested as the dems have become in O’s political survival they had no choice but to pour it on. But O’s chickens are coming home to roost over the next four years and there isn’t much besides committing even more election fraud the dems can do about it.
So, yes, my big money is on O’s second term being a belly flop, maybe a big one—the last successful second termer was T. Roosevelt. O is just too instinctively divisive, too polarizing, and generally too much of an all-around misfire to have anything close to a successful second, given that his first probably set a new all-time record for presidential malfeasance . And don’t lose sight of the impact Obamacare is going to have on voters’ frame of mind; it could really poison the well for the dems in ’16, maybe even ‘14. And although Benghazigate can’t be hidden behind Executive Privilege it looks like Team O recently decided that sexual shenanigans might work just as well.
May I add another possible option? The GOP staged a self-defeat. We all know where the Obama policies are going to get us. In fact I believe we may see the end of the Democratic Party if the economy takes a 1929-like nosedive.
One of the reasons for my interpretation of the facts at hand:
1. The US becomes the biggest exporter of oil in about 5 to 6 years (check it, it is absolutely factual)
2. The US debt is about 60% internal (US Treasury)
3. Paying the US debt with the proceeds of an exploding exporting economy (2017/2018) would safely repatriate all the petro-dollars without causing a peak of inflation
4. Because of the demise of American style socialism and the collapse of the Democratic Party in the period of 2013-2016, unions are weakened and so is the welfare state.
How about that for a conspiracy theory?
Oil is Allah, and Allah is oil. Infidels don’t mess with Allah; It’s politically incorrect.
See Obama’s recent mandates to see where oil exploration/production is going in the U.S.
Afraid I have to agree with you about fraud, although I don’t think its future adoption as SOP in the future is inevitable. To me all the analysis and self-flagellation are sad reminders of that old cliché, “who’re you gonna’ believe, me or your lyin’ eyes.”
The first thing we need is a firewall against voter fraud. I’ll never believe that this alone wouldn’t have been enough to defeat Obama, despite his being the living embodiment of the signature leftist technique of lying like a rug to fan the flames of racial hatred, revenge, envy, and class warfare.
The other thing we need to do is to own the public’s perception of our candidate’s message, capabilities, and persona by getting there “firstest, fastest, with the mostest,” in all media, but especially an exponentially ramped up use of social media.
We might also need transmitters injected into every person by a certain age, possibly even at birth, in order to further ensure that at the very least ghost voting is killed (no pun intended). Honestly, we have far too many instances of Ghost Voting in Chicago, in Connecticut, and even in California. At this point, we need it to be that the very second someone has died, they are instantly ineligable to vote.
It is highly interesting, and not a bit ironic, that I understand the ability of any old slob to show up and cast a ballot was what was reputedly surprised the UN election observers that the DemocRats invited.
So even the UN observers are surprised at our lack of voter ID laws.
People like me, (yea; I know there aren’t that many) avoid “social media” like the plague. Are you aware that there is a database loaded to your device/computer whenever you use that media? It has been used successfully for organizing action groups like terrorists, but they have left a data trail to follow.
If I knew I could use it with complete anonymity and security, then I might consider it. But, even I know there is no such thing as complete anonymity and security for the masses anymore, anywhere.
I’m talking about the people who did not vote for Romney who do use it, Friend. Note my italicized use of *all* media in the last line of the post.
I don’t use social media and expect to be one of the last people left alive in that category. Ditto i-Phones. The tracking information in those is hair-raising.
Unless there becomes a “Conservative Media Network” that can force their exposure to the masses, we’re just spittin into the wind. Those social media networks are owned and operated by card carrying Liberals. Michelle Malkin has “Twitchy” which culls Twitter for subscribers, but there you go getting into the privacy issue again.
Conservatives should flatly refuse to participate with the enemy (main stream media), and boycott anything they are associated with. If you play their game, you always lose anyway. So, why play at all?
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are about the only ones I know that have ventured in this direction. There has to be more.
Going to Liberal sites and commenting gets you a virtual egging. I don’t waste my time any more.
PJM is one of the places I’ve found that has a good collection of Conservatives. There are others, such as Daily Caller, News Busters, National Review, American Thinker, The Heritage Foundation, Powerline blog, The American Magazine, Cato Institute, Michelle Malkin. There you find adult conversation.
There are financial penalties in the near future that even the most ardent Obama fan is going to be upset with. But will that be enough to make an opponent of them? I’m sure you have tried to rationalize with them; It’s like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. Feels good when you stop.
It is looking more and more like massive vote fraud is the biggest answer. Maybe not the only answer but the biggest one.
Fraud – big time. And no one to investigate, prosecute, or at least correct it for next time.
Like Reagan was re elected despite high unemployment and a bumbling economy. However, he cut spending and lowered taxes, like Obama, and with two wars I think the President played the “Lesser of twin evils” a bit better in the eyes of the electorate. However, Romney had the further disadvantage because many in his own party were not very interested in him as their candidate and the fact that he made a few “less than forgiving” verbal gaffes. The good news is that there were no real compelling reasons for Obama to lose so at least the Repbublicans will have “a lessons learned” sheet ready to take to the next election. And with elections usually rotating within Cycles, Republicans will have a real shot in 2016 if they have a decent candidate. Great Article, Thanks.
By jove, you’re right. Romney’s verbal gaffes were completely inexcusable. On the other hand, Bidens were simply unexciting.
I’ll have to be more attentive to these next election. :-7
Charlie
Do you have democrat friends? I do. Do you talk to Obama voters? I do. What I hear is that many of these would love to vote republican but realize that taxes will need to be raised and budgets will need trimming and view this as fiscal responsibility. They self-identify as CONSERVATIVE. A number of them reckon Obamacare to be substantially the same as what Gingrich proposed in the 90′s and see this as a responsible plan. To them they DID vote conservative. And I mentioned that they would love to vote republican, right? However in their view the GOP is run by the batshit crazies, everything from abortion wingnuts to execrable teabaggers ranting about nonsense. See Robert Morris @ #37.
Bilgeman, responding to #37 –
You’re emotionally compromised and not paying attention. It was conservatives like you who put up anti-gay initiatives in no less than four states. And in no less than four states, these initiatives lost. You were told to sod off by the voting public. They don’t like you nor your “values.”
It was not Obama nor the left who made social issues dominant. It was the far right. The social conservatives. The left merely responded. Nobody is trying to impose their values on you. When you social conservatives are putting up anti-gay initiatives it is YOU trying to impose YOUR values.
And by the way this is pretty much how most of the country views this, not just me. After all, the anti-gay legislation lost and Obama was elected.
Sad day. We lost the presidency and the senate because of you wingnuts just as I had feared we would. Nice going.
Nice try dumba**. What exactly are these anti-gay positions the GOP ran on? Romney ran on jobs and the economy.
Hey forkface. Obama got a lot more votes in Washington State than the GM initiative. Nobody gives a crap about GM. Nobody.
If Obamacare, a measure explicitly intended to drive the country towards government-run health care, is “conservative”, then we may as well chuck the English language.
“You’re emotionally compromised and not paying attention. It was conservatives like you who put up anti-gay initiatives in no less than four states. ”
You’ll pardon me if I don’t follow each and every state’s Sodomite Political issue, I wouldn’t wish such a life on anyone, but in Maryland the initiative on “Gay Marriage” came from the Gay Cult’s political lobby…NOT the Republicans,not the Churches.
Oh, but if we oppose changing the status quo, WE are the ones “imposing”.
Look, ace, I know the game, but the fact is that you cannot have an “election” if opposition to the favored outcome is “not allowed” or “discounted”.
And the point that you and others have been trying to make here about Conservatives not raising “social issues”, or Republicans disavowing them if they DO is an utterly absurd one.
In 2016, a RINO nominee could remain ABSOLUTELY MUM on anything that the slack-jawed label a “social issue”. ANY language that might in ANY way be construed by the DemcRats as being “social issue” oriented could be stripped from the party platform, and guess what, sport?
They would STILL attack us as being “on the wrong side” of their “social issues”.
If you don’t know this to be true, then you are being deliberately mendacious or monumentally obtuse, and in either case I am wasting my time discussing this with you.
Charlie — I think you have nailed it exactly: nobody knows why Obama won. Obama certainly doesn’t know why he won — as exhibited by his uncharacteristic emotionalism over the end of this election. I think he thought he was going to get rolled in the swing states, and was worried about losing everything but the Left coast and the Northeast.
I am not a conspiracy guy. I think that the least-complex answer is usually the best one because let’s face it: complexity requires competence to run, and the DNC is not competent at anything except maybe ‘ginning up insults and hooking up with strangers and other people’s wives. But I have a hard time believing that 5 or 6 million voters stayed home on the red-side because of Mormonism. Most Christian culture warrior couldn’t tell the difference between a Mennonite and a Mormon.
I think someone with time and patience needs to compare the counts of voters checked in at the polls in the swing states with the final counts of votes to see if the numbers match. A very simple con — especially in states where there are paper ballots involved — would be to ditch “unfavorable” ballots, and the net result would only look like a suppressed turnout.
Is anyone checking that? Does it get checked?
My two doubloons on this would be to point out that Romney was also what amounts to the good old boy GOP establishment’s moderate (aka dem-lite)’my turn’ guy. I am so tired of re-nominating failed candidates from previous election cycles. They failed for a reason and doing the same thing expecting different results hasn’t been working out all that well, now has it?
Romney is the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama the first time around. Now everyone is wondering why Romney lost. He lost for the same reason Bob Dole lost but some are still trying to figure out that one too.
For the GOP to win a presidential election, the Democratic candidate has to SUCK BIG TIME. Otherwise they win.
Conclusion: if you want to win find a candidate that does not SUCK. I bet you they will present Jeb Bush in 2016. It’s his turn!
Mr. Martin apparently you live under a rock,
The country has just witness
MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD
Obama stole the election — he won NOTHING
Romney did not lose, and certainly did not lose for any of the petty reasons you mentioned.
Romney was robbed by a crook.
Really people, I know the new format’s a little confusing, but read the damned second page.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that even with Obama weakened by the miserable economy … Republicans could not get the job done. This should have been easy.
As Clint Eastwood would say “…when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”
There are no dead bodies because of the election. But there is because of actions/inaction in Benghazi.
With a full and complete accounting, I believe this would result in Obama being removed from office in a most embarrassing way. Many heads may roll, but it is necessary for the maintenance of OUR REPUBLIC.
Criminal deception IS being managed by this regime.
