Posted on 11/07/2012 5:32:07 AM PST by SJackson
In this election the Republican Party ran two wholly inoffensive blue state Republicans on a platform of jobs at a time when the economy was everyone’s chief concern and the incumbent had absolutely failed to fix the economy. And they lost.
The Monday — or Wednesday — morning quarterbacks will have a fine time debating what Mitt Romney should have done differently. The red Republicans will say that he should have been more aggressive and should have hit Obama on Benghazi. The blue Republicans will blame a lack of outreach to Latinos. Some will blame Sandy, others will blame Christie and many will point to voter fraud. And they will all have a point, but the makings of this defeat did not happen in the last two weeks; they happened in the last two years.
Mitt Romney won the primaries because he was electable. But, as it turned out, he really wasn’t electable after all. Not when the chief criteria of electability is having no opinion, no point of view and no reason to run for office except to win. Not when the chief criteria of being a Republican presidential nominee is being able to convince people that you’re hardly a Republican at all.
Romney was a star political athlete who had an excellent training regimen and coaching staff. But to win elections, you have to change people’s minds. It’s not enough to try hard or to fight hard; you have to fight for something besides the chance to round the bases. You have to wake people up to a cause.
The Republican comeback did not begin with innocuous candidates; it began with angry protesters in costumes and Gadsden flags marching outside ObamaCare town halls. The 2010 midterm election triumphs were not the work of a timorous establishment, but of a vigorous grassroots opposition. And once the Tea Party movement started the fire, the Republican establishment acted like the Tea Party had sabotaged their comeback and cut the ties with their own grassroots movement. Separated, the Republican grassroots and the Republican Party both withered on the vine.
The stunning 2010 midterm election victories happened because a conservative opposition loudly and vociferously convinced a majority of Americans that ObamaCare would be harmful to them. And then that fantastic engine of change was packed away and replaced with political consultants who were all focused on seizing the center and offending as few people as possible. But you don’t win political battles by being inoffensive. And you don’t win elections by avoiding conflict.
Is it any wonder that the 2012 election played out the way it did?
The Democrats in the Bush years were about as unlikable a party as could ever be conceived of. They were hostile, hateful and obstructionist. They spewed conspiracy theories at the drop of a hat and behaved in a way that would have convinced any reasonable person not to entrust them with a lawnmower, let alone political power. And not only were they rewarded for that by winning Congress, but they also went on to win the White House.
Why? Because dissatisfied people gravitate to an opposition. They don’t gravitate to a loyal opposition. They aren’t inspired by mild-mannered rhetoric, but by those who appear to channel their anger.
When the Republican Party sold out the Tea Party, it sold out its soul, and the only driving energy that it had. And there was nothing to replace it with. The Republican Party stopped being the opposition and became a position that it was willing to reposition to get closer to the center. Mitt Romney embodied that willingness to say anything to win and it is exactly that willingness to say anything to win that the public distrusts.
The elevation of Mitt Romney was the triumph of inoffensiveness. Romney ran an aggressive campaign, but it was a mechanical exercise, a smooth assault by trained professionals paid to spin talking points in dangerous directions. But, what if the voters really wanted a certain amount of offensiveness?
What if they wanted someone who mirrored their anger at being out of work, at having to look at stacks of unpaid bills and at not knowing where their next paycheck was coming from? What if they wanted someone whose anger and distrust of the government echoed their own?
Romney very successfully made the case that he would be a more credible steward of the economy. It was enough to turn out a sizable portion of the electorate, but not enough of it. He tried to be Reagan confronting Carter, but what was remarkable about Reagan, is that he had moments of anger and passion; electric flashes of feeling that stirred his audience and made them believe that he understood their frustrations. That was the source of Reagan’s moral authority and it was entirely lacking in Romney. And without that anger, there is no compelling reason to vote for an opposition party.
The establishment had its chance with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor was everything that they could possibly want. Moderate, bipartisan and fairly liberal. With his business background, he could make a perfect case for being able to turn the economy around. They had their perfect candidate and their perfect storm and they blew it.
The Republican Party is not going to win elections by being inoffensive. It is not going to win elections by going so far to the center that it no longer stands for anything. It is not going to win elections by throwing away all the reasons that people might have to vote for it. It is not going to win elections by constantly trying to accommodate what it thinks independent voters want, instead of cultivating and growing its base, and using them as the nucleus for an opposition that will change the minds of those independent voters.
The Republican Party has tried playing Mr. Nice Guy. It may be time to get back to being an opposition movement. And the way to do that is by relearning the lessons of the Tea Party movement. The Democratic Party began winning when it embraced the left, instead of running away from it. If the Republican Party wants to win, then it has to embrace the right and learn to get angry again.
