Posted on 12/01/2012 12:07:46 PM PST by smoothsailing
December 1, 2012
Frank Fleming
So what lessons should Republicans learn from the 2012 election? I don’t think anyone other than me has thought to ask this question, as Republicans tend not to be very analytical. But I think the answer is pretty obvious when you look at the failure of their presidential candidate this year and the one in 2008: Republicans need to stop nominating right-wing extremists like John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Obviously, the two most recent Republican presidential candidates were far too extreme to the right to be elected by the American public. They were constantly seen in the company of numerous Republicans and conservatives (one was even seen hanging around Sarah Palin) and often praised them instead of denouncing them. Also, they reveled in the racism of the Republican Party (especially in their racist stance on taxes) and sometimes said positive things about Republicans’ stances on social issues. And worst of all, they were actually opposed to the election and reelection of the first black president and occasionally even criticized him.
So it’s no wonder that so much of the country was absolutely repulsed by these people. By reading any news source like the New York Times, you could see how terrified the average person was of having those extremists elected. If the Republican Party doesn’t want to continue being hated, it needs to finally give up on its right-wing radicalism exemplified by McCain and Romney and plan to have in 2016 a perfect candidate who will not be so offensive to Democrats.
I speak, of course, of the legendary Super Squish. The one the Republican elite speak of in hushed whispers as the prophesied one to lead the party away from extremism. This is the ultimate candidate the Republicans need for 2016.
So what is he like? First off, the Super Squish will not spend a lot of time criticizing Democrats, as he should be far too busy disparaging his own party. I mean, lately, the party has been filled with white people critical of a black man, and this ultimate candidate needs to take on that racism in his own party to show he’s not a part of it. His first campaign speech should be something like, “Shame! Shame on all of you! I am disgusted to be a Republican because radicals have taken over the party and constantly attack the president! Can’t we get over race?” Some tears would be nice, too. And in the rest of his speech he should studiously avoid all the codewords Republicans use for “I hate black people”, such as “cut taxes”, “reduce spending”, and “USA! USA!”
And the Super Squish is someone who doesn’t just automatically reject every idea because it comes from a Democrat. In fact, to show he’s open-minded, he might even embrace some of his opponents’ proposals. Better yet, he might even be a vocal advocate for some of their ideas… or even like them more than Democrats do. If he could get Democrats to say things like, “I do like raising taxes on the rich, but that Republican candidate wants to go too far with it,” that would be perfect.
Furthermore, the Super Squish is someone who won’t lose votes on social issues. He’ll never bring them up, and if Democrats bring them up, he’ll immediately capitulate to what they want to keep those issues from being problems. And maybe he can support them on some things to show he doesn’t agree with those scary religious Republicans. Ideally, he himself will be an abortionist. This would certainly keep women voters from being frightened of the Republican candidate; they love abortions.
Also, the Super Squish will not be another one of those Republicans who mindlessly invoke Ronald Reagan and instead will really chastise the Republican Party’s love for him. He’ll tell Republicans, “Reagan would be ashamed of the Party as it is today. Also, I’m ashamed of Reagan, because he’s not as great as everyone pretends and was actually quite divisive. Yes, everyone likes him now, but they shouldn’t. So let’s never mention him again except to say how ashamed he would be of today’s GOP.”
Similarly, the Super Squish will take on the religious wing of the party that pushes it to extremism. “The only things I believe without question are things that people in white lab coats say,” he’ll lecture the religious nuts. “If Jesus didn’t warn us about climate change, then maybe He wasn’t that great a messiah. So let’s never mention Him again except to say how ashamed He would be of today’s GOP.”
And I guess the Super Squish can support some conservative idea to shore up the base a little… like what’s a really harmless right-wing idea? Balance the budget? No… that implies some severe spending cuts. Anyway, this perfect candidate will have some sort of conservative idea he’ll favor… but he’ll only mention it if a reporter really presses him on why exactly he is a Republican at all. And he’ll be profusely apologetic about it, knowing that mentioning it might hurt the feelings of people who disagree with him.
