Posted on 11/12/2012 8:12:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Each year I drive across the eastern half of the country twice, including the states of Ohio and Indiana. Without benefit of signage it would be hard to tell them apart. Each has an industrial base in the north and a heartland dedicated largely to agriculture.
Each state is 86 percent white and has a Republican governor. Over the last 25 years, I think I have stopped at every McDonald's on 1-70 and 1-71, and the service is uniformly upbeat and amiable along the whole route.
In 2008 both states voted for Barack Obama for president, Ohio by four percent, Indiana by one percent. In 2012, Ohio voted for Obama by a two percent margin, but Indiana voted for Romney by a 10.5 percent differential. Some 250,000 fewer Hoosiers voted for Obama in 2012 than in 2008, and Romney topped McCain's total by nearly 70,000 votes.
Despite the filter of a hopelessly corrupt media, huge numbers of Indiana citizens saw through the Obama ruse. In this unproductive week of finger pointing and teeth gnashing, I am prepared to argue that Indiana tells us potentially more about America's future than Ohio.
In the week before the election, I was invited to speak at my alma mater, Purdue University. As I drove around West Lafayette, what caught my eye was the absence of Obama signs. I did not see one, not even in the faculty neighborhoods. As Obama's unpopularity grew during the last four years, his team at some point decided to concede Indiana. From their perspective, Indiana lacked one tactical asset that Ohio had -- early voting.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
There are a few small hopeful signs amid the dissapointment. Romney won 60% of white Catholics and even got 1/3 of the Jewish vote, the same that Ronald Reagan got in 1984. He also got a significant majority of the independent vote. His portion of the two-party vote was about 48.5%, not a landslide loss.
However, I have to make a painful observation, one that I didn’t think I’d need to. We need to take the immigration issue off the table. So I suppose some kind of compromise, like what Newt Gingrich propopsed a few months back, may be needed. That would be a limited path to citizenship under very stringent conditions. One example would be granting it to people who have been here 25 years, provided they pass a criminal background check and pay a fine. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but we can’t win on enforcement alone. The election proved that. Hispanic voters tend to trend Republican if they’ve been here a while and achieved some degree of economic success. We can’t write off a growing group of people who sympathize with us on some important issues.
Saying that hurt, but it is what it is. If you disagree with me, that’s OK, but no reason to slime me.
Making some changes re immigration policy would be a step in the right direction. But it should be very narrow and stringent.
Dumping millions of unskilled people into an economy that is struggling to create jobs and/or into government free stuff programs that are already running deeply in the red will set everyone back. Family unification programs present another serious drawback.
Gradually easing people into citizenship who have been here for a long time might be an overture.
But tightening the border has to be the prerequisite to any amnesty ideas.
Yes we do have early voting in Indiana.
However, Axlegrease wrote our state off early in the year based on polls and the Dems did not use the same tactics here that they did in true “swing” states like Oh, Fl, and Va.
That’s why you didn’t see adverts for Obama on local media outlets - just the national ads.
Isn’t it interesting that when Dems win “elections have consequences” and when Reps win, the media tells them they must “reach across the aisle”?
Pandering on immigration (amnesty) won’t work. You won’t gain any votes from the left and you will lose votes on the right.
I don’t like it either, but what I’m proposing (like Newt did) is very limited in scope, yet will provide enough political cover to get this issue off the table. The demographics are not on our side right now. Native-born Americans have more children during prosperity and fewer children during bad times, and times are bad and may remain so for years. The way demographics stand now, I don’t see any other way. We can still build the wall and should build it, but we need to find a way to win more non-white votes. Hispanics and Asians have conservative instincts on some issues and could be a gold mine of votes in the same way white Catholics did for Ronald Reagan.
On pure merit, your position is correct and if you have a better idea, feel free to enlighten me.
Having watched my neighborhood fall, I cannot see giving an inch. We have absolutely no business bringing in (or legalizing) more people at this juncture when our economy is in shambles and are on the brink of a fiscal calamity. Any nation doing that is a recipe for suicide.
Two things:
1. I've seen the results of two polls of legal Hispanics reported. Such polls don't get a lot of coverage, understandably. But, in both cases, legal Hispanics were against amnesty by a 2-to-1 margin (60-32, e.g.). And why not? They are American citizens, they're proud of it...and they earned it -- either buy jumping thru all the hoops or by virtue of being born here (some of families who have been Americans for hundreds of years). They've no more interest in seeing their citizenship devalued than you.
2. We don't need to compete with the Democrats for a majority of the Hispanic (or Asian) vote. If we could have gotten another 10%, the GOP would've won in 2012. If we get another 15%, the Democrats would likely never win another national election.
That's doable.
Well Daniels was the incumbent running a good race against a loser dem. We’ll see how Pence does in Marion in 2016 (if he is not on the national ticket).
In between Obama landslides they reelected the GOP Mayor.
I get the sneaking suspicion that once Mayor Ballard retires or is defeated (I believe there is no term limits, since his Dem predecessor tried running for a 3rd term and lost to Ballard) that he will be the last GOP Mayor for the forseeable future. Sadly, much like Columbus, Ohio. It’s astonishing and sad these two formerly GOP cities have turned to rotten Democrat like so many others. UniGov in Indy was designed to keep that from happening (as the city was electing Dems prior to Lugar in the old city limits), but short of expanding out into multiple counties, the GOP won’t have much luck. I’d expect Pence, unless he draws a pathetically weak opponent in ‘16 (or runs for President), he’ll probably get in the mid to low 40s in Marion.
The rats did win the city council in 2011.
And Jacksonville elected an Obama mayor.
It’s sad as an urban dweller to see almost every major city dominated by scum with no signs of it ever getting better, only worse.
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