I agree. Idiots like these two should have been yanked from the race when they opened their stupid mouths as they did. Chris Christie needs to be crushed for the damage he did, and all because he didn’t get Romney’s nod for Vice-President.
The Tea Party was dead the moment it was taken over by social conservatives and people like Palin, Glen Beck & Hannity.
Great points! Be angry and sin not says the bible...that unresentful righteous indignation. Really too bad Romney did not have it...too nice. Gingrich had it and that is why I voted for him. God save us now because our foreign enemies will really be emboldened now.
We need effective conservatives, with political savvy, and they are in short supply.
The fact is, most so-called “Conservative politicians” don’t truly believe in conservatism, they play the role they think gives them the best chance to get elected.
Bingo - the Akins and Mourdocks are a disgrace and simply DUMB.
Yes - some of these precious socons are FNG DUMB!
they don’t know how utterly stupid they come across with their nonsense. Learn how to sell the message or STFU.
These idiots are like bulls in a china shop.
Yes, and The PRESS is now going to have to report the decline as it happens and they will be caught in deceit. “Recovery Summer”, still waiting...
He's a loser who was fortunate enough to have a stuffed shirt run against him.
Such is life.
I had an epiphany early last Spring when it was obvious this was a RACE TO THE BOTTOM with two unpopular candidates. The normal ways of evaluating relative strength would fail us ~ and they did. Romney's backers could have saved a billion dollars if they'd taken a step back and said to themselves "But is he likeable"?
Amen. The Tea Party was stabbed in the back by Romney and it’s lifeless corpse was paraded around by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity in a grotesque mockery.
I think Mitt did everything right EXCEPT articulate HIS plan. We hammered Obama good on the economy.
If the Republicans have any hope of getting back n the White House, they will have to create a voting plan that limits voter fraud. The Democrats can just store up a bunch of cash and pay the Precincts for the votes. The UN guys were right. It’s too easy to cheat.
Great question; simple answer, the power brokers of the GOP could care less; they got theirs and they profit coming or going. Their only real interest is in continuing to syphon off fat profits via K Street lobbyists and their interconnect with the gov’t. That’s why their focus is not on the White House, but rather, on Congress. They knew Mitt was a loser, but paid him handsomely to play the game.
Those two “tea” candidates were hardly classics of the tea party. And those two probably did enough damage at critical moments with unskilled mouths to lose the election and the senate for us. For all the noise, TEA was organized around resistance to the TARP and Obamacare. Even the name, “Taxed Enough Already”.
So a week before the repub convention, one of them says the most idiotic thing about womens bodies being able to prevent rape pregnancy that most people have ever heard. He breathes new credible life into the “war on women” lie.
And with us barely surviving that, his buddy wades into wacky rape opinions a few days before the debates begin.
Those two lost their way from the TEA economic message. And their hard-headed stupidity ensured that the psychopathic killer of babies delivered alive will get another term, and will give us a 6-3 court.
Their unskilled approach to how to attack abortion has solidified the most pro-abortion candidate imaginable.
So true what you said about the kids under 40. This is why the communists running our public schools have been indoctrinating the kids for the past 30 years: Now we have a whole new demographic of adults running around who will vote for anything communist. I noticed this change around the late 70s early 80s when I finished up my education. In my classes you still had teachers/Professors from the 1950s, very Republican and Conservatives, but by around 1981 I noticed they were being replaced by the radicals, the commies, leftists. And around the mid 80s they were all replaced as the last retired so what you were left with was the Bill Ayers the Ward Churchills, and this crap they teach has been going on ever since. So now you got an avowed commie like Barack Obama easily winning the office of POTUS. That would have been impossible 30 years ago, and not because of his race. Well, these kids who are now adults are going to learn the hard way what communism does. Let them ignore the history books all they want - When the hard cold reality of it smashes them in the face I will be front and center telling them to go F themselves.
This is what happens when you pick the electable candidate.
The Tea Party?
The Republican insiders and the party well connected nurtured the Tea party. It became a talk show joke. This is what they wanted.
I can see the headline now: Unemployment situation worse than previously thought.
Followed of course by, "The Obama Administration today proposed a new...."
The 2010 freshman Tea Party class got their collective a$$es kicked this time.
The Tea Party?
The Republican insiders and the party well connected *neutered* the Tea party. It became a talk show joke. This is what they wanted.
until we get our moral house in order our fiscal house never will be
the only thing that could be done would be to get back to church and live the commandments and get back our schools from the state ... I fear it is too late
How many Americans go to church on Sunday (every Sunday?)
Thou shall not steal ( the whole welfare system and illegal immigration is theft)
Thou shall not kill ( millions and millions of dead babies)
love the lord God with you whole heart soul and mind.... the majority of americans love only themselves
Actually, my Chicago Bears made it to the Super Bowl in the 2006 season doing exactly that.
And then got blown out by Peyton Manning.
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