Posted on 11/24/2012 6:37:37 PM PST by T-Bird45
In many aspects of the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney and the establishment Republicans who were running his campaign just plain got outgunned and outsmarted.
Yet, in the aftermath of Romney’s defeat, he said he lost because he couldn’t overcome the effect of Obama’s “gifts” to key demographics: student loan modifications for young voters and amnesty for young and predominantly Hispanic illegal aliens.
We think Romney missed the mark with that analysis because conservative ideas have successfully countered the Democrats’ attempts to bribe voters in the past. To avoid the kind of defeat Republicans suffered in 2012, conservatives must learn from the successes of the Obama campaign.
Let’s start that learning process by examining five of the top reasons Obama won.
Obama won because he defined Romney, destroyed his image, nationalized the election and drew a stark contrast with him. It is the law of the political jungle – define or be defined. Obama defined Romney in negative terms, but Romney never defined Obama or himself.
What’s more, the one candidate who took our advice and said over and over that the election was about two world views was Barack Obama. Obama framed his world view as one where only the power of government could create “fairness” in a world that otherwise would be unfair through the machinations of big business and other forces hostile to average citizens – even social issues, such as same-sex marriage, were cast as issues of “fairness.”
Obama then worked relentlessly to put Romney in the context of this argument for fairness. The Bain Capital attacks orchestrated by the unions and Democrat Super PACs all hammered home the point that Mitt Romney was not just unfair to working people, but heartless. The fictional, but unfair “war on women.” The unfairness of people not having health care. The unfairness of the tax rates paid by the “wealthy” – the contrast was clear. Obama stood for fairness, Romney stood for all of those forces in society that make life hard for the little guy.
The obvious lesson here is define or be defined – but there’s a deeper lesson for Republicans here as well. Republicans will never win if they accept or fail to rebut the idea that it is government’s job to impose “fairness” on society. If the Republican candidate for President won’t make a passionate argument for freedom, liberty and opportunity, and oppose the whole notion that it is government’s job to impose “fairness” on society, he’s bound to lose.
Obama won because he focused like a laser on the states he needed to win to block Romney’s path to 270 electoral votes. By rights, Obama should have lost the states of Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin, all of which had Republican Governors and Republican legislatures going into the election – but he won them all. Some were closer than others, but Obama won credible victories in each state by putting in place strong voter ID and get-out-the-vote programs over the course of his first term, and working each state relentlessly.
Romney never seemed to commit himself to a similarly well-focused plan. The futile last minute spending in Pennsylvania by pro-Romney PACs, and visits from both Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan to a state where he had no ground game, had alienated the Tea Partiers who elected a Governor and new Republican members of Congress in 2010, and that he ultimately lost by some six points, is but one illustrative example.
The lesson here is one Republicans should have learned a long time ago: to win the Presidency, they have to be a national party and build world class political organizations all across the country. They will not win if all they do is come around every four years and run millions of dollars worth of TV in a relatively few “swing states.”
Just as the Democrats and unions do in their urban and coastal strongholds, Republicans need to build, and maintain between elections, world class political organizations in center-right states, particularly in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Michigan, Colorado and the rest of the Great Plains and Trans-Mountain West.
Obama won because he ran as himself. Despite Republican carping about how “phony” Obama is, he actually ran for President as himself. He campaigned on hitting the “wealthy” for more taxes, on implementing Obamacare and for advancing the radical secular liberal agenda on almost every issue, and, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is a complete failure, he defended his economic record.
Obama didn’t turn himself into a pretzel trying to mollify conservative independents or soft Republicans the way Romney tried to appeal to center-left voters who were not natural allies of his candidacy. Obama ran as an authentic liberal, and came away with more credibility, more likability and more votes than did the inauthentic Mitt Romney.
The lesson here is, again, one that establishment Republicans should have learned a long time ago: campaigning as a conservative in the primaries and then “shaking the Etch-A-Sketch” or “pivoting toward the center” -- which is what most Americans outside the Beltway call lying -- is a recipe for defeat.
Obama won because he understood this was a base election and he solidified, energized and turned out his leftwing base. For the better part of two years commentators were predicting 2012 would be a “base election.” Obama energized his leftwing base by throwing down the gauntlet to Romney and the Republicans on the entire range of values issues.