We can get to the election debacle later.
The Democrat Senate is a firewall against Obama being removed from office. Period.
If that’s your final decision, then the Republic is finished, as far as you are concerned.
But, if an investigation uncovers a massive coverup, and absolute malfeasance, the Senate would have to grant the decision, or civil war would ensue.
I have no doubt the real story is being suppressed in the most adroit fashion.
I’ll make sure you and I don’t end up in the same fox hole.
I’ve been in a foxhole, dude, have you? I’m not quitting anything. I am merely asserting that getting Harry Reid and his merry band of di**heads to try Obama is highly unlikely.
Cyber, I’m afraid Trang’s right. The thing you’re missing is that they hate us and they wish us dead. Obama is their guy and they will defend him to the last man, no matter what he does, because one of them and we are The Other.
trang & Cousin;
IF ample evidence revealed malfeasance and the attempt to cover up and deflect the investigation, any attempt by the Senate to dismiss the charges would be met with a sizable civil uprising, since the dead have been considered heroes for their actions.
Not all Senators are happy with the situation; Feinstein, for one. And she wouldn’t be alone when the chips fall.
Cyber, I hope you’re right. The thought has occurred to me that if Feinstein pushes the issue too hard, she may suddenly find herself in a compromising position, just like Patraeus. (And yes, I will give her a certain amount of props for asking the questions.)
What about the simple answer ?
There is a consolidated majority of idiots in this country.
Schools, university, media, welfare have finally achieved what the subversives wanted. The “homo sovieticus” has won.
Its the economy stupid.
From Ross Douthat’s column in Sunday’s NYTimes:
“But Republicans are also losing because today’s economic landscape is very different than in the days of Ronald Reagan’s landslides. The problems that middle-class Americans faced in the late 1970s are not the problems of today. Health care now takes a bigger bite than income taxes out of many paychecks. Wage stagnation is a bigger threat to blue-collar workers than inflation. Middle-income parents worry more about the cost of college than the crime rate. Americans are more likely to fret about Washington’s coziness with big business than about big government alone.
Both shifts, demographic and economic, must be addressed if Republicans are to find a way back to the majority. But the temptation for the party’s elites will be to fasten on the demographic explanation, because playing identity politics seems far less painful than overhauling the Republican economic message.”
This is misdirection pure and simple. The middle class and many in the trades did vote for Romney. There are fewer of us thanks to increased poverty, and a growing number of people that pay no income taxes.
“Americans are more likely to fret about Washington’s coziness with big business than about big government alone.” If they are seriously thinking along those lines there is no way they would vote for Obama. Coziness is not the word I would use. Government and the too-big-to-fails are merging into something that has nothing to do with free markets. Obama favors the merger.
These are the sorta things that one may see when when we have a anti-Christ poking around. No?
This is kind of squirrely. I’m assuming at some point someone is going to clean up vote fraud. Okay- so no motor voter registration?
Why not move the voter registration office to some place that you can only access by car? Technically, you’re open to everyone- but who can make it? Right now, a great many social services use geographic vetting, just the other way. To use the city computer center, one is obliged to park in an unsafe neighborhood. They don’t even patrol. So anyone with a car that works isn’t going to park there, to use the facility. Technically, it’s open to anyone in the city. Practically, it’s only open to people in the projects next to it.
Or, even birth certificates. Again- microscopic parking in an unsafe area. I had to use the bus to get there with the kids, when getting papers to register for school. My purse, with all- and I do mean ALL- of my ID was stolen. I had to have my birth certificate to get my kids’ birth certificates. It was like tethering a goat. I’ve had to file papers with the IRS for years, since someone else is using my stolen ID papers.
The cities are set up for urban thieves to have use of public facilities. Why not make it easy for public goods to be used by suburban, tax-paying citizens, rather than moochers? It’s easy to do opaquely- Post Offices have moved from the town core to highway roads- inaccessible except by car. Why not voter registration?
My experience has been that the vast majority of DMV’s and other government social service offices are located in low income, majority minority areas. So the whining about minorities not being able to get (free) state id’s is preposterous.
Besides, the Dem’s are sure able to get them to the polls on election day(s), why not drive them to get id’s if it is truly so difficult for them to get them on their own?
You’re an optimist. The dominant major party is doing this as a matter of policy, and the other ‘major’ party is playing with itself. Nothing’s going to be done about this until the power players decide to do something about it, which will be about three eons after hell freezes over.
What are you smoking?
Democrats have installed themselves in strategic places and maintained themselves there through massive fraud. Now that they control the election apparatus in those strategic places there will never, ever be a legal way to get them out.
Who exactly do you think will clean up the election process?
THE WIDE AWAKES MUST RETURN.
Okay, I give up. What the fuck are you talking about?
The nation is split, but it’s an electoral college perfect storm for the Dems. Considering the influence and massive delusion of political correctness, it would’ve required a watershed event to change this.
If H. Clinton or Michelle Obama choose to run, the same thing may be in play. To half the country, the Dem Party is the stupid party. To the other half, the GOP is the party of hate and “no.”
My prediction of America slowly, politically splintering into an ethnic Tower of Babel stands. Given immigration from the Third World, it’ll only get worse, much worse. Issues will be increasingly thrown to the roadside and last names and skin carry the day. Hell, even this election wasn’t on the issues, at least not for Dems. For liberals it was a series of urban myths based on the supposed racism and intolerance of the GOP.
When those type of myths trump jobs and the economy, you know we’re in trouble. Identity politics in spades – a suicide cult. The only real winners are peasants from Third World, mostly Latin American, urban pestholes and rural areas. If all welfare were ended tomorrow, that would be the watershed event. Ethnic groups would be forced to fracture.
We might have to face up to the fact that the Republican pro-life platform needs work. I’m pro-life- but the idea that “keep electing us- then we will appoint conservative justices and overturn RVWade ” is a sick, cynical joke- especially now that Obama will probably appoint two liberal justices. I’ve heard this line for 25 years- I’m not buying it anymore.
Be Pro-Life- but kick out all the creeps with their theories on rape. Be pro-birth control. That is the only reasonable way to get abortions down- not by hinting that we will lock up your 15 year old daughter at some time in the future.
Oh- we can even work it to scorch the Dems- who clearly have a All abortions – All the Time belief system- but again- we can’t attack that by putting rape victims in jail.
Romney got his 330 electoral votes if you include all the votes he was cheated out of. Vote stealing, haven’t you heard, is the communist way.
Every thing you peopleaymeans nothing. The Wide Awakes must return!
ONE WORD……………….F I X E D !!!!!!!
Vote fraud, pure and simple.
– Mormon, but sick of the blame on Mormons from Buddhists.
Dr. Buddy Rydell: “How does a guy who weighs over six hundred pounds have the balls to teach people about self-discipline?”
Hm. That one’s interesting. You didn’t read the “Magic Underwear” piece or you’d know that I thought anti-Mormon prejudice was an evil vile and reprehensible attitude, you didn’t read my “13 Weeks series” or you’d know that I’m attacking my weight problem from a mere 300 pounds with a highly disciplined long-term program of exercise and diet along with discussion of my feelings and attempts to root out causation — not to mention examining the modern literature on nutrition and exercise physiology using my years in biomedical research as a basis — but you did manage to work in a fat joke.
I see what you used anonymity — if I were you I’d be terrified someone I knew might find out.
This is all you need to know about what happened on November 6, 2012.
” (LiveScience.com) Humans may be gradually losing intelligence, according to a new study.
The study, published (Nov. 12) in the journal Trends in Genetics, argues that humans lost the evolutionary pressure to be smart once we started living in dense agricultural settlements several thousand years ago. Etc., etc., etc. ”
That explains it all to me, clear as a bell.
There you go! Why use my brain when I can use yours?
Due to genetic entropy, humans are losing about 1-2% of their capability per generation. Eventually humanity is doomed, and no ‘random mutations’ aren’t going to save us….this entrophy is random mutations, about 100-300 per every human individual on the planet. The entropy is so severe that eugenics, even if it was not morally problematic, would be basically useless.
Thankfully, there will be a New Earth.
Oh; So those vines hanging at the local gym are there for THOSE people. They’ll be able to swing through the trees and keep up with their offspring and grand-offspring.
You learn something new everyday. (Sorry to dis your theory).
All during the campaign, I was worried that Romney had no idea how to connect with people in the skilled trades. Many of these are Republican or open to conservative ideas. Skilled tradespeople have been hosed since 2008 and cut off from credit by the banks. Romney made his money in the financial sector that people have come to fear and distrust, so they couldn’t warm up to him. The constant mantra of “I’m a businessman” came across as “I’m one of those financial sector guys who caused the crash that made your business go down the drain.” Secondly, the Romney campaign was too bland and abstract. He never explained how conservative policies could benefit regular Americans, probably because he’s a technocrat by nature and doesn’t actually believe in conservative ideas himself. Thirdly, Obama’s campaign did an outstanding job with identify politics plus vague promises to each group about how he’d provide them with more free stuff. In other words, Obama convinced many people that “He’s one of us.” If a significant proportion of possible Romney voters concluded, “He’s NOT one of us”, then Romney was toast. Voter fraud may have helped Obama, but Romney’s disconnect from his voters was more important. Other posts made excellent points that it’s not a good idea to blow off the libertarians, or the pro-life Evangelicals and Catholics.
“Skilled” workers are massively organized. If you are a union member, your vote is either along party (union) lines, or you are disenfranchised.
So; Who paid all those suckers to attend the Romnay rallies?
You can’t win a political war with little old ladies. Bring back the Wide Awakes!
I recommend reading Micheal Barone a little closer. Obama won because he got more votes, electoral votes, in an extremely tight race, in light voting. He does not have a mandate. He had a better get-out-the-vote effort than Romney. Romney lost women, Blacks, Hispanics and young people. Romney’s constituents stayed home. True there was fraud and stupidity, but that would not have changed the outcome. Barone states (from memory) that some 3/4 of the ads in the firewall states were extremely negative, e.g Romney is a racist, etc. It worked, albeit essentially untrue.
Romney is a lousy salesman, compared to Obama. Romney never fully connected with suffering people on his promise for a better America. Obama did. Romney’s experts thought he would win. They were wrong. The election is over; Obama won.
The mess we were in for years, is still with us. The voters returned the same crowd that drove us into the ditch. There was zero sanctions on our elected politicians. If our present recession did not force an accounting, what will? Under current law, on January 1, our military funding will be cut to pieces, a law passed by both parties. The election just drove us deeper into the ditch. We are in big trouble, and it is the fault of the majority of American voters.
