Posted on 11/09/2012 4:38:36 AM PST by Zhang Fei
(Putting on my flak jacket). Let me say that I'm no fan of Romney's politics, but the guy ran a decent campaign, and he appeals to swing voters in a way that Santorum and Palin cannot. And let's face it - what's he going to do with the rest of his life? If there's one thing he's got, it's time and money. He can learn from his mistakes, just as Nixon learned from his, and perhaps lead the GOP to victory in 2016.
Nixon was 47 when he ran in 1960; 55 when he ran in 1968.
If voter fraud is the order of the day I don’t think it matters who runs. That has to be a first priority. I am not sure how that can be changed or investigated. Maybe a John Stossel or someone like that.
Only if he runs on ideas.
Nixon spent several years going state to state talking and working at the grass roots level.
Dear God, Romney is DONE. Stick a fork in him. Let him retire to the “Al Gore hall of guys who were groomed and thought they were destined to be president”
He had his past 10 years of running for president
Be gone
Romney has proven that no matter how moderate (or even center-left) the Republican candidate is, the media will lambast him as being an extremist. Obama/Pelosi/Reid have proven that no matter how far left-wing the democrat goes, the media will hail them as a centrist working on solid policies.
The Republican party tried a strategy of appealing to the middle in 2008 and 2012 and failed miserably both times. Why not try a strategy of appealing to the base? If the media is going to claim we’re extremist, why not nominate someone who is AT LEAST as far right as Obama is far left. We can’t do any worse....
As screwy as it may sound, I cant picture anyone else on the horizon that could, or would want to, tackle what a mess this nation will be in in 4 more years.
No! He was a marginal candidate to run this time!
I voted for him against Obama, but he was NEVER a conservative. He loves America, and that was enough cause to vote for him instead of Obama, but he was not and never will be a conservative!
Let’s try a Conservative in 2016.
The GOP-E has a lousy track record.
Doubtful. One of Romney’s biggest shortcomings is that he always learns from his mistakes. Count on him to shift position.
While I’m here, I’d like to add that Clinton got reelected in ‘96, and we were all appalled. If he’d seen how it was going to work out he’d have skipped it.
No.
will only work if “the base” grows and overwhelms the good ol’ boys who run the so-called “party” and who are already deciding what “moderate” to nominate in 2016
maybe our hope does not lie in Washington DC but in the statehouses of 51 state governments
Absolutely. How about: Romney/Powell 2016
Romney lost all 4 *four* states he claims as his HOME.
Romney lost his home town of Belmont.
HE IS HATED.
That makes him, again, the PERFECT candidate,
the ‘selected loser’ .... of the GOPe/ and MSM.
Nah... we all know that a real conservative will visit to our pumpkin patch in 2016... this time for sure! ;-)
“he appeals to swing voters in a way that Santorum and Palin cannot”
Not enough to get their vote. NY, NJ, Penn - the large majority of the people there are stuck on the government teat. Piglets don’t vote for Republicans, even if you run the most liberal republican in our history!
Write off the NE & California. We can never win them in this generation. They are ‘teat-suckers’!
Kid Rock
See "Gore, Albert" and "2000 Election" as an additional illustration of how this worked from the other side. That guy was running as the incumbent vice president under Bill Clinton, and he had so thoroughly sold his soul in politics that he couldn't even carry his home state (Tennessee), or even Clinton's home state of Arkansas.
Maybe BO’s unthinking suppporters will be so chaotic in their failure at individualism by then, a conservative will be able to wald in, fix it with order and a compliant House, Senate and tired failed out of money electorate.
Tomney, God love him, was defined by the left because he was undefined himself.
It’s not a winner.
I volunteer!
First order of business: Decree the Dem party outcasts.
Second order of business: No work, no money.
Third order of business: Make citizenship mean something: not a citizen, no bennies.
It would have been nice if the GOP could have morphed Mitt Romney’s executive leadership skills and Rick Perry’s political background into a single candidate.
I agree, and add, I dont think we can ever win again, regardless of who we run. UNLESS, the it is after the country completely folds, and then who would want it? The 47% have spoken, and I think they will grow and suck the country bone dry.
- NO MORE OPEN PRIMARIES. I don't like Democrats nominating our candidate.
-Conservatives radio hosts or TV anchors as moderators for GOP debates. I'm tired of CNN or MSNBC hosts trying to trip up our candidates on abortion, when the whole world is aligning against the US and prepared to take us out.
- Nominees need to go on Limbaugh. George W. bush went on Limbaugh, he won twice. McLame and Romney didn't, and they lost.
Close to 4 million conservatives stayed home because he was a moderate. I think he ran a real good campaign as well, but evidently these 3+ million warned after McCain that they would do this if a conservative was not put on the ticket. They did it. I want them back
Exactly.
And in that shift, the GOP needs to learn the Art of Political War, as discussed by Horowitz in his book of that title.
