Posted on 11/07/2012 3:23:45 AM PST by xzins
I knew last week that it was over, and I knew it because of Benghazi, the very issue that had me reluctantly put my check mark next to Romney's name, because I couldn't conceive that a Romney administration would have abandoned the lives of our heroes to the hatred of Al Qaeda.
Benghazi, Budget, BamaCare, Barrios....the 4 B's.
During the debates, conservative commentators liked to talk about Bayonets and Battleships, but four other B's explain Romney's loss and why he was the wrong man to carry the flag.
Benghazi was a window of opportunity presented to Romney that he was too timid to address. Some say that Romney decided after the first debate to just run out the clock. Well, events intervened and Hurricane Sandy made running out the clock impossible. (Give Governor Chris Christi an assist with mother nature's efforts.) In reality, though, discussion of Benghazi by Romney could have continued throughout Sandy, but Romney never again picked up the one issue that was moving the polls at that time. Once Candy Crowley slapped him in debate #2, he backed off. It was an absolute scandal, and no one ever asked Obama where he was at the time the live feed from Libya was playing. Romney lost for lack of sand.
Romney muzzled Ryan and the budget debate never was held. The very reason he was called courageous for his Ryan pick was the very thing they shut Ryan down on. Ryan was reduced to waving his arms at Romney gatherings. Platitudes of balancing budgets were common, but there was no stomach for discussing the real dangers affecting America is the budget was not controlled. Tepid describes the Romney approach to the budget.
As predicted, Romney never addressed the very issue that brought about the Tea Party. ObamaCare was simply not an issue for Romney. He was vulnerable due to his own support of RomneyCare, parent of ObamaCare, so he really couldn't attack the idea of big government health care. When it came to ObamaCare, Romney was simply the wrong guy to carry the message. Romney was AWOL -- as predicted during the primary season -- on ObamaCare.
The barrios of America rejected Romney by a huge margin. Forty-four percent of Hispanics supported George W. Bush. Romney garnered a meager 28%. Sadly, most Hispanic Americans have religious reasons to support a more conservative view of life and should naturally fall into the conservative camp. Anyone who has ever watched a migrant worker picking fruit in a field knows that a huge number of Hispanices do not shy from hard work. Sure there are those who would rather live on the dole, but isn't that the case with every demographic? Romney shot the one messenger who had a message that obviously appealed to Hispanic Americans, the governor of Texas. Like Perry or not, the same as George W. Bush, Perry had to get elected in a highly Hispanic state, Texas, so his sensibilities on the subject of the Hispanic vote should have been heeded.
Conservatives must find the inner resolve to admit that targeting Hispanic illegals makes Hispanic legals worry about their inalienable rights of privacy, search and seizure, and equal treatment. Another bitter pill for conservatives is that Hispanic legals are more compassionate toward Hispanic illegals than is the average conservative. With significant Hispanic populations in most of the swing states, conservatives should have noticed that Perry had found a balance that elevated him to the governor's seat in Texas AND permitted him to apply both economic and social conservatism throughout his state. The bottom line is that inalienable rights SHOULD BE a conservative issue. And while "compassionate conservatism" earned George Bush enmity with many conservatives, it also earned him the White House. Conservatives need to rethink the Hispanic vote and acknowledge that concerns about individual inalienable rights trump immigration purity in their minds.
It was too late for Romney, though. He had already taken a hard line stance to win the primary debate with Perry, attacking him mercilessly along with Michelle Bachman. He launched another barrage against Newt Gingrich on the same subject. Neither Romney nor Bachman was experienced in winning the Hispanic vote. Perry was inexperienced in winning primaries. In this instance, Romney lacked the determination of George W. Bush to push back against the poorly aimed concerns of base conservatives.
Romney's loss was predictable and was predicted. The reasons will open a huge debate. The four B's explain much: Benghazi, Budget, oBamaCare, and Barrios. In each instance, whether due to timidity or misguided policy, Romney proved to be the wrong candidate. Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong message.
I heard that comment by Brit Hume last night. And if I’m not mistaken, he really seemed to be saying that conservatism needed to move over to them rather than them moving over to conservatism.
Did you get the same impression?
thanks, KC. I hadn’t heard.
Even the lying squaw Elizabeth Warren won in massachushit.
Perry and Gingrich, I think, would have fought. Perry entered with the next best financial backing, but soon proved that he had entered the race without the necessary preparation. By the end, though, he had figured it out. He did not stop fighting.
Gingrich, on the other hand, fought the entire way, but simply couldn’t get the financial piece together.
If we could have Gingrich’s brain in Perry’s body, we’d have a great candidate.
Yeah I agree. Even Reagan likely loses last night. The demographics are different.
If the conservatism we sell on this board were in vogue, then Todd Akin, Mourdock, Mia Love, Allen West, Josh Mandel, etc all win. But they didn’t.
There is a new young generation of single people out there who want the government to be their parent. They don’t have a traditional family most of us rely on nor a religion to fall back on. They want to belong to something and government is offering them the best alternative in their minds.
