There was no appeal to 'populist' or Perot type individuals from the GOP.
Posted on 11/11/2012 10:00:15 AM PST by dirtboy
President Obama may have scored a narrow victory Tuesday night ... Yet his squeaker of a triumph not only represents a bigger loss for the Party of Lincoln, but also offers a critically important lesson.
[snip]
In contrast, 21st-century Republicans have traded a devotion to "average Americans" for a love affair with free-market and limited-government abstractions. Consequently, the Romney-Ryan ticket invested heavily in the notion that naked market forces, especially fiscal austerity and tax cuts for investors, would magically lift all boats.
The anxious electorate didn't buy this pitch, especially in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, where free-trade and outsourcing policies have drained away millions of manufacturing jobs. Appealing primarily to educated small-business owners - so-called "job creators" - the GOP lost the votes of the vastly more numerous but less educated "job holders" worried about not holding a job. Exit polls revealed that the electorate trusted Obama - running on the highest unemployment rate of any incumbent since FDR - to create more jobs than the heralded entrepreneur Romney.
If that weren't enough, the top of the ticket showed no awareness of how laissez-faire economics has dovetailed with the sexual-liberation agenda of the left in undermining prospects for millions of Americans, especially those without college degrees. It is no coincidence that globalization has undermined the economic security of Middle America at the very time that Democratic policies have destabilized the family through legalized abortion, distortions of marriage through no-fault divorce and same-sex union laws, federal birth-control mandates, subsidized day care, and gender-based affirmative action.
This may explain why Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, remained mum on social issues, as a robust defense of natural marriage, motherhood, and family life would have forced them to rethink their economic platform...
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Everybody knows the answer and most of them are full of Shiite.
Limited government and free markets are indeed the answer. leading to increased prosperity when ever tried. Massive vote fraud was necessary to beat Romney.
Next time the SEIU unions at the DMV will create new motor voters out of nothing but a lust for power. Voter fraud works until it is stopped.
ping relating to your vanity
Food for thought. But theres not one successful candidate to point to. How to emphasize social issues without appearing radical? Mrs Gingrich, Santorum, Ryan are all political animals, not your typical neighbor you identify with.
Food for thought. But theres not one successful candidate to point to. How to emphasize social issues without appearing radical? Mrs Gingrich, Santorum, Ryan are all political animals, not your typical neighbor you identify with.
There is an entire school of conservatism (Russell Kirk, etc.) that is as distrustful of laissez faire as they are of socialism. Some even describing these two theories as two sides of the same materialist coin.
What they now call the “Middle class” is really the working poor. The real middle class are now called “The Evil Rich”.
The truly rich are above all this and are pulling the strings to their advantage.
You can’t run a campaign devoid of social issues.
I don’t know about anyone else but not a day passes when I don’t give a fair amount of thought to education, immigration, regulation, defense, troops overseas etc.
As my neighbor said “I’ll vote for Romney but he seems to think that the only thing I ever think about is my paycheck.”
There's a long list of GOP-e candidates who fell into that category ~ I believe 10 of them since Hoover.
That's entirely too many.
Landon, Willkie, Dewey, Nixon, Goldwater, Ford, Bush, Dole, McCain, Romney. Democrat losers were Stevenson, Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry.
There was no appeal to 'populist' or Perot type individuals from the GOP.
The first time the subject of "tax hikes for the rich" came up in a debate, the Republican response should have been: "If Barack Obama thinks raising taxes on the rich is so effective and the 'Bush tax cuts' need to be eliminated, then why are we sitting here in 2012 with these Bush tax cuts still in place -- four years after he took office and seven years after Mr. Obama began railing against them when he was a U.S. Senator from Illinois?"
The best analysis so far.
And at a time when a majority of Americans stood opposed to Obamacare, the GOP nominates ... Romney, the signer of Romneycare who never backed away from his support for such.
And for all the talk of wooing the Hispanic vote, the GOP has yet to present a coherent vision to the Middle Class about how the wave of illegal immigration has driven away working-class jobs capable of supporting a family - IMO that has been just as destructive to the middle class as globalization.
Throw in the GOP's long support of policies that help erode jobs at all levels (such as H1-B visas) and it's a pretty hard sell that Romney truly cared about the Middle Class. And it showed. For all the talk of Obama winning by vote fraud (and I do not dismiss that argument), the more compelling point is that, in a bad year for Dems, Romney could not beat McCain's vote totals, with McCain running in a very bad year for the GOP. That alone shows just how much of a lemon Romney was - as well as the establishment corporatist GOP sect.
>How to emphasize social issues without appearing radical?
How about first winning on logical and fiscal issues and then work on the social issues after you get in a position of power.
We need to convince the “stay at home voters” that preventing democrat scum from winning is better than punishing Republicans that don’t “act” socially exactly like they do.
Yep. Most potential swing voters already believe by default the GOP is the party of the rich and has been for decades. We need to try extra hard to work against that stereotype by nominating someone who can relate to the common man. Why do you think Bush Jr. won? Instead the elite establishment blue bloods showed their absolute blindness to how the party is perceived by people in flyover country by nominating the poster boy for wealthy, connected, corporate, high finance businessmen, who the working class considers a natural enemy. They look for politicians to defend them against the abuses of people like Romney and would never elect one of them.
There’s also the weakness of his campaign to point to. Obama made the argument that not only Bush’s but even Reagan’s policies, going back 30 years, were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. Romney never once argued against that. He just changed the subject. Which makes you think he agreed with Obama on that. Not a shock since he railed against “Reagan/Bush” himself in the ‘90s.
Forget Romney's political baggage. Why the hell would any political party nominate a presidential candidate who didn't even have a chance in Hades of carrying his own state? Romney's Election Night campaign headquarters was in Boston, folks. ROFL!
the author misses the point and the fact that using free markets as the guide and barometer to taxes and regualtion is not just a federal issue, and that the economy of this country IS doing better in the states where the state government does better with their companies when it comes to taxes and regulation - in spite of whatever the federal government is doing
and what is missing in the national communication is that the federal government would help the economy if ITS policies on taxes and regulation were more following the best performing states than the worst ones
HOWEVER, the more difficult communication issue is one that provides no real selling point for federal candidates - they cannot help your state if your state continues with its own bad policies, because the federal policies, even better federal policies will only do so much for a state whose government does its own worst for the business climate
No matter how you slice the pie; it’s big time fraud.
Which proves the electorate is either insane or bone stupid!
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