Finally, this Super Squish will not be a minority or a woman, as it’s highly offensive to them to imply that one of them would actually be a Republican.
So who is this Super Squish? We don’t know yet, but we’d better start looking now. Start with any Republican allowed to speak on MSNBC. And we must have him ready for 2016 before the wingnuts start to rally around another far-right disaster like McCain or Romney. If the Republicans have finally learned their lesson, they’ll embrace the Super Squish, and the Super Squish will in turn keep them at arm’s length so as not to appear too Republicany. And while the Super Squish won’t win the presidency (beating a Democrat is racially insensitive to their numerous coalitions), he’ll run a campaign so inoffensive to the left that they’ll pat us on the back and say, “You ran an honorable campaign, predominantly white people.”
Ah, it will be nice to hold our heads up high again.
Nope, not at all.
Lincoln himself was ousted from the House after one term, let alone the Senate, and then later run for president.
The only knock against Santorum was, “could he win”. Now, that’s gone. Like I said, he won 11 states, same as Romney. If Romney was ‘electable’ than so is Santorum.
Yeah, 1860.
Are you aware of some of the differences between 1860 voters and 2016 voters? Or even between Abraham Lincoln, and Rick Santorum?
Bingo!
Just because Romney had an (R) by his name, you might think he was not a democrat, but........
I am. The greatest issue of Lincoln’s time was slavery, and Lincoln was an abolitionist. The greatest issue of Santorum’s time is abortion and he’s also an abolitionist.
So what was that argument again?
Gee, you overwhelmed the voters of America. You have nothing left to worry about.
Lookie here...
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Oct 09, 2012
Currently, 19% of U.S. adults identify themselves as white, born-again or evangelical Protestants, down slightly from 21% in 2007.
http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx
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So they are declining as a percentage of the population, yet they maintain their share of the total electorate at 26%, and even increase their support to a whopping 78% for Romney!
That is ASTONISHING!
You just aren’t getting it, are you? :) More evangelicals as a percentage of total evangelicals stayed home.
False.
Evangelical voting age population in 2008 was 21% x 230M* = 48.3M. The turnout was 26% x 131.4M = 34.2M. Percentage participation was 34.2M/48.3M = 70.1%
Evangelical voting age pop. in 2012 was 19% x 240M** = 45.6M. The turnout was 26% x 128M = 33.3M. Percentage participation was 33.3/45.6M = 73%.
So despite declining in absolute numbers (48.3M to 45.6M), evangelicals managed to increase their votes for Mitt Romney to 26.0M from McCain's 25.3M. They did it by increasing their turnout rate from 70.1% to 73.0%.
73% is a PHENOMENAL turnout rate! You simply don't want to face facts. Mitt Romney got ASTONISHING support from evangelicals.
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*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections
**Estimate based on the following (note: Add '000' to the figures below. First column is voting age population, 2nd column is total number of votes):
2000 | 209,787 | 105,594 | 50.3%
2004 | 219,553 | 122,349 | 55.7%
2008 | 229,945 | 131,407 | 57.1%
The turnout was 26% x 131.4M = 34.2M.
The turnout was 26% x 128M = 33.3M.
So according to your numbers, Romney lost 1 million evangelicals from this election to the last. I rest my case. :)
Sorry but I have to disagree with your premise here. The premise seems to be that it's the fault of conservatives because they say the wrong thing. That's not correct. It doesn't matter WHAT or HOW a conservative says anything. The left will bend it and twist it no matter how innocuous it is.
What Republicans do WRONG is to panic and pander to the left when they bend and twist words. In other words, they respond to idiotic stuff. They turn it into a story. Look at the Akin thing as a prime example. If the entire Republican establishment had just IGNORED it it would have gone away in a week or two. Maybe that's a bad example though because I think the Republican establishment didn't want Akin there in the first place. In fact the more I think about that the more I see an unholy alliance between the Republican establishment and the left against conservatives.
Conservatives need to say "Screw you Republicans. Screw you democrats. We're a force of our own."