Religion and work? Too hard. Obama gives me phones and free birth control. And he doesn’t judge me or expect much from me.
They can complain about anything they want to. Board bullies like you can take a flying leap. The GOP lost again, doing it your way with moderate, toady bootlickers. If you don’t like that, get lost. I’m done being civil with nasty jerks like you.
We did not have a more liberal candidate than Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and he still didn’t win. And like you point out, his opponent was a self-created Indian.
Brown lost pretty big, too. I calls into question those who say that conservatives moving left would help them to win more.
Akin and the Indiana guy didn’t lose because they were conservative. They lost because they lost control of their tongues. In Akin’s case, his party then savaged him, but he might have lost anyway.
Which raises the point of polls. I kept reading polls saying these guys were back in the race.
Conservatives had their own pollsters and their own commentators who were the only ones they would listen to. The ones they hated were saying the electorate would be D+8. Well, it ended up D+6.
Our people were either sadly mistaken or they were simply telling us what we wanted to hear. That’s the last thing I want. If I’m getting shellacked early in the game, I want to know it. I can at least adjust fire then, try something different, re-group, re-organize.
But if my intel section is telling me all is well, then I’m blind.
Conservatives were blinded by soothsayer pollsters and commentators.
Exactly. You can see it in your community too (at least I can). I have a cousin who lives off disability even though he could work (just not the hard manual labor he used to do). I have a brother — an electrician — who lays off 4 months a year collecting unemployment and uses it as a long vacation. He doesn’t even try to find a job until the Spring. I know a couple where the husband gave up working to be a “house husband” even though he could find a job and the wife doesn’t make that much. I could go on and on. People don’t think they are obligated to support themselves. 80 years of the Welfare State have conditioned them to think that Mommy and Daddy Government is going to take care of them and that the “rich” have an obligation to fund the Ponzi Scheme forever.
“To this day, I still don’t understand how or why Romney got to be the nominee in the first place.”
OLIGARCHY, pure and simple..........
Thanks for that...I made a horrible assumption he didn’t run for the senate...
Thank God for that at least.
Would it have been the conservative Jesus?
Or perhaps the liberal Jesus?
ooops strike the first, a
If you read the article, you’ll discover that the complaint against Romney was that he was timid. He didn’t engage on Benghazi, in particular. He backed off of a budget discussion. He wouldn’t attack Obamacare. And he wouldn’t confront conservatives on Hispanics.
So, timid, tepid, lukewarm, awol.
Pick a fighter of a candidate, and they would have at least engaged. I’d suggest any of the others: Perry, Gingrich, Bachman....all were fighters.
Will America choose a Pinochet or a Chavez?
Don’t know about Love but the GOP, Inc changed West’ voting district and they also did abandon Allen over in 2008.
Let me see if I got this right. You think Romney lost because Soros rigged the voting machines and other fraud.
But Romney would have won, and Soros would have been stopped, if I'd supported Romney a little bit sooner.
Got it.
Dr. X, thanks for the post. I agree that Romney dropped the ball and could have run a more effective campaign. But in the end I’m not sure it would make a bit of difference.
America has chosen the government it wants and God will give America the government it deserves.
I have come to the sad realization that America is no longer a Christian Nation. We say we believe in God, but in reality Americans worship their Federal handouts and government programs and rely upon the government more than they rely upon God. We have reached the point where the populace has discovered that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. The takers now exceed the producers. The Republic can no longer survive.
I don’t see this turning around without a complete collapse of the American economic system. As long as there are hard working American people paying their taxes there will be lazy, indolent people who covet the fruits of other people’s labor and who are more than willing to use the power of the government to steal those fruits and distribute them to themselves.
That is where we are.
As a nation we have become a majority of covetous tax thieves seeking to take the money from those who earn it and give it to themselves.
America’s sin is greed. But it is not the greed of those who work hard to produce the goods and services that drove this nation to the pinnacle of ecomonic freedom and success, but the greed of those who would use the power of the government to take the fruits of that initiative and labor.
The democrats have purchased their power using the money they have confiscated from the taxpayers and by borrowing against the next generation and the generation after that.
We are now at the point where the majority of the nation is receiving some kind of benefit from the public largesse and they are loathe to vote in anyone who might threaten the bounty they have received from their democrat benefactors.
I don’t blame Romney.
I don’t blame Akin.
I don’t blame Mourdoch.
I don’t blame Karl Rove.
I blame the American people. Shame on them.
Except they repent of their sins, this nation is doomed to collapse.
Our only hope is to turn to God, like the people of Nineveh. Repent, pray, fast... the whole sackcloth and ashes thing. I’m not sure I believe that will happen without some kind of really bad situation occurring that brings the whole nation to its knees.
This election was about our spiritual values. America has shown that it no longer has any.
I don’t have any other answers.
America has voted.
They have chosen their American Idol.
Now they have to live with him.
house not senate
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.