Robert Kennedy summarized it. In a democracy, the voters can send the nation to hell, and it is our job to get them there. We are on our way.
Maybe the reason you lost is your inability to recognize that lots of people don’t agree with you. The problem wasn’t that you didn’t get your message across. It’s that America heard your message and didn’t like it. No mystery.
Which is why the Republicans won more House seats and now have 30 Governors. Nice try, but theories shouldn’t be so easy to refute.
It is not so hard to figure out as the Obama campaign figured it out before the campaign even started. Negative campaigning works by suppressing the vote and particularly the vote FOR your opponent. Obama ran a remarkably negative campaign and the Romney campaign, just as remarkably, never managed to articulate the positive case for Romney’s Bain days. Maybe there was no effective way to do so in 30 second ads but I don’t believe that was the case. There were constraints on Romney early on which were exacerbated by the Republican decision to hold their campaign so late in the year but with all the super pac money out there one would think that some smart guy would have hit upon a way to succinctly defend the Romney Bain record and maybe even turn the negativity against Obama. Alas it was not to be and Romney never fully recovered from months of lies and smears.
This negativity was enough to counter the real Republican energy among the grass roots and caused enough “leaners” to sit out voting to allow the Democrats GOTV operation to prevail.
Lack of trust killed the Romney election.
A great many of America’s 60 million gun owners REFUSED to vote for Romney because they didn’t believe his “election eve conversion.” I tried to move many of my friends but they weren’t buying the “lesser of two evils” theory of voting. Even the NRA’s blatant begging couldn’t move them. You don’t vote FOR a man you don’t trust.
A Massachusetts “moderate” can’t become an all-American “conservative” by purchasing a new suit. Too many members of the hard core Republican base thought Romney was a fraud in 2010 ans still a fraud in 2012. You don’t vote for a fraud.
They can look forward to a nice big dose of reality when Obama’s anti-Second Amendment Supreme Court nominees breeze through Reid’s Senate. When you vote for President you are also voting the entire Executive Branch, and the future direction of the Supreme Court. If they didn’t comprehend this much, I doubt any candidate would have penetrated into such limited thought.
The problem with the gun owners and the Supreme Court thesis is that there’s precious little evidence the latter matters to the former.
We did smashingly well in the RKBA counter-revolution prior to Heller in 2008, enough so that Obama ran as hard and as fast as he could against his own anti-gun record.
On the other hand, on the ground, the favorable decisions in the Federal courts have made little or no difference. OK, great, in theory, if they can jump through enough hoops, you can now maybe buy a gun in D.C. or Chicago. Nothing major has changed yet, and maybe nothing will, even with the current nominally pro-RKBA majority.
Faint glimmer of hope there. Read that Scalia’s been teaching Kagan how to shoot and she’s starting to really enjoy it.
He lost because he failed to seal-the-deal, and not enough people were convinced to vote for him.
That, plus rolling out an unknown-quantity, un-tested, GOTV-process – which promptly screwed-the-pooch – didn’t help at all.
His brain-trust weren’t smart enough, and that falls upon the guy who hired them.
So, you can say the candidate lost because of the candidate – which is usually the case.
my advice: Pull your heads out of your asses – everything will finally make sense
look, when it’s 333000 votes in four counties, counties that we know have vote fraud, I don’t think Romney lost the vote of Americans. I think the election got stolen out from under him. The Dems have documents about how Obama stole the election from Hillary. It’s not exactly news to them that Obama is massively corrupt.
I was more worried about regular Americans, my neighbors, than some golf-playing idiot in washington, dc.
yes, illegals come over and have anchor babies. It’s how my next door neighbor had her lawn mowed, car serviced, house cleaned, fence repaired. she showed illegal immigrant mothers how to get benefits- housing, foodstamps, diapers, who knows what else- for having their baby at her hospital. the head of the hospital can say anything he wants- his clerks speak spanish and english-what do you think they are saying?
My id was stolen by an immigrant a few years ago. I could change it- but then I would have legal issues until the day I died, and anyone could look up one number, and then the linked number- so there could be two immigrants using both numbers, fairly easily. The IRS field office, itself, has ID fraud going on- immigrants buying numbers from lowly clerks. It’s in the local news.
I don’t think Americans are crazy leftists. I think they are center-right, and are just as vulnerable as any Ukrainian in 1918.
And, again, abortion. It might not be a viable policy to reach. However, the people affected by it are not people in stable, caring families. The people blighted by it are people dependent on government largesse. India had a famine in th 60′s. LBJ would send out grain weekly- not monthly- weekly- depending not on the severity of need- but on how many men the government had spayed. You like your junk? You want it cut by a Democrat? Or do you want grandchildren? They spayed young boys.
Part of why Bush 41 was not loved is he enforced gov’t spay policies on American Indians and Puerto Ricans. Women would get their tubes cut when they delivered their first child. The government used its power and might to spay poor people under their care.
When suburban, catholic, urban working class pro-life people get excited- they aren’t necessarily trying to protect their own daughters- they are trying to protect people who don’t even know enough to say thank you. I’ve read Indians who call us icky ignorant religious types. Their grandfather could’ve had his nuts cut off, except for our protests. Native Americans who call us oppressive? Might not be here, except for our protests. Puerto Ricans trying to bomb right-wing Republicans? Wouldn’t have been born, without our protests.
Catholics- and I’m not catholic- Catholics insist that everyone is created in the image of God, and treats them that way. Any majority Catholic group? Is usually a group of people that communists, progressives, and smart thinker consider sub-human, icky, revolting, “slav”-es. The working class New Yorkers who have just gone 12 days without food, water or heat- obviously are not even worth news reporters time, much less government concern. Who would you rather be with- catholic care agencies, or FEMA?
Well put. Though I’m not sure about the details on Bush and sterilization policies, I concur with a lot of what you’re saying here. As a Catholic and as that uglier persuasion, political worker.
And yet a majority of Catholics voted for Obama. Ironic, isn’t it?
One striking fact about most elections for the past few decades is that the more optimistic candidate won. In other words, focus on the positive.
For example, Prior to 1980, class-warfare elections produced 60% majorities for the left-wing candidate. Now it’s down to 50%. (The bad news is that it’s stuck there.)
Another point to remember: If you tell people they aren’t wanted, you will be believed.
It’s spelled ‘liar’, not ‘lire’.
Unless you’re talking about money in Italy of course.
Sorry, Charlie. They’re in the Euro. There are Pounds and Swiss Francs, but no more lire.
Voter fraud changes the percentages and that is significant!!
Romney lost because there were more of them, less of us.
It didn’t matter who the nominee was, nor the issues. Proof: the fake Indian woman who practised Mass laws without license will be making laws for us. The Democrats really don’t care for anyone without a “D”. I’m pretty sure if Scott Brown was a “D”, he would be Senator for life from a state that returned to office a drunk who left a pregnant woman drown in the car he drove off a bridge. They also returned a man whose lover ran a brothel in his basement.
The Middle East is on fire, the anti-Islamist video did that. Why don’t we all just shut up and send the parolee to jail.
The numerous laws and regulations are passed to make sure everyone of us has violated a few. We would not be prosecuted as long as we toe the line. Hence Gibbson Guitar was fined, its competitors who have “violated” the same laws were not; Northwestern Hospital was “randomly” audited, its competitor U of Chicago, Mrs. O’s former employer, was not.
It’s much easier to take a disability check than to gas up one’s car with half a paycheck to go to work and net less than the govt check. How can one who claims disability return to work? What happens when he is layoff again, can he claim disability again? Probably not. Disability now covers mental distress from not getting a job that one is trained for. I actually talked to a woman who didn’t care for Obama but was afraid her welfare check would be cut by Romney.
Romney’s American Dream was we work hard and succeed, Obama’s American Dream was we could enjoy a life of leisure on somebody else’s hard work. Afterall, they didn’t build their businesses, why don’t they share their good fortunes?
Here are some reasons I believe Romney lost:
1. The MSM. Let’s face it–if you’re getting your news from radio and the internet and FOX News it’s like you are tuning into the Voice of America. Folks who get still get their news from NBC/ABC/CBS/MSNBC are tuning into Pravda. I read someone who said that the conservative pundits/news services just told conservatives what they wanted to hear. Well I think they told conservatives what had always been true about elections historically speaking. But historically in America we have not had an MSM who hid things like Benghazi and Fast and Furious. Historically we haven’t had Pravda for a mainstream news service. So to criticize right-leaning media for telling the truth as it has always been, historically speaking, is to leave out the fact that the left-leaning media lied and ignored and covered up actual news that would have provided information to voters about how the President does (or does not) do his job–news that in the past would have been shouted from the rooftops.
2. The MSM part Deux. The MSM picked a side. They’ve been doing that for a long time, but this time around they not only picked a side, they collectively decided to ignore Romney completely. People fault Romney for not getting his message out there but the truth is he was out there running ads and giving great speeches all along and the MSM did all it could to pretend that he did not exist. You had to search the internet to find out what he said or did each week and that went on for most of the campaign. In normal campaigns, even with the MSM in the tank for the liberal, they still reported both sides. You combine that with the caricature Obama was creating for Romney and it was incredibly difficult to break through that barrier.
3. Right-leaning media. Let’s face it. For much of the campaign, many right-leaning pundits repeatedly shot Romney in the foot. They’d publicly wring their hands. They’d bemoan the fact that Romney wasn’t breaking through the MSM firewall. Why did they spend so much time doing that when they could have been on the attack? The MSM isn’t reporting on Romney so YOU do it. YOU tell the American people what he’s saying in his speeches. YOU report on his events. You helped no one with your constant hand-wringing.
4. 2010. In 2010 things were bad. Very bad. So what did the swing states do? They got rid of the Democrats locally and installed people like Scott Walker and Bob McDonnell. Even Michigan voted in a Republican governor. And what happened? Things have improved in those states. That was great, of course, but the downside of that is that the fire in the belly wasn’t there like it was in 2010. People who might have voted were more complacent than they would have been had 2010 not happened. That impacted the Senate as well. People voted Republicans into the House in 2010 but we needed to take the Senate in 2012. Voters who only pay attention every couple of years, however, didn’t necessarily realize that the reason the 2010 House couldn’t deliver on their promises was due to a Harry Reid-led Senate that sat around and did nothing. So they weren’t motivated to win the Senate because as far as they are concerned Congress never follows through and so what difference does it make if we take the Senate or not? Why bother to vote?