And thus you extend your streak of posts filled with error:)
Romney got 26.0M evangelical votes vs 25.3M for McCain. That's an increase of 700K evangelical votes for Mitt Romney. Obama went from 8.2M in 2008 to 7.0M. That's a 1.2M vote loss for Obama.
See the difference? By any measure, Mitt Romney REALLY turned out the evangelical vote! Now be a good FReeper and acknowledge your error:)
“Romney got 26.0M evangelical votes vs 25.3M for McCain. That’s an increase of 700K evangelical votes for Mitt Romney. Obama went from 8.2M in 2008 to 7.0M. That’s a 1.2M vote loss for Obama.”
Once again, after adjusting for the growth in population, he lost votes to McCain. :)
You keep using the same flawed sources (exit polls), to come to the same flawed conclusions. Romney’s ‘increase’ is only 2.7 percent, well within the margins of the exit polls. So it is entirely possible that Romney didn’t even earn as many evangelical votes as McCain.
With a 2.7 increase and a 6 percent increase in the population, Romney fell short of the evangelical share that he needed, and his ‘falling short’, was sufficient to cost him the election.
Evangelical voters! = Evangelicals. The exit polls say that the percentage of evangelicals dropped, but the exit polls cannot measure evangelicals as a whole -> only evangelicals who vote. As a result of the evangelical voting population dropping, Romney failed to earn enough votes to cover the growth in population from 2008, to 2012.
Evangelical voters! = Evangelicals. The exit polls say that the percentage of evangelicals dropped, but the exit polls cannot measure evangelicals as a whole -> only evangelicals who vote.
The total number of eligible evangelical voters was not measured by an exit poll. Did you not see my earlier post of the survey dated Oct 19, 2012? And the exit polls DO NOT show the percentage dropping. It was 26% of the electorate for both 2008 and 2012.
Romney lost by 4.6M votes. He would have needed a turnout in excess of 83% of all eligible evangelical voters to overcome that. No group comes close to that. I haven't been able to find a group that matches the 73% evangelical turnout in 2012. Those are extraordinarily high numbers.
What’s your explanation for Romney’s extraordinary turnout of the evangelical vote?
Run Allen West for President and Susanna Martinez as VP!
That is not to say Akin would have won his race or that the media and the 'Rats wouldn't have dumped some other dirt on him. But this particular controversy would never have come up if Akin hadn't said the words he did in the way he said them. They set a trap for him, and he took the bait. Our candidates have to be smarter than that. They have to be ready for the kinds of dirty tricks the media and the 'Rats will spring on them. They can't be taken off message and put on the defensive, because then our opponents frame the issues and our candidates in the way they want them. It cost us two Senate seats this election that were ripe for the taking. We can't afford to throw opportunities like those away.
“Did you not see my earlier post of the survey dated Oct 19, 2012?”
Yes. The error margins of said poll?
If you have to resort to margin of error to say Romney possibly didn't keep pace, you've lost the main argument - which is that evangelicals turned out in extraordinary numbers for Romney.
Let's say Romney pulled in only 70% of the eligible evangelical vote. The next highest figure I saw was a blurb from 2008 which said that 69% of eligible black women voted.
Now, nobody will make the absurd claim that Obama didn't turn out the black female vote in a big way. With 70% of all evangelicals turning out, you cannot make an equally absurd claim about Romney.
“If you have to resort to margin of error to say Romney possibly didn’t keep pace, you’ve lost the main argument - which is that evangelicals turned out in extraordinary numbers for Romney.”
*sigh*.
You have an error on the total number of evangelicals, an error on the total number of evangelical voters and an error on their voting preferences for Romney.
These all add together. You’ve got about a 10 percent error or so when all these factors are combined, meaning that Romney did no better than McCain from the data that we do have.
He actually did worse, when you look at the population growth as a whole, which is greater than 3 percent over the last 4 years. To the tune of several million years. The overall population growth of the united states is the better measure because it is far more accurate than what you are trying to do.
This is why I’ve been trying to show you that your analysis is flawed. Romney depressed evangelical turnout, had the Republicans ran a candidate that supported evangelical values they would have won.
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