Same-sex marriage, government-paid abortion on demand at any point in a pregnancy, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, continuing the war on religious freedom and the Catholic Church over Obamacare’s contraception and abortion mandates... Obama and his allies never backed down and made this radical secular liberal agenda a centerpiece of the campaign.
In response to Obama’s challenge on the social issues, Romney went AWOL and failed to even respond, let alone campaign on the conservative agenda and the social issues – even those the polls showed to cut substantially in his favor, such as the right-to-life and reining-in the size and scope of government.
Indeed, instead of solidifying his base, Romney and his establishment Republican allies did everything they could to distance themselves from the small government constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party and from social conservatives.
The lesson here is that without fully engaging all four legs of the 2010 wave election coalition – national defense conservatives, economic conservatives, social conservatives and the small government constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party -- Republicans will have a difficult time defeating a Democratic coalition of ethnic voters, big labor, young singles, traditional progressives and radical secular liberals.
Obama won because his team understood and effectively used the new and alternative media to get-out-the-vote and dominate communications with voters who only get their information through online media. No campaign is perfect, and no doubt someone will identify a laundry list of things Obama’s online team could have done better. But to win, you don’t have to be perfect, you only have to be better than the other guy -- and Obama’s online effort was light years ahead of Romney’s.
The Obama Team understood that among adults younger than age 30, according to a Pew study, as many saw news on a social networking site (33%) as saw any television news (34%), and just 13% read a newspaper in print or digital form.
In contrast, Romney and the Republicans were stuck in a 20th century air war campaign strategy that relied on TV and denigrated digital communications. Obama spent at least $52 million just for online ads during his 2012 campaign, compared to the $26 million spent by Governor Romney's campaign – and that does not include their social media, email and other online and digital platforms.
Obama’s online effort was a key piece of his landslide in the young voter demographic, and thus his victory. Digital and social media were also key to Obama's get-out-the-vote effort, which used social media and a weird, but effective form of online peer pressure to squeeze every last vote out for the President.
Technology is neutral and the digital world thrives on freedom. Ron Paul and the Tea Party have built huge networks and online communities of conservative voters. The Romney campaign and the establishment GOP forfeited access to those networks by alienating those voters and distancing themselves from Ron Paul and the Tea Party.
The communications lesson here is simple: Republicans need to get in the 21st century.
What’s more, the larger lesson is equally simple: the small government constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party Movement, economic conservatives and libertarians, social conservatives and national defense conservatives must redouble their efforts to reassemble the 2010 coalition and take over the GOP.
Put in mind too, that the Democrats had their pro-Obama propaganda campaign running nonstop from Obama becoming a frontrunner, and Romney was stuck in a long quagmire to get the nomination, with his losing opponents refusing to concede. Unless you can simply acknowledge the genuine magnitude and timescale, or even the probability that in so many situations it’s simply lose-lose, you’re not going anywhere.
I guess Mia Love and Allen West aren’t conservatives either.
I firmly believe that there are a large number of “conservatives”, many posting here on FR, who relish the thought of being losers. That way, they can simply blame the other voters who dared to cast a vote for the candidate they simply called not conservative enough. It keeps blogs rolling, website traffic up and it prevents them from taking responsibility for much of anything. During the primaries, each candidate was called not quite conservative enough for the purists to support.
Meanwhile, the left is totally organized. Our side? Busy with the circular firing squad.
Romney wasn’t “in the arena”, he was looking to be president for self aggrandizement, to this day no one can come up with what he believed in, or any particular reason for his obsession to be president.
I have a good idea from looking so closely at his life, and it is not pretty, nor flattering to him.
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Poll: Evangelical Vote at Record High in Election
Wednesday, 07 Nov 2012 05:28 PM
Evangelical voters reached a record high in Tuesday’s election, with 78 percent of white evangelicals supporting Republican Mitt Romney, a national survey has found.
The survey of 800 voters commissioned by the Faith and Freedom Coalition found that a record 27 percent of those who voted in the presidential election were evangelicals.
Romney’s 78 percent showing among white evangelicals was 10 points higher than Arizona Sen. John McCain’s in 2008.
“Evangelicals turned out in record numbers and voted as heavily for Mitt Romney yesterday as they did for George W. Bush in 2004,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of TK-based Faith and Freedom Coalition. “That is an astonishing outcome that few would have predicted even a few months ago.
http://www.newsmax.com/US/romney-evangelical-vote-obama/2012/11/07/id/463268
Ten reasons??? Sheeeeyit. There’s about a thousand youtube videos of Obama voters exposing just how stupid they are. And that’s just from Obamaphone! lady, Nanzi Pelosi and Joe Biden.