5. Abortion. Let’s face it: People in this country are consistently anti-abortion. The number of people opposed over the years has actually increased. But Mourdock and Akin did nobody any favors running around talking about rape. What on earth were they thinking?
And another thing–pro-life voters/groups: You are driving people away with your all or nothing approach. I consider myself to be pro-life. However, I do believe abortion should be allowed in the case of rape or incest. I do not believe 12 year old girls should have to bear the child of their uncle who continually molested them (for example). But in the middle of this election I got a phone call from a pro-life group who asked for my support. Then they asked for my view and when I told them I was against abortion except in the case of rape or incest they hung up on me. I understand you believe that you are compromising your principles if you work with people like me. But frankly, if you work with people like me together we could save millions of lives. We could turn back the tide of people who use abortion as birth control. You would make a lot of progress on your goals and then you and I could have a conversation about what God intends for pregnant girls who’ve been abused. Ronald Reagan was a man who changed his position on abortion. But if he was running today you wouldn’t vote for him? That’s just plain ridiculous.
6. Voter fraud. I don’t know how much voter fraud played a role. I don’t know what the end result would be if every precinct had to go back and verify every vote. But I do believe voter fraud is real and is probably far more widespread than is known. I also know that when the UN–the UN!– says they’re shocked we don’t have an ID system in place for voting, we have a problem. Paint my finger purple, look at my driver’s license, whatever. Voter ID must become the law of the land immediately. A subset of this is that every member of the military should have their vote counted. I am sick of the excuses given every election as to why the military’s votes won’t be counted. I don’t care if they’re voting for my guy or not. They are serving our country, putting their lives on the line, and they have more than earned the absolute right to vote for their commander in chief.
And speaking of voter ID, Washington and Oregon have rendered that question moot by going to an all-mail system. This is not a good thing. Now nobody but the “professionals” see what goes on in the counting.
The country needs comprehensive voting reform:
1) Ban voting by mail except when there’s a demonstrated need. The burden of proof lies on the voter to demonstrate the need to vote.
2) Guarantee the vote to all active military members. No election shall be certified until it is proven that all military members were given the opportunity to vote, and their votes were counted.
3) Picture ID. All states shall provide picture ID cards free of charge upon request. Upon PROOF of citizenship, the picture ID can be the same card as the voting card.
4) Modify “motor voter” to REQUIRE proof of citizenship.
5) Ban electronic voting machines. Make all tabulation of all precincts available online to the public. Impound all paper ballots and voting machines for 90 days after an election in a locked vault with NO access by anyone without a court order.
We also need to revisit the baby thrown out with the bathwater by the USSC with residency requirements. Maybe a year or more is too long but thirty days is too short and that is the legal maximun the USSC will permit. Many states merely require physical presence and allow “same day” registration. Sorry, folks, but a person should have some relationship to the community to vote there. If we can’t accomplish this in federal elections we should at least try to get around the USSC for state elections and have some minimum period of residency and a demonstration of an intent to remain in that locale.
Actually I believe all college students but certainly all college students who are still claimed as dependents of their parents should not be allowed to register and vote where they go to school but rather should either return to their parents home to vote or vote absentee, likewise snowbirds and others with two residences should have to declare which is their domicile and vote there only even if as an absentee. I believe large numbers of college students and snowbirds vote twice but if one does, it is one too many.
Federal employees should be considered residents at their place of hire and remain a resident of that place so long as employed by the US. Outside DC, those of you in the East and South don’t see it, but in the West, federal employees are like an occupying army in many places. Since they are usually transferred in and can transfer out, they can’t really demonstrate an intent to remain as a resident, so they can vote absentee where they were hired.
And at the risk of being a heretic, the military and their dependents should be treated just like other federal employees; they remain residents of their place of enlistment since they cannot form an intention to remain but rather must go where and when the military sends them.
Absentee voting should be allowed only on an objective demonstration that the voter is or will be out of the district at the time of the election.
No one should be able to request or provide an absentee ballot for another person. This would stop SEIU from turning out the Alzheimer’s Vote but oh well.
Early voting should be eliminated.
Voting by mail should be eliminated.
Internet/email voting shouldn’t even be discussed.
Same day registration should be eliminated.
All voting should be by paper ballot but I find OCRs and other tabulation machines acceptable. They’re subject to fraud, but so are black and white stones.
And finally, my fondest dream: passing the same “civics” test we give to naturalizing aliens should be the condition of voter registration. Of course, that would eliminate the Democrat Party.
Counting? Who needs counting when one could hard code the results with a computer program before elections began.
Stuff ballot boxes, increase zombies turn out were so last century. Anyone can vote with or without IDs, doesn’t matter. Computer programs can fix a predetermined win-lose percentage. Hence, election results will never be closed enough to warrant re-counts, but close enough to look legit. Hugo has done that, Obama has caught up.
6) All vote counting is performed in front of live webcams. If the webcams have technical difficulty, the counting stops. Yep, even Euros get to watch.
95. Tex,
Best comment yet.
To all those here who allege vote fraud: do you really think FoxNews and the WSJ would cover up fraud or fail to investigate it?
Yeah, right, they can investigate Benghazi too, and raged against Big Woman Candy for giving Obama 9% more time and helped him out.
So?
Oh, they have investigated Fast and Furious gun running, investigated Obama’s rewarding crony billionaire bundler Kaiser’s Solyndra with more than half a billion taxpayers’ money, investigated Corzine’s “misplacing” investors’ billions into his own pockets too.
So?
Damned right I do!
FOXNews and WSJ are businesses that exist to make money. If they manage to tell us the truth about something every once in a while that’s nice but I don’t expect it.
Remember when Obama repeatedly and publicly denounced FOXNews generally and Glenn Beck personally? After a couple of months of that Rupert Murdoch visited the White House, and Obama suddenly shut up about FOXNews. When Glenn Beck’s contract was up it wasn’t renewed. Coincidence? I think not.
Wouldn’t you just love to know what Murdoch gave Obama in return for Obama’s stopping his public attacks on him and FOX?
Don’t forget the ‘pox on both your houses,’ non-voters.
This year, conservatives livie in their own little world, for a time. Perception bias combined with wishful thinking or wish fulfillment. Now, you’ve found that your pipe dreams fell short of the reality…
Then, what many conservatives and republicans say is often contrary to what they actually do. You say you’re the party of greater freedom and liberty, but your actions, and many of your policies, are seen as limiting freedom and liberties. Just for one eample, out of many, you want the benefits of government regulated and licensed marriage, but you don’t want others to have those same benefits. (Some animals are better than others.) The actual solution is to get government of the marriage business.Marriage is a religious or cultural institution. It’s not a government monopoly.
You claim to want smaller government, but you endrosed and created the DHS and the TSA, medicare drugs…and the war on drugs as well as many others, over the years.
You claim to spread democracy and freedom around the world, but it is more usually spread with other nations looking down the wrong end of our guns than it is through diplomacy of by example. Hint: That’s not democracy, let alone freedom and liberty. Using armies to spread your ‘message’ is the work of empires, dictators and tyrants.
However, you don’t want to examine these and other issues, let alone re-examine your own premises and assumptions.
Until you do re-examine your premises, you’ll continue to lose the close elections and the big policy decisions.
I am one of those. Until I see the spirit of Barry Goldwater descend on the GOP’s candidate I AM NOT VOTING. Won’t vote Democrat but HW and GW cured me from expecting small government from their likes. I haven’t seen a real Conservative candidate since Ronald Reagan. I rather let the Democrats rule. May be over time a real Conservative will come if we give the people enough Progressive pain and suffering.
We lost because we SUCK! We suck at candidate choice from the polisubs to the Presidency. We suck at messaging from the polisubs to the Presidency. And we REALLY SUCK at GOTV.
Democrat candidates need their Party’s money and resources and consequently the Democrats have enormous Party and Caucus discipline. The Republican Party lets anybody fly the Republican flag and usually nominates the one with the money and resources to outlast the opponents. Almost all Republican campaign assets are those of the candidate and PACS that ally with the candidate; the Party’s resources are meager and usually meaningless.
The consequence of the Party needing the candidate more than the candidate needs the Party is we wind up with rich lightweights or religious conservatives because the Churches are about the only institutional support for conservative/Republican candidates. This election provided graphic evidence that being a rich businessman REALLY isn’t an asset in what used to be the industrial Midwest and Middle Atlantic states. The sting of outsourcing, offshoring, re-engineering and downsizing compounded by being upside down in one’s house really, really, really militates against the political future of bankers, brokers, venture capitalists, and captains of industry. SoCons can only win elections in rural areas. You might note that those vast red areas on the electoral maps are mostly empty. No Republican/conservative will ever carry the cities, with or without fraud, but in order to win a Republican absolutely must carry the suburbs and suburban women. Sorry, but if you tell most suburban women of any political stripe that if she or her daughter were raped and became pregnant that she’ll be legally required to bear that child and she votes for the other guy no matter whose campaign bumper sticker is on her husband’s car. And being associated with the Party that has candidates that say that sort of thing is the same as saying them yourself and it doesn’t have to be true to be credible. In politics a lie is better than the truth if people believe it.
We suck at messaging mostly because we try to message from enemy territory. The media in the BoWash Axis of Evil and in Ecotopia from Anchorage to San Diego hates Republicans, all kinds, colors, and genders of Republicans. There is absolutely nothing short of ritual suicide that a Republican can do that would meet with the approval of the media in these areas and in most of the major metropolitan areas elsewhere as well – Georgia may be a Red State, but the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation is practically communist, red of another sort. Likewise here in Alaska; the bulk of the State is Red but the McClatchey-owned Anchorage Daily News is only slightly to the right of Chairman Mao. Yet, federal level officeholders and candidates try to do their messaging in NYC, DC, and LA and wonder why they’re distorted, spun, or ignored. Nobody in the BoWash or Ecotopia is going to vote for a Republican, so why does a Republican hold a presser there or seek the approval of their media? Hold your presser where people vote for you. Hold your fundraiser where people vote for you. If you’re a viable candidate, don’t worry, the lobbyists and the executive directors of the PACS can find your address and send the check.