The GOP establishment is part of the leftist problem. They play the role of enabler by not attacking the left, by offering a lame defense against leftist attacks, by running candidates that they believe will appeal to the ‘other side’ while they don’t give a damn about appealing to us but rather attack us by referring to us as those who ‘cling to guns and the Bible,’ and by overtly destroying those candidates that do appeal to the base.
Don’t listen to the state-run media lies, my FRiends.
Conservatives with conservative cultural values did not lose because of their ideas. They lost because they were destroyed or abandoned by the GOP and unjustly attacked by the left and their state-run media.
We do not and should not move to the left just to win.
AND speaking of debate mods. HOW did obama know that crowley would have the transcript right there handy to use when Romney brought up benghazi? I believe they planned that, and it worked even though crowley admitted later that Romney was correct, her backing up obamas lie won that debate for obama, and stopped Romneys momentum.
By the time obama gets through, there won’t be a 2016.
I think Mitt Romney was one of the most capable, competent men ever to mount a campaign for the White House. His problem was always going to be two-fold: (1) that doesn't mean he'd be the best candidate to run for the position; and (2) a capable executive is so focused on achieving objectives within an organization that he ends up doing things in one position that hurt his chances of winning a campaign for another one. Item (2) is exactly what happened here, and is why his presidential aspirations would have been better served if he had been governor of Ohio or Texas instead of Massachusetts.
In what world did he run a decent campaign? He turned out less of the base than McLAME. He let them demonize him over Bain Capitol. He let them demonize him over the 47% remark. He let them say he was a felon and a murderer...and did not hit back...jsut grinned and said "naaaaaw....shucks...I not all that...geeee." He had, by most accounts, a HORRIBLE team surrounding him. He never once made F&F an issue. He didn't make Libya OR Benghazi an issue. He didn't make foreign policy an issue. Every time I looked around on national TV ads...I saw Obama ads. Everytime I got on Youtube...or Facebook...or Google...I saw Obama (and I said the GOP was WAY behind in E-media back in 2008! And this year was WORSE). "ORCA" was a failure. Had he been as viscious and run the general like he did the primary...he might have won.
I also echoed MANY Freepers about Romney: You CANNOT be governor of Taxachussets and be a conservative. NO WAY...NO HOW.
Run Romney in 16?
You need to upgrade your body armor to something more modern.
NO.
Romney is done like McCain. Time for a non-establishment candidate like Allen West. No more RINO’s or country clubbers either or socialist-lite.
There is no such thing as a swing voter. Just people who vote and people who dont
All the guys who imagine they can hold their base just by registering as a Republican and then campaigning for the non existent undecided middle of the road moderate swing voters LOSES!
There's this iron clad rule of campaigning they always forget ~ first secure your base. Cater to them. Attract those who are like minded about your solutions even before you campaign ~ BTW, learn what it is they will be like minded about too ~ they are NOT interested in more reacharounds.
The other rule to observe and never violate is DON'T DISCOURAGE YOUR BASE OR EVEN A PART OF IT FROM VOTING 'CAUSE THAT"S WHAT WILL HAPPEN
The last 8 years Republicans seem to have abandoned voter registration drives so the storehouse of like-minded Republicans is replenished. We have rules in Virginia that make getting on a primary ballot so difficult we actually don't have enough folks running to attract a crowd!
That's not the way to play the game.
as out of work liberals move to republican states..they too will be voting left..its a che movement
This is the fallacy that continues to cost us elections. Every time we seek to appeal to the swing voter we lose.
The last time we ran a conservtaive was Ronald Reagan. He won in the biggest landslide we've ever seen.
Forget the swing voters. They will follow whoever is strongest. Forget the liberal 47%, they hate us and always will hate us. Run a STRONG conservative and let them be a conservative.
We are a country divided and will remain divided until we get the parasites off of welfare and they either starve or regain a work ethic. (this may take a couple generations). We need to get every conservative to the polls every time. We need to impose our will on this country without regard to offending the liberals. Let them scream until their heads explode if they want. (It'd be fun to watch)
We msut retake our country and half measures (running another GOP-E selected wuss) aren't going to get the job done.
No.
A future Mitt Romney running might have to tell someone, “We can never win the 51% who are teat-suckers! We need to figure out how to win with 49% or less.”
I’m not seeing a bright future...
To your good list, I’d add that the first primaries ought to be held in the states that had the highest percentage of Republican votes. Why in the world should Democrat/ Socialist states such as NH and Iowa get to have the first Republican primaries?
Another good rule would be that no nominee can come from a state that has not voted Republican in two of the last four presidential elections. That would automatically weed out some RINOs, who will never get the votes of the 4000,000+ who did not vote this time.
1789—John Adams (lost to George
Washington) became 2d President 1796—Thomas Jefferson (lost to John
Adams) became 3d President 1808—James Monroe (lost to James
Madison