Romney was a whack case, a radical liberal, whose only legacy in politics will be gay marriage and Obamacare, Romney rejected the GOP pro-life platform and called for homosexualizing the Boy Scouts and the military, and returned to his pro-abortion “health of the mother” after he won the nomination.
The man is a whack case that literally believes that he is becoming God, and teaches that others can become Gods also, and rule over their own planets, he is a draft evading pathological liar that claims to have marched with MLK and other bizarre lies.
A lot of credibility was lost supporting a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, cult leading Mormon Bishop from Massachusetts, who believes that he is in the process of becoming a God, who actually campaigned claiming that Reagan was “adamantly pro-choice”, and who recently rejected the party platform on abortion, and on homosexual Scout leaders, and homosexualizing the military, and created romneycare.
It is still mind boggling how such a bizarre creature became the Republican Presidential candidate.
This is one for the history books.
I hope he and his didn’t break the party for ever.
How does that square with his record support from evangelicals?
I could NOT disagree more with the dummy who wrote this article...his research is shoddy, his approach is as LAZY as Romney, his logic is exactly why the Republicans have lost...he doesnt know what the word ‘accountability” means
Lets look at the FACTS:
The liberal Media, as the citations below demonstrate, universally JUMPED to the conclusion that Obama lost the first debate with Romney...
I am and WAS very suspicious when hard nosed ferocious US left wing main stream media make a sudden turn against their beliefs...
And of course the conservative Media celebrated....
If this dummy paid attention to my beloved FREEP, he would have seen this develop
I have studied Obama for many years, and believe he is an impressive actor...
To see him look down to the floor on camera during the first debate, to see him ignore the face of Romney, to
see him fail to powerfully challenge his opponent, is NOT the conduct that he is capable of, or has exhibited over a long time...he was ACTING and like Mohammed ALI he “rope-a doped” Romney
In world war two, Obama’s hero Stalin withdrew across Russia and lured the Germans into a enveloping trap...from which they couldn’t escape...
In sports the score after the 1st period doesn’t really matter if it can be used to discover an opponent’s “game plan” that can be terminally exploited in later periods
Obama KNEW that employment could be substantial in the November 2 NFP release (he planted 100% a year before)and
surveys showed that the U S Economy is and was the number one voter issue in this election
Romney, the SWEET DUMMY, explained his political and economic plan in the first debate...and delivered Obama the facts he needed for the next two debates and facts that Obama’s campaign needed to counter the large “RAT ROVE” Media AD campaign...
Parenthetically in the NFL, they stopped using CHALKBOARDS 25 years ago, but Rove didnt graduate to anything more modern...he was a fool when he advised Bumbrain Bush the Minor, and he was a BIGGER FOOL in the role he played in the last election...
Rove is playing under the “Old Rules” while Obama had high intellect associates who marshalled the BEST Hollywood STORYTELLERS and IMAGEMAKERS along with the power of TOP Silicon FACTFINDERS...
In WAR and Chess, those who possess the best information WIN
This years political loss can be found in the legacy of Bumbrain BUSH and laws he passed such as the Patriot Act which allow LIBERALS TODAY to treat americans more like the enemy than those who wish to teach us a capitalist lesson...
and ROVE was right there at the center of the stage...he sickens me
Romney lost because of the legacy he inherited, and because quite frankly he only worked 6 days a week...while his opponent’s team worked 7 days
if you tried to reach Romney’s campaign on any sunday, no one answered the phone...week after week after week...not even phone mail was turned on...
Romney, nor any of his sons, ever risked their lives in the u s military, and he lacked both the instincts for hard work and/or exceptional personnel selections in his campaign...he may have been successful at Bain or Caving into MASS liberals, but he didnt have God’s blessing or he would have won
Nice losers all of them...but losers...
America is being punished for condoning immoral, evil and outrageous conduct, just as Rome was punished for similar actions...no matter what liberals believe they cant stop the clock from ticking...how many people survive beyond 100 ? not enough to remember all the mistakes we should have learned from...obama has no institutional memory and his arrogance of history will lead us nowhere
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/04/carville-mitt-romney-came-with-a-chainsaw/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/10/obamas-cutter-takes-swipe-at-lehrer-137444.html
Do you honestly think those factors alone mean anything?