And finally, we simply suck at GOTV, and Republicans have never really been very good at hands-on retail politics. Traditionally, Republicans have used a money advantage to buy a media advantage and it doesn’t work any more. First, the Democrats’ adoption of crony capitalism has gotten them a lot more money so Republicans hardly have a money advantage any more. Second, technology has made media so fragmented that it is extremely difficult to reach a targeted constituency. Ironically, the 21st Century’s 200 channels and broadband internet as made politics return to the early 20th Century’s door to door and handbill campaigning and GOTV. This is where we lost the Presidency! The other two factors, Romney’s biography and political positioning/messaging, didn’t help, but they didn’t lose the election. Republicans drew the wrong message from the battles with unions in WI and OH. Republicans took the victory in WI to indicate that organized labor was at best a paper tiger and a spent force. They ignored the fact that organized labor handed Kasich his head in Ohio. Organized labor in concert with other Democrat front groups spared no expense or resource in conducting a retail campaign and getting our THEIR vote, something organized labor has always done very well. Back in the days of Joe Napolitan’s “minimum winning coalition” and Matt Reese’s “socio-demographic targeting” labor, then as now the Democrat’s muscle, knew that in a fair fight, they’d lose so they did all they could to avoid a fair fight. The best way once was the sneak attack; run the quietest most boring campaign ever, ignore your opposition because even saying his name gave him publicity he wouldn’t get otherwise. And while keeping things as quiet and boring as possible, you identify and target your supporters and your supporters only and MAKE SURE THEY VOTE. This is what the Obamunists did in the battleground states but with one modern distinction: instead of keeping it quiet, an impossibility these days, they added to the noise with negative media which probably suppressed the Romney leaning independent and undecided vote but more importantly just added to the incredible cacaphony of political noise. A message that can’t be distinguished in the noise is no message at all. Add together the targeted GOTV with enough fraud in the cities to be sure the rural and suburban vote could be overwhelmed and you have the old-fashioned stunning victory of an unpopular candidate in a low-turnout election. This one will probably replace Matt Reese’s victory for organized labor in the Missouri right to work battle of the ’70s as the modern textbook example of how to win with an unpopular candidate.
And, no, I don’t really have a plan but I know it starts with Party organization to assure better and more disciplined candidates and finding some Party resource for GOTV rather than depending on candidate organization.
What you stupid poll believers and stupid poll watchers have failed to consider is habitual lying prevails today. Lying, along with many other perversions, distortions, and moral deviancy is the NORM in our Nation. People lie on these polls and every thing else ALL the time and it is beyond comical to believe otherwise(just like with islam, lying is perfectly acceptable). There is WIDE spread voter fraud all across our Nation in this election and, of course, with the most crooked DOJ we have ever had, nothing will ever be done. In spite of this election outcome, the Obambulating Manure Spreader should NOT be president…..this is the direction our Nation is going and when the Manure Spreader and his thuggish minions are through with the next four years, we may NEVER recover. Please try an remember, when we are sliding down your fiscal cliff, you heard it here first. Fact is, if you had a way you could go back and read all of my posts over the last 6 years, you would quickly learn that I have predicted everything that has happened in the Manure Spreader’s race for the WH. This election was never about what you have heard but was indeed about PERVERSION being elevated to a level of acceptance and FREE goodies! Soooooo now we are officially know as the United Perverted States of America……you know, a lot like Californication of the left coast, Greece, France and many others.
“I imagine, like me, you’ve been wondering: ‘What the hell happened?’”
Nope. I, like many, was not surprised at all. This is because I know the difference between careful analysis of polling data and wishful thinking.
To win the next presidential election:
1. Hire David Axelrod in 2014.
2. Stop talking about abortion. It is a fait accompli. Give it a rest.
3. Don’t have a destructive primary for the sake of the publicity.
4. Control the primary condensers who are only concerned about their own self interest and don’t want to wait for 8 years.
5. Get some street smarts.
6. Understand what people want. Don’t be tone deaf.
Am I the only one who hates the iPad auto correct? I know … turn it off.
What happened??
Chicago style ballot box stuffing????
This is by far the best article I’ve read on the subject.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/18815/the-ron-paul-effect-how-the-gop-threw-the-election-by-disenfranchising-ron-paul-supporters
Florida in particular, Romney Lost by 46k votes, 117k people voted in the PRIMARIES for Paul. “If only 40% of these Ron Paul Republicans stayed home on Election Day, it would have been enough to cost Romney the state and its 29 electoral votes.”
The last 5 paragraphs clearly define why they stayed home.
Why does the GOP hate liberty so much. What you neo-conservatives need to realize is when you spout off about big government… Big government is big government, whether it is about drug laws, abortion, regulating industry or marriage, or engaging in “preventative” war overseas. Just because you agree with a regulation doesn’t make it any less BIG, it is still obtrusive and tyrannical in nature. Big government crushes our liberties.
Ron Paul’s foreign policy is to the left of Obama’s. I could never have voted for him for that reason. I’m hoping that Rand Paul will adopt his father’s domestic policy and combine it with a more sane foreign policy.
Ah. Thank you for reminding me of #7. Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Write-in “Jesus” voters:
Allow me to compare the 2012 election to a good old, American football game: From 2008-2012 we played defense. Team Liberal was deep in our territory. In fact, they scored a couple of touchdowns. But the game wasn’t lost and we played defense hard.
In 2012 Team Right had the chance to go back on offense. Team Democrat was at 4th down and 12. They had almost no chance to keep the ball. But Team Right had a problem: Part of their team wanted to throw a Hail Mary pass. They thought they ought to throw the ball from deep in their own territory down to Team Left’s endzone. They had the easy opportunity to get the ball, and march the football down the field 1st down to 1st down. It wasn’t the immediate score they wanted. They weren’t happy with the players on the field. So rather than take the opportunity to control the ball and move down the field, they insisted that if they couldn’t have the Hail Mary play, they were going to take their ball and go home.
The problem with that is we’re in the 4th quarter. There may not be another opportunity to take the ball back. I’m not saying Obama will cancel elections and whatnot. But what I am saying is that his policies will never go away. We’ve never rid ourselves of LBJ’s policies. We had one shot to advance the ball back into our territory. We had one shot to undo the damage inflicted on this nation. Because you stayed home or wrote in your own quarterback, we lost that chance. We are Venezuela. Not in that we’ll have Obama himself forever, but in that we will have his policies, not to mention his dependent voters, who will vote for the Leftie candidate he anoints.
That’s on you.
I won’t be saying “I told you so” to the Lefties. Most of them are so brainwashed they don’t know any better. But those of you who voted for Ron Paul, etc. do.
A lot of us see the differences between Dems and Pubbies as a choice between big tyrannical government…or even bigger and more tyrannical government.
In the real world, that’s the choice you’ve given us.
(Personally, I think you should be p.o.d at the six million conservative ‘protest’ voters in 2008, who stayed home and didn’t vote …because they didn’t like McCain. You wanna blame anyone for Obama, blame them.)
I understand absolutely what you are saying. I voted for McCain while plugging my nose. I was sorely tempted to write in my own preferred candidate. But what changed my mind was that I saw Obama coming. I saw what a disaster he was going to be.
Now, KNOWING what we all know about Obama and what a disaster he is and that he was determined to hold on to power by dividing us and bribing this group and that group to vote for him, and knowing that he was determined to make those groups permanently dependent upon him, how could ANY libertarian and/or conservative waste their vote on a write in or stay home?
The path to greater personal liberty is not and never will be through allowing the Democrat party in its current form to hold power. The path to greater personal liberty will not emerge from an electorate who allowed, (by not voting or by voting for a write-in), the Democrat party to ensnare us in ever tightening chains.
And while the Republicans can be viewed as “Democrat-lite,” they have one thing going for them that the Dems do not: They are typically more prone to bow to pressure by their constituents.
Here’s the other unfortunate thing–Republicans don’t like to confront the Dems when they’re out of power. (Heck, they don’t like to confront them when they’re in power). The only reason they’ve done so the past 4 years is that the TEA party held their feet to the fire. But your refusal to vote this time around may have killed that. Your refusal to vote has demoralized a lot of good people who are even now considering giving up. It’s going to take a lot more than a rant by an analyst at CNBC to galvanize those folks again.
You really shouldn’t have clung to the Hail Mary pass. You should have gone to work, taking the ball and going for a march down the field. It was the harder road and you would have had to continue to hold the Republicans to their promises–but you would have had a lot of support for your cause. I’m not sure that will be the case for the next 4 years. And in the meantime we’ll lose the Supreme Court. And how likely will it be that we hold the House? Will the House even be worth holding when it’s likely they’ll go weak in the knees without support?
I understood why people didn’t vote for McCain. I understood why people stayed home and handed over Congress in 2006. I will never, ever understand why anyone who thinks of themselves as libertarian or conservative (or both) stayed home in 2012. Never.
What really happened is that our true message never got out. The MSM never let it get out. All we heard was Dem talking points and their lies told about our real messages.
Obama ran on NOTHING. He had no policy statements, other than “more time is needed”. But that is not what you heard from media. Conservative or libertarian ideas were never truthfully reported on. The Tea Party is still being called racist and radical, even though it is neither. How can wanting the Constitution of our country followed be radical? The same with wanting our country to live within it’s means. Not radical, simply necessary for survival.
We don’t need to change our way of thinking, we only need to make sure our true message, without the liberal lies, is delivered. Perhaps then, Americans who would like to see our country return to prosperity and greatness will believe.
Actually, Rich Galen hit it pretty much on the nose in his article “What Happened”, but not a lot of Republicans are listening. His article is linked from here:
http://lajuntablog.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-last-republican-vote.html
which explains why I have had my fill of the GOP, and it also has a link to a pretty good article about how the so-called ‘conservative’ media completely missed the boat.
Your point about Mormonism is invalid. After all, Billy Graham, one of God’s personal conduits to we mere mortals, took the Mormons off the cult list, so evangelicals were apparently authorized to vote for Romney.
Funny, that’s not what a number of commenters said on the original “Magic Underwear” post. Go read the comments there and you’ll find a number of Evangelicals who said exactly that they refused to vote for Romney because he wasn’t a “real” Christian.
Conservatives Stand Up and Strong, We Lost the Election, Not the War!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WItsgR0DR4s&feature=player_embedded
We still keep dancing around the issue although a few people have touched on the issue in this thread. We lost because of women’s issues. The facts:
Women made up 53% of the electorate. Among this group, Obama got 11% more votes. That is a 17% net gain. Romney outperformed Murdock by 14%, Aiken by 24%, and the abortion defunding issue in FLA by 10%.
There is not much more you need to know than the above facts. Saying that you will allow abortion in the cases of rape and incest is not seen as a moderate view by a majority of Americans.
