Posted on 11/23/2012 9:24:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In the immediate aftermath of the election, Republicans slammed Mitt Romney for not being able to match the popular vote totals of John McCain, but many forgot that the full totals in the popular vote take a few weeks to finalize. This past week, Romney's totals surpassed McCain's in an election that had a smaller overall turnout, Kimberly Strassel reports for the Wall Street Journal --- and Romney did significantly better in swing states than the GOP did in 2008 as well (via Scott Johnson at Power Line):
Mr. Romney beat Mr. McCain's numbers in every single battleground, save Ohio. In some cases, his improvement was significant. In Virginia, 65,000 more votes than in 2008. In Florida, 117,000 more votes. In Colorado, 52,000. In Wisconsin, 146,000. Moreover, in key states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia, Mr. Romney turned out even more voters than George W. Bush did in his successful re-election in 2004.
By contrast, Mr. Obama’s turnout was down from 2008 in nearly every battleground. He lost 54,000 votes in Virginia, 46,000 votes in Florida, 50,000 votes in Colorado, 63,000 votes in Wisconsin. Ditto Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio. The only state where Mr. Obama increased his votes (by 36,000) was North Carolina, and he was still beaten by a Romney campaign that raised its own turnout by a whopping 147,000.
The notion of an enthusiasm gap among Republicans compared to 2008 is therefore a myth, one suggested by incomplete data the day after the election. So what happened? Did Romney just run out of time, or was Obama’s downturn just short of bad enough to lose? Not exactly, Strassel argues. The demographic data shows that Democrats boosted voter turnout where it counted, and where Republicans didn’t bother to seriously compete:
Because what ought to scare the GOP is this: Even with higher GOP turnout in key states, even with Mr. Obama shedding voters, Democrats still won. Mr. Obama accomplished this by tapping new minority voters in numbers that beat even Mr. Romney’s better turnout.
In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama’s margin of victory there was 103,000. …
Republicans right now are fretting about Mr. Romney’s failures and the party’s immigration platform—that’s fair enough. But equally important has been the party’s mind-boggling failure to institute a competitive Hispanic ground game. The GOP doesn’t campaign in those communities, doesn’t register voters there, doesn’t knock on doors. So while pre-election polling showed that Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end the only campaign that these voters heard from—by email, at their door, on the phone—was the president’s.
In order to win national elections, Republicans have to compete in all communities. That doesn’t mean pandering, but it does mean putting free-market, small-government philosophies and slogans into concrete policy proposals that will improve the lives of voters. It’s not enough to talk about empowering investors to take risk in the American economy; we need to talk about how we can encourage that investment to go into urban centers to revitalize neighborhoods and create jobs. We need to commit to school choice and educational reform, in combination with a shift in control away from federal mandates (and the costly administration they require) to the local school boards and parents. We have to have specific policy proposals on the table and the commitment to follow through on them.
Until we remember what Jack Kemp figured out two decades ago, we will never compete for those votes, and end up with a massive handicap in national elections.
So your advice is to ignore the fact that the guy known as 0bama is not eligible and has forged documents. Great. Ignore crimes, and you're asking for more of the same. I wonder if you work for the RNC or something; or maybe the Dems. You read every single article about voter fraud? And they're all nothing? No actual evidence? I guess you want to live in the play pretend world of "no voter fraud. You're pretending that the Dems are not playing vicious revolutionary hardball.
And using the word "conspiracy" to mean "paranoid and untrue fantasy" nullifies puts you squarely in the "MSM/Dems/regular old carry on as we've been carrying on professional politicians RNC and GOP" groups.
You either are so willfully blind that you can't see the game has radically changed, or you know it has, and it's okay with you. Which ever it is I don't know and I don't care.
PS. Patriot08 has posted long lists of articles about election fraud in many states and districts. I assume you don't want to read them. Your choice, free will etc.
Patriot08 posts that list seemingly to every thread that discusses the election. Try as I’d like to ignore them after the 5th or 6th time seeing it, the list keeps being brought up again and again. And sadly, even though errors have been pointed out again and again, the exact same list keeps getting posted, with the same false assertions and links to badly researched and debunked claims.
It is typical of the argument that, after I’ve pointed out more than once that there is real fraud, and this list is hurting our chances of addressing it, that you claim that I live in a pretend world of “no voter fraud”. But since you said you don’t read what I write, I guess it’s not surprising that you make up what I said to suit your purposes.