We could try inviting the illegal immigrant vote?
Dems already beat everyone else to that one, and because of their being the first they also monopolize them as an audience.
Try appealing to the NAACP?
A laugh, and a guaranteed failure.
Social Issues?
Again, the problem the GOP has with social issues is failing to show that their stances are more than a reaction to the Democrats’ stances. Abortion is a losing cause more than anything due to the fact that the right gets more and more on the extreme end, where legal action hasn’t progressed. How is one supposed to believe that abortion will end anytime soon? How could it be done? Again, the failure exists here where the candidates fail to really define.
As far as religion goes, it’s a lose-lose situation. The left can make up any crazy story about any candidate’s religion.
As far as family-oriented, that’s also lose-lose as well.
Rich? Well, here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter if the candidate is multimillions of dollars or only hundreds of thousands, he would still get classified as an evil rich white man.
People need to understand the main point that the left doesn’t have core principles: they make up standards with a chalkboard as to what makes “evil”.
The “whack’s” base was larger than Big Ears’ base, but he did not pump his base as well. There was no clamor at the end about Mitt being a “whack” at all. Mitt did err by not pressing his attacks harder. That enthuses the base better than a “prevent defense” does.
I look at his life and know EXACTLY who Obama is.
I have said before that we needed the Executive AND the Senate to control the SCOTUS.
Romney may have sucked, but Obama is a disaster and ripping Romney , tearing out hairs, pulling at clothes, wailing is not helpful.
It’s not a question of seven days out of the week, it’s a question of literally over four years versus a matter of months to secure the nomination, and months to campaign as the official nominee. Gingrich, Cain, and Santorum, all made fools of themselves in the process of trying to get it, and once they imploded well, most people’s minds were all made up as to whether or not they would bother voting Republican at all, if they even would budge. Obama had all the time as president to campaign for term two, and he did, and people believed it for the most part throughout his first term. How much of the population do you think wishes or even bothers to research whatever Obama claimed as fact from 2007 until 2012? I believe that number was heavily overestimated.
Mitt lacked no facts, what he lacked was aggressiveness. He assumed victory too soon.
Really? People used to vote for the Whigs in the past, too.
Face it, we lost because we are no longer the majority.
Give-me-free-stuff voters and phoney compassion-made-for-television politicians are in the driver’s seat in this nation now.
Add to this the fact that America as we knew it is over, and that the Silent Majority of Nixon's '68 run and the Reagan democrats of 1980 and '84 are dead or dying and have been replaced with the generation of self-esteemers who only want "fairness".
We have FAR DEEPER problems than who we run. It’s really what we represent that voters are rejecting.
Enough people have been brainwashed to hate the rich, the successful, the hard worker, the tradesman (mechanics, plumbers, electrician, etc) who didn't go to college, the Christian and the white man.
That wasn’t Mitt’s base, it was the base of the republican party and Mitt was such a weak candidate, that he couldn’t even make it larger than it was in 2008.
The general public doesn’t know that Mitt Romney is a whack case, because they don’t know him well, they only know the campaign image.
If the public learned the truth about Mitt, and evidently enough did, or sensed it, he would be seen as the most bizarre creature to ever run for president, interestingly enough, the other most bizarre, freaky man to ever (credibly) run for president, was his opponent, Barack Hussein Obama.
Mitt polled well in that base. What it lacked was being enthused. Mitt played safe too soon.
That is, if majority is defined the way Democrats define it, being able to gin up more warm bodies by hook or crook. Quiescently sampled, Mitt had the approval of more Americans eligible to vote than Barack did.
He got a record number of evangelical votes, and a higher % of the white vote than Bush or McCain. Which part of the base did he not pump?
Well Obama just got made president, and you, with Romney and the gope, just lost us the presidency, I think we need to talk about our loss a little bit don’t you?
You are not going to shut down conservative analysis and discussion of the history making disaster, called Mitt Romney and the election that is only weeks in the past.
The GOPe had a catastrophic effect on the election, and they were a serious problem in 2010 as well, we have to come up with a way to defeat their destructive influence in the republican party.
I define base as Americans eligible to vote who would have answered affirmatively to the candidate in question if asked. That’s different from whom you can actually muster to the polls (or summon from the dead to do the same).
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