I agree with Toronto Girl above who said that Hispanics are socially conservative but economically liberal. They seem to put their pocketbooks ahead of their religion however. Will Republicans ever learn to do the same?
Probably never, because I get the feeling that many social conservatives only pay lip service to smaller government, as evidenced by their willingness to let government intrude into our personal lives on questions of morality.
With such a base, it is no wonder we have lost the popular vote 5 out of the last 6 elections.
To close on an somber note about the lack of voter turnout, keep in mind that for the most part older voters are more conservative and approx 2.5 million are dying every year. They are being replaced by a younger, more left leaning demographic, 3.5 million of whom turn 18 every year.
Republicans lost because “Julia” is a real person with real needs. Did the Republicans show “Julia” how they were going to meet her needs?
Julia does not read 57 point policy plans or even 5 point plans. Obama explained how he was going to meet her needs in one sentence. “Julia, government will buy you everything you want.” How can Republicans counter that offer?
The answer is found at the web site http://www.cashinthehand.org/2012/01/07/cash-in-the-hand-destroys-poverty/
Some of the web site is copied below:
“Cash in the Hand” Destroys Poverty
Poverty will never be eliminated until the poor have money.
If the government owns my retirement account, government is rich and I am poor.
If the government owns my educational savings account, government is rich and I am poor.
The same is true for housing, transportation, and health savings accounts.
Which do you want: A rich government and poor citizens or a poor government and rich citizens?
Socialism: An economic system where the government gets rich while promising to care for the poor, but the people stay poor and lose their liberties.
Capitalism: An economic system where some people become rich and some become poor and most are somewhere in between.
Capitalism with “Cash in the Hand”: An economic system where some people get rich and where the money funding the government’s social programs is diverted to everyone by some retaining their taxes and others earning the money through work. The poor can become middle class, do not need government social programs, and do not lose their liberties.
Democrats, Liberals and Socialists promise that government will provide all your healthcare needs.
America, do you want cash in the hand or a promise from the government?
Socialists, be the party of overpriced and rationed, health care, medicare and medicaid.
America, be the country of private health care made possible by “Cash in the Hand”, which allows individual liberty and financial freedom.
Democrats, Liberals and Socialists promise that government will feed you.
America, do you want cash in the hand or a promise from the government?
Socialists, be the party of food stamps.
America, be the country of “Cash in the Hand”, which allows individual liberty and financial freedom.
One thing that strikes me is the author’s…arrogance, unintentionally, revealed, when he claims that if he hasn’t figured it out, no one can figure it out. iow, no one else’s opinion really matters…except for his.
The other interpretation is… if he hasn’t been able to come up with a decent excuse for the losses, no one else can, either. I could buy that, myself. There are, indeed, lots of excuses being bandied about(many of them proffered on this site) …but *none* of them make a lot of sense.
Oddly, as I noted below, while everyone else seems to know what the answer is, none of them agree,
Charlie you lost because more people voted for the other guy.. Its really that simple.. Your question should be why did more people vote for the other guy?
Another reason we lost besides the women’s vote is the youth vote. In his post above, drilcple4 touches on how difficult is to counter the Democratic message of free stuff, and he is correct. However, it is important to ask who is that message appealing to? For the most part the answer is the youth and the reason is social media.
Social media fosters a feeling that we are somehow all in “this thing” together, that we are somehow in this thing together. Social media is fertile ground for government healthcare, climate change, and social issues. It gives the young a feeling that they belong to some greater community. In short, social media is the waiting room for socialism. While we get irritated that our kids spend so much time on the computer, blissfully irritated about what is happening in the world, the Democrats mastered the art of reaching this group by Facebook and Twitter.
We, and by we I mean their parents, get our news from FOX. Yes, I was sucked into the bubble to this cycle, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t. I even held out hope against hope that Dick Morris might actually be on to something when he predicted a Romney landslide based on turnout models that saw the youth not turning out this time.
Alas, I was disappointed once again. We have lost 5 out of the last 6 popular votes and most of our pundits say we need to double down on our message, or convince Hispanics this or that. Hispanics will vote their pocketbooks not their religious convictions. If we soften our stance on immigration, we will guarantee the Democrats a supermajority much like they have in California, but with even more disastrous results.
Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is by definition insanity. I might agree if we had simply lost the popular vote in 1, 2, or 3 cycles. However 5 out of 6 should be a slap in the face that awakes us from our stupor.
Maybe we conservatives are by nature too conservative to be able to adapt to new media, voter turnout based on data mining, and other irritating innovations such as exit polling. If we are, then we are nothing more than dinosaurs and I might have to question my long held belief that youth is wasted on the young.
If you look back just eight years to 2004 you will find that the GOP was in the very same position as the democrats are in today after an election. Matter of fact, the margin of victory in the popular vote was just a couple hundred thousand difference for the candidates in the two elections.
We need to regroup, and stay away from the social issues if possible.
It would appear that many businesses are not happy with the outcome of the election, and have become more vocal than normal. it would be smart to be out of the market because it is going to be a rocky two years.
The delicious irony of the failure at the polls by the Republicans is that it was set up by their willing encapsulation in their own alternate universe created by their own propaganda machine.
Tune into any of their echo chamber outlets and you get the same Obama Derangement Syndrome which has created the Invisible Obama that only conservatives can see. And this delusional distortion is so intense that this imagined Obama elicits not just opposition but virulent hatred. He’s not just misguided, he’s plotting the destruction of America.
I’ve watched in awe for years – long before Obama – as the conservatives have developed a competing reality reinforced by their constant repetition of the mantra that they are the victims of a “liberal” MSM. They thus tune out this “biased” reality and focus only on the one that supports their version of reality. The echo chamber that has resulted reinforces their existing misconceptions further offering, not “fair and balanced” but often a fact-free bubble where any talking point continually repeated becomes unquestioned “fact”.
And, this new set of competing realities – the right-wing echo chamber v. the rest of America – is what now drives more than anything the toxic partisan divide that is making this country ungovernable. And, as long as the Republicans continue to drink their hysteria-laced kool-aid, they’re going to continue to live in their alternate universe, separated from the rest of America and continuing to lose at the polls.
Which also accounts for 30 Republican governors, a bigger majority in the House, and defeats of Democrat-favored amendments in Michigan.
Next?
Ouch!, Charlie, it’s the old “we won the House” ploy, the nefarious move to which there’s no response but to throw up your hands in surrender. Man, you really know how to dish it man!
The Republicans still have control of the House (thanks to 2010 gerrymandering within an inch of their lives by the new Republican governors and legislators) but they LOST seats, something you seem to have missed. But, LOOK, the Republicans won another governor’s race. Wow!, that’s impressive, huh!!? And, And, they won some initiative I’ve never heard of and don’t care about in Michigan. That’s all you have???
Big FREAKING deal.
Next!!
I’d really like to understand why coattails didn’t happen. That’s unusual. And I have a testable hypothesis: that maybe the presidential election was determined by organized multiple voting, where the voters only voted for president and ignored the downticket races.
This should be testable. If the total number of votes for president are way out of line with the total number of downticket votes, that would be a smoking gun.
Which conversely also puts the lie to the “stolen election” nonsense. You can’t have it both ways. If anything the districting where red districts can pick R congresscritters seems to show that the more rural populations pick R and the more urban ones pick D.
After all, if your hypothesis is that Republicans didn’t turn out, there’s no evidence to be gained from people voting Republican down-ticket.
Soon Charlie the every four year voter will turn out every year. And that will change..
Amen!
The “return of the Confederacy” explanation is particularly amusing. Yes, neo-Confederates were just chomping at the bit to vote for a Massachusetts/Wisconsin ticket, right?
The attachment the Left wing media and intelligentsia have to their narratives is mind boggling. Maybe I’ll be topical and describe it as “slavish”, how about that? The divide in the country is no longer a North/South thing, it’s far more of an urban megalopolis vs. everyone else dichotomy. The red-blue county maps show this with great consistency from election to election.
And Andy was apparently under the impression the Confederacy ran up to the Canadian border.
It does…and beyond.
Been to Calgary? Banff?
Crawling with Texicans drilling for awl/url/oy-yull.
The one thing that has changed in the past 20 years or so is the many solid red suburbs have become purplish. Slowly, the yuppie demographic is becoming liberalized. I’m not sure exactly why that is, but I suspect it’s got to do with the colleges becoming more extreme indoctrination institutions.
To figure out what happened, you need to purge all political information from your brain. Now that you have done that, you have become the average Democrat voter. Then allow only information from your car radio and contemporary radio stations and late night talk hosts, ie. Letterman, Leno, Colbert, Stewart, Maher, et al to enter your cleared brain. Oh yes, I forgot to mention listening to those Hollywood news sources as they quote the “intellectuals” and their political beliefs. If that is the only way you receive your information it is obvious why the youth, single women and minorities voted overwhelmingly for Obama. The coup de grace is when the remainder of the populace that only views “network news” makes their decisions on what they are spoon fed by those sources. If Abraham Lincoln ran for office opposed by those same media he would lose too.
The use of radio which utterly saturatred the most popular radio stations in my swing state as I’m sure it did in others, was a major part of the Dems masterfully timed and targeted media campaign.
The spot that drove me craziest was one with an engaging eager beaver just oozing youth-wants-to-know and “trustworthiness” (think of an up-and-coming version of the man with the marvelous voice we’d buy anything from who narrated Reagan’s famous, “Morning in America” ad) declaiming in Oscar-worthy shock and awe, “Romney’s got two degrees from Harvard, and now he wants to gut education for the rest of us???!!!!” As brilliantly concocted a devil’s brew of ageism, class warfare, and terminal “cool” as I’ve ever been subjected to in 20 seconds.
The Romney campaign’s radio silence against this barrage (or perhaps, with a nod to McLuhan, more accurately “massage”) was maddening, particularly in light of the news that their coffers were so full toward the end of the campaign they might not be able to spend it all in time.
They could have IV’d a painless Velvet Hammer straight to the brains (?) of a huge demographic mix for far less than they paid out for the late-game avalanche of pricey direct mail pieces that a shrinking portion of our population has either the time or attention span to read, i.e., the classic low-information voter.
Just ask Nate Silver!
Just ask him what? Run along Mary Ann, here come the Skipper and Gilligan.
Sorry, Mary Ann, the truth has a “liberal” bias. That leaves Nate out. If he contradicts the reich-wing echo chamber, he must be a “liberal”.
“I imagine, like me, you’ve been wondering: “What the hell happened?””