I’ve played the game before, where someone posts dozens of links, and you pick one, and debunk it for them, and they just keep posting it, and claiming that everything is accurate, and you figure maybe ONE of the links is accurate, but most aren’t.
THat’s why I’ve asked to be given a SINGLE claim to research. I’m through wasting my time randomly picking and debunking links, only to have that work ignored, and the same stuff posted again and again.
The challenge is out there. You are certain the election was stolen by fraud, so it should be easy to provide one example where one state was stolen by fraud.
Of course, if you really could, the GOP would be all over it, as would all the politicians who were affected, because in the real world that’s what happens — it’s only in the fantasy world that the party and the politicians are all unmotivated spineless cowards who will meekly accept getting elections brazenly stolen.
We’ve just been working to prove or debunk a claim at one of our local precincts, and it’s beginning to look pretty certain that the claims made were false — we’ve got information from an election supervisor from our side, and one of the lawyers assigned to watch the polls. But the story keeps getting circulation, because the person making the claim went on the news so there’s a news story you can watch and listen to the claims.
I point that out to note that a lot of links you see are similar youtubes with people making claims. Claims are not evidence, they are things to be investigated. People don’t know what they are seeing.
For example, there is a story about somali voters. Missing in that story is proof that these voters had not become naturalized citizens. Because there are foreigners who go through the process, get their citizenship, and vote. Do I know if these particular people did that? Certainly not. Do I want to investigate that claim? Yes. But will I simply go off and claim without evidence that these were illegal voters — no, because if you are going to claim someone is breaking the law, you should actually have evidence other than “they look foreign”.
Because frankly, running around and claiming that every foreign-looking person is an illegal voter is not a good way to broaden the appeal of the party, or to advance conservative values.
As to the Birther issue, my advice is to not call conjecture “fact”. The documents have not been “proven” to be forgeries, or has anybody “proven” that Obama was not born in Hawaii. I’m not objecting to people investigating these issues, nor am I indifferent to the outcome.
But more importantly, Obama is President. That fact is not changed by anybody’s belief in whether he met the eligibility requirements, any more than Bush’s presidency was any less real because Gore and many of his supporters were sure that the Supreme Court acted unconstitutionally to interfere in Florida’s assignment of their electoral votes.
Obama isn’t the first president for which eligibility issues were raised, and that previous case didn’t amount to anything either. And it’s not as if we would solve a problem if we got Biden into the Presidency.
Just as in 2000, the courts made a determination on the election, the courts have been asked to rule and have done so regarding Obama’s eligibility, and none yet have chosen to accept the theories being presented.
Not all things that might be correct are helpful. The birther focus has not been particularly helpful. Although I guess as long as you can argue that the election was stolen, you can avoid having to address the damage done to winning the election by the choice of candidate or the distraction of arguments about eligibility which keep us from attracting the voters we need to actually win elections.
Yeah this seems HIGHLY unlikely that more blacks voted for him in 2012. I don’t trust the (open borders loving) WSJ, BTW.
Spoken like a true Lib.
In the words of JB Williams; ‘American will have to take a stand and refuse to back down, or the American people should simply shut up, sit down and learn how to live in a lawless 3rd world dictatorship. They have no other choices now.’
Nothing is compelling you to read my posts.
You are perfectly free to ignore them.
Your Turing response program is stuck on stupid.
Spoken like a true Lib.
Don’t worry about patriot08’s lists.
You’ve always been a thread nanny.
CharlesWayneCT is a windbag, thread nanny.
Ignore him.
:-D!!!
I have for years...just wound up delving into it yesterday, and vowed never to again!
(Hope all is well with you, onyx!)
LOLOLOL. I hear ya!
Mighty fine, thank you LJ!
God bless and keep you.
Please: NO profanity, NO personal attacks, NO racism or violence in posts.
Yet any time we ask for specifics we get the debunked laundry list.
Stockholm syndrome is rampant on FR. We’re in a coup. Pretending that we are not and we can “try again” next election is pathetic
Thus the appeal of Trump. Nobody really thinks we can elect a legitimate conservative anymore. Instead we go for the guy who might tip over an apple cart or two. IMO, it's part of the decline since Goldwater. Reagan did some good things but he also grew the government to our detriment.
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