No, I am capable of integrating objective facts with my perceived reality. It’s a neat trick, you should try it some time.
“…but hyperbole irony are beyond me.”
THis is getting interesting: I say “no one knows for sure what happened” and I’m over 300 comments of people telling me they know exactly what happned.
Oddly, they all seem to like different explanations.
Are you still convinced NOBODY KNOWS?
This suggests a possible sea change. The paradigm of practically everything has so reformed that any expectations of normalcy needs to be drastically revised………
Just like a climate blog. Nobody knows anything, but everybody is sure that they have THE truth. And there are about three dozen ‘truths’.
So you wrote an entire article about how you just can’t wrap your mind around the fact that your guy lost – complete with requisite vague allusions to conspiracy theories, and a nice dose of arbitrary blame-placing – and now you want to claim you’re being… ironic?
Sure, what the hell, I’ll let it slide; you’re clearly already grieving enough.
No, I was resisting the urge to say “you idiot, if people have this many explanations for what happened then in fact no one knows quite what happened.”
The fact that you want to wrap up your apparent assurance that you do know what happened in my supposed arrogance for saying I don’t know what happened just adds to the enjoyment now, however.
Or maybe I am right and everyone else is wrong (or only partially right). What difference does the message make if it is getting filtered by every news source that the common voter listens to. By the way, in Chicago the act of vote stealing is a high art.
My view is that there was absolutely massive, planned vote fraud in the 5 counties that counted: Miami-Dade and Broward in Florida, Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Ohio, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. It was witnessed by many people and nothing was done about it. Hundreds of thousands of votes were strategically added for Obama, using extra ballot papers, rigged machines and other methods. It”s one thing to seize power for power’s sake, but quite another to know what to do with it.
Steve, my next piece is going to examine the numerical possibility that it really was stolen (notice that I offered that as one possibility).
While you’re researching election theft, you might read this:
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/07/26/dead-men-do-tell-tales-of-rigged-elections/
This gives you the beginnings of an understanding of how the 2004 election was stolen for Bush with the help of a Republican Sec. of State – who was also the head of the committee to re-elect Bush – working with a Republican-run IT firm that channeled the votes through servers housed in a basement in Tennessee. There the vote flipped from exit polling that had Kerry winning Ohio to Bush winning. There’s a court case in which documents signed by the Sec. of State identify both the IT firm and detail in the agreement the architecture of the server setup.
And, there’s plenty more where that came from.
And because the Democratic Party is so unwilling to attempt to overturn election results through Court action, it was never ever litigated.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. The article I cited refers to a case that is in the courts. That’s how the contract papers came to light (though ignored by the MSM).
Since I haven’t had breakfast yet, let’s just settle for “turley’s a moron.”
The article wasn’t written by Turley. But, even if it was, the facts are there . . if you were interested.
Or, just Google King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell, the court case that led to the revelations about the contract and start reading . . . if you were interested.
When you do that, remember that there are three kinds of voter fraud. You only talked about the first one; ballot box stuffing. The second one is suppression of the other side (i.e. the military), and the third one is monkey business further up the chain of custody. For some interesting material on the third kind, look over some of the posts by statistician Stephan Sharkansky at Sound Politics regarding the Washington State gubernatorial theft in 2004. King County did some things that are completely implausible. And they got away with it.
Jesus, snork, get a grip on reality!!
The Washington race was adjudicated IN A COURT IN EASTERN WASHINGTON WITH A CONSERVATIVE JUDGE CHOSEN BY THE REPUBLICANS and when the conservative judge in that case handed down his decision AGAINST the Republicans, he also sternly lectured them about their actions in this case. He gave wide latitude in their pleadings so they could get everything they wanted on the record as everyone expected this case to be appealed to the state supreme court later. Rossi didn’t do that, did he??? He lost and he lost convincingly but he still took a shot at the higher court and inferred that he wouldn’t have gotten a fair hearing and refused to appeal.
As for the idea hatched in the fever swamp of reich-wing crazies that this election was stolen by operatives in King county, the King county error rate was actually LOWER than some other counties in the state. This election wasn’t stolen, it was legally and cleanly won by a narrow margin by Gregoire as confirmed by a hard-fought court case.
Cut the bullshit. The judge was a flaming liberal who bought the donky party’s risible claim that convicts all vote Republican.
Frak’n A, you moron.
It’s the old “liberal” judge gambit. Wow, don’t you hate it when you drag your legal case to the deep red, eastern Washington tulles and end up with a “liberal” judge?? DO’H!!
So, if the outcome was so unfair, why didn’t Rossi appeal. That “liberal” judge gave the Republicans every opportunity to put whatever they wanted on the record so that any argument they wanted to make at the Supreme Court level was available. Yet, Rossi didn’t appeal.
I think we both know why, they threw everything they had at the wall and not much of it stuck (except in the brains of the yahoos and crazies like you).
Looking much forwardly to that –thanks!
I think you’re right. Look at the registration laws in Florida — I could invent five new voters using my computer and photocopier right now.
I’m just happy we had a candidate who knew how to get the crap beat out of him with honor, just like John McCain did.
We could have picked somebody really embarrassing like Gingrich or Bachmann who would have mouthed off and embarrassed the republican consultants, and who knows, some of those consultants might not have the opportunity to lose with honor again in 4 years. This way, they still have their 7 figure incomes and the opportunity to blame the disaster on Tea Party people.
And who knows, maybe our grandkids will learn to love medical care by death panels. After all, if they don’t lip off, they will get free contraceptives, and besides, what could be more important than free medical care for the people who flock to America to cut liberal’s grass and vote for them 2 or 3 times apiece.
The Republicans were for stuff that some people liked, and others did not. The Democrats were simply against the Republicans. And that’s why the Democrats won. You can’t unify 60 million persons by being for something. It’s hate that unifies (as Chesterton said, I think), whereas love is always individual. That’s why nobody has ever won a national election by running on “love of country” alone: you should give the people traitors, bloodsuckers, aliens, and “the one percent,” to be against.
Argh, why is it nobody gets this?
THE ANTI-MORMON BIAS, IF ANY, DID NOT COME FROM EVANGELICALS.
Evangelicals got over that with JFK, whose Catholicism was (back then) viewed as more of a threat than Mormonism ever will be. Nowadays, Evangelicals are rarely even anti-Catholic. They loved Paul Ryan, Clarence Thomas, Bobby Jindal, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa.
Evangelicals are INDIFFERENTIST; indeed, that’s a core requirement for being an Evangelical.
Do you think Lutherans and Baptists believe the same stuff? Presbyterians and Assemblies of God? Seventh Day Adventists and Methodists? Pentecostal Holiness and Anglican?
No, no, no. They don’t. They all have takes on the Christian faith sufficiently different from one another that a preacher who holds the doctrines of one is generally never allowed to preach from the pulpit of another, or even teach in a Sunday School.
Yet…they all read Christianity Today, they all buy similar devotional matierials; they all experience the same fads for The Purpose Driven Life and Brennan Manning and Chuck Colson and My Utmost For His Highest and The Prayer of Jabez and whatever else. They all have Chris Tomlin in the Contemporary Service and “How Great Thou Art” in the Traditional Service. They all send their kids to Young Life and Fellowship of Christian Athletes and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. All the moms have Christian radio switched on in the minivan.
They are all, in short, Evangelical. And in order to maintain Evangelical unity, y’know what they have to be? INDIFFERENTIST. In order to get along, they have to CONFESS WITH THEIR MOUTHS that the doctrinal things which divide them don’t matter overmuch in the grand scheme of things.
That is the core doctrine of their unity. It’s why so many of them practice open communion and don’t talk about potentially-divisive doctrinal issues. The sermons are all therapeutic rather than doctrinal, because it’s “relevant” and “engaging” and “seeker-sensitive”…and because it won’t drive away people whose doctrinal views are slightly different.
(That’s Evangelicalism: A vast lake, ten miles wide and six inches deep. You can’t teach serious theology, ecclesiology, or soteriology without ruffling feathers, so…you don’t.)
Why does this matter? Simple: A group of Christians who can no longer rouse themselves to bother expressing their disagreements about whether infants should be baptized or not are simply NOT going to give much of a damn about whether Romney’s a Mormon.
Sure, a lot of ‘em say, “Mormonism isn’t Christian; it’s not Trinitarian.” Sure, but next thing they say is, “But there are a lot of nice Mormons, and I think some of them don’t even know they aren’t Trinitarian.” If their daughter dates a Mormon they hope he’ll convert to “real Christianity”…in about the same way they’d hope a Jew or a Catholic would convert. But they’re not going to refuse to show up at the wedding, either way.
Do you get where this is going?
Evangelicals are not going to get exercised enough about Romney’s Mormonism to reject him on that basis UNLESS they consider Obama to be a good, authentic, Evangelical Christian (and thus preferable).
But almost none of them thought Obama was a good Evangelical. I’m not just talking about the 10% who actually thought he was a Muslim; I’m talking about the other 90% who (in my view quite correctly) thought he was a secularist who only bothered attending Jeremiah Wright’s church because it allowed him to schmooze with the black community in Chicago and build a political power base. Moreover, Evangelical Christians hear Wright’s teaching and say, “I’m not enough of a theologian to know quite what Mormonism’s problem is, but that ‘God Damn America’ stuff is DEFINITELY WRONG.”
So…given a choice between Mormon Romney and secularist Obama smirking complacently at the antics of racist anti-American pastor Wright, what’ll Evangelicals do? They’ll pick Romney and be perfectly happy about it, that’s what.
BELIEVE THE NUMBERS. Evangelical turnout was not down. That’s because EVANGELICAL TURNOUT WAS NOT DOWN.
It was not the Evangelicals who stayed home.
If anyone, it was the secularists, the agnostics, the atheists.
Let me spell this out:
A GOP voter who grew up Presbyterian, but who lost his faith in college, doesn’t mind voting for a Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Lutheran even though he himself no longer believes. With some politicians, he’ll assume the candidate also no longer believes and thus is the same as himself.
Or, maybe he’s the other guy, the guy who didn’t lose his faith in God; he just lost his faith in the value of organized religion, and likes to stay home on Sundays with a vague sense that God doesn’t mind. That guy doesn’t mind voting for a Methodist or Baptist politician, either.
However, either one of those two voters WILL be a bit wigged out by a Mormon. It’s one of those exotic and more-committed, flaky religious things, with the annoying persistent door-knocking, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Mr. Agnostic and Mr. Unchurched each moved away from the Presbyterianism of his upbringing, to which he never had more than a young child’s commitment anyway. He can imagine himself having stayed, and he can imagine himself having left; what he can’t imagine is himself moving the OPPOSITE way to something even more supernatural or irrational. He’ll think that someone who’s a MORMON, as an ADULT, is on the opposite side of a gulf from him, and definitely kinda weird.
So THAT voter will need a REALLY good reason to prefer Romney over the Obamabots…something sufficient to make him go vote. But Romney gave no reason. Romney wasn’t on fire to defeat Obama. Romney was nice bland milquetoast for most of the campaign. So, there’s nothing to get excited about. That leaves only: The Mormon thing, distasteful to your agnostic or unchurched GOP voter.
Result, he stays home.
I don’t know that there was much anti-Mormon bias in this election at all.
But if there was, look for it less in the Evangelical community, and more in the secular or agnostic or “unchurched” group of GOP voters.
Argh, why is it nobody gets this?
Probably for the same reason no one reads the original article, in which we already discussed it including a number of Evangelicals who did say they refused to vote for Romney was belonging to an inappropriate sect of Christianity.
I’m guessing ethnic makeup matters more than religious affiliation. No doubt many Mexican Catholics would have voted for Obama regardless of who was running. Many black Evangelical churches went for Obama big time.
Charlie, I don’t understand your response.
You say, “Probably for the same reason no one reads the original article, in which we already discussed it including a number of Evangelicals who did say they refused to vote for Romney was belonging to an inappropriate sect of Christianity.”
I’m reading this as a bit of snark: you criticizing me for not reading the your article…but, as evidence you are citing a discussion that appears nowhere in the article. Are you thinking of a different article? In THIS article, it seems your discussion was limited to saying: Evangelicals must not have stayed home in great numbers, because their percentage of the turnout didn’t drop.
And, who is “we?” Did you have someone else writing the article? It just says “Charlie Martin.”
Anyway, I am not of the opinion that no Evangelicals rejected Romney because he was a Mormon. I’m confident they did.
But I am of the opinion that insufficiently few Evangelicals rejected Romney because of his Mormonism, for it to make a big difference in the election.
Granted, it could make a small difference, and in a tight election, that could be all the difference required.
But of all the things that made a difference, I would count this to be among the smaller factors.
If anyone who identified as “Evangelical” would refuse to vote for a Mormon, it would typically be someone who was:
(a.) a pastor, or otherwise unusually informed about theology and the errors of the Mormon variety thereof;
(b.) of a somewhat more fundamentalist attitude than the average “Evangelical” and thus more inclined to preserve the anti-Catholic views of 50 years ago; and,
(c.) above 50, or often 60, years of age (strongly related to (a.) and (b.))
But, to reiterate my former statement, my view is that folk who DON’T identify as Evangelical dropped on account of Romney’s Mormonism.
But this would not make them crypto-Evangelicals. It’s more likely the agnostic, the atheist, and the unchurched-but-believe-vaguely-in-God crowd.
These are people who are of a secular mindset. They are turned off even by the more overt supernaturalism or enthusiasm of their own childhood religious traditions, and are thus primed to be EVEN MORE turned off by the whole schtick of “God has a body, saved people get to be gods of other planets, America was once populated by fair-skinned Israelites, Joseph Smith legitimately got a brand new Holy Writ using a hat trick and some now-missing golden plates, the leaders of the church should be considered to have a true prophetic gift despite the reversals on polygamy and racism, and every Christian writer who personally knew the apostles, including the folks the apostles selected to lead the Early Christian Church, totally misunderstood the apostles’ teaching and got their theology all wrong…all in the same way, with none of them landing on what Joseph Smith eventually proclaimed to be correct.”
Some of these folk grew up with no religious tradition. But I suspect most grew up in mainstream Christian traditions and feel that, if they ever did start going to church again, it wouldn’t be that.
And these folk therefore feel that Barack Obama, with his loose, halfhearted, and cynical association with a church, the teachings of which he doesn’t take seriously enough to be fazed by, is more their kind of guy.
Voter fraud. It’s that simple. Romney won every state that has voter id laws. That’s not a coincedence. Then you have a bunch of precints like Gilpin and Hinsdale CO with more voters than people; apparently 110 percent of their populations registered to vote. And the cherry: 99% – 100% turnout in some precints, those are numbers Saddam, Castro, Lenin and Hitler received. And the big kicker, some of those precints had not one contrarian vote for Romney… not a contrarion vote for Romney but other third parties got votes.
Together – I just cant believe all the above are just coincedences.
Election results were not such a surprise. INTRADE.COM and FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM both hit it on the nose, as they did in 2008.
What were the leaders in the first caucuses? Ron Paul was first with 38%, if I recall, and Romney was on bottom with 18%, I believe. That should’ve set the message, if not the messenger – the RNC could’ve forwarded his son, Rand. Mia Love as VP.
There was this old guy who did an improv bit, channeling Jimmy Stewart: “If you hire somebody to do a job and they don’t get it done, you have to let them go.” Something like that.
That’s why 10 million didn’t show up. The vested political Beltway elites changed rules and fostered the photogenic one, wrote a script, and pretended to enter the 20th century. They really missed the bus. Not to mention the electronic age and the following century…
Merit leadership, right? Keep folks who prove they can do the job? Republicans want it to apply in education – they got schooled. It should apply to RNC leadership and everybody else who just played toady.
If I’m right, Charlie – in about 12-36 months, it will be a moot point. Barack Obama’s policies were a failure, are a failure, and will be a failure. The fact we are a majority nation of the inane doesn’t redefine failure. It only masks the failure a bit longer.
In addition, a country’s social mores can only decay for so long before the imbecile stands up and demands change for their own well being.
The problem with Conservatives may be methodology, but it most certainly isn’t the message. Truth always wins out. Sometimes it takes longer than we wish. But it will happen. The absolute worst thing we could do would be to change ourselves and pander. That may win an election, but the win would be hollow and will lose the country. The Conservative message is our only hope.
This is why I believe it time to try another method. No more debate or reasoning with the irrational – I choose action. Losing a vote is one thing – but it hardly the only alternative of fighting back. You can make it personal without becoming personal, so to speak.
Let them gloat. It will make winning the war all the more satisfying. Let them feel the burn of their victory in one battle. But this isn’t battle; it’s war.
I’m far more interested in what we choose to do, instead of what they have failed to understand. We have the power. The question is, do we have the collective will?
The only rational response to “I don’t know what happen” is that if the GOP’s going to survive, you’d best be finding out.
Thank you Captain Obvious.
Charlie Martin, after writing “Keep Calm and Finish Him” coming back here to pontificate on the reasons you were wrong would elicit thought of incredulity. So, thanks for that. I read Keep Calm and swallowed hook, line and sinker. We succumbed to our own natvist gathering, drinking of Beeelguise and chanting. I know I did.
However, one thing is clear to me. The primary voter was prescient. From January to May it was 1/3 Romney, 2/3 anyone but. They knew. They don’t pick the canidates, only nominate among those who choose to run. So it’s not their fault the rest took turns stepping on their own tongues. If whoever initially backed Romney had an interest in the primary besides Romney only and winning at any cost this election would have been different.
Charlie Martin, after writing “Keep Calm and Finish Him” coming back here to pontificate on the reasons you were wrong would elicit thought of incredulity.
If not grammar.
Do ya think it could be because the Republican brand – no matter how far to the right it goes – isn’t acceptable anymore? Maybe it’s seen as outdated. Maybe it’s seen as just a little (or a whole lotta) crazy. Maybe it’s because America has progressed forward socially, and doesn’t want to go back to what you people seem to think are the “good old days.”
Did you ever stop and think that YOU are the problem, and not everyone else?
Did you ever stop to think your way, the cool way, is the eventual slow decay of America – the pace now quickening? Or are deep enough to contemplate the decay around you?
I’m not getting vibes you’re much deeper than a Simpson Cartoon.
” Maybe it’s because America has progressed forward socially, and doesn’t want to go back to what you people seem to think are the “good old days.””
The “Good Old Days”…when churches and synagogues outnumbered bars?
When the parents of children were married before they had kids, and stayed married to each other?
When you could walk out of high school and get a job that in a few years would pay you enough to afford to buy a home?
When the value of that home did not depreciate?
When thanks to a growing population, we did not worry about Medicare or Social Security going broke?
When we WORRIED about a 4.7% unemployment rate?
When murderers were executed as a matter of course while unwanted babies were adopted into loving families?
When you could safely let your kid watch TV without worrying about the kind of sludge would be pumped into them?
When we knew that we had foreign enemies, and we knew that those enemies feared not just our capabilities, but also our will to use them, and that kept the peace.
And when people of all races and ethnicities were publicly civil to each other because the consequences of NOT being civil were extremely unpleasant?
Yes, I would like to return to the good old days. They really DID exist, youknow, I remember them.
This age is Shit. Expensive and flashy and shit. And it’s not getting better.
“Did you ever stop and think that YOU are the problem, and not everyone else?”
Maybe so, Mr. Jacobson, maybe so…but when people like me, who personally recall a better time are gone, you will have no frame of reference, no one to guide you on a pathway out of the pool of shit that you find yourself trapped in.
You may yet end up drowning in your own communal cess-pool, but it won’t be for a dereliction of duty on the part of people like us, who have been yelling “STOP!”.
And should you have children, and you love them, imagine what future you are setting for them. Have you considered that in twenty-five short years you may be pining for THIS time as “the good old days”?
And then someone will tell you that you are the problem.
Eric;
If it weren’t for people like you, I wouldn’t have any problems at all.
From this tea party person’s perspective, our country suffers cancers of metastasizing debt, regulations and taxes. The Romney/Ryan response to such cancers was to propose relatively painless and ineffective remedies. I guess they did this partly to attract those who knew there were problems, but who didn’t want the pain of effective (i.e., aggressive) treatment. An oncologist, confronted with such a patient, would eventually shrug and move on to patients with a will to live. Likewise, some voters (e.g., many libertarians) shrugged. What is the point when the majority lives in a dream world?
Another take: Romney/Ryan’s platform was like a plan to put out a major house fire with a garden hose…why bother…you might as well just sit back at a safe distance and watch it burn.
“After due consideration and several sleepless nights — you think I like being that wrong? — I’ve come to a conclusion on the question “what the hell happened?” and that conclusion is: I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t think anyone else knows either.”
Well…I suggest using Occam’s Razor ( ..”among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.”). – You are a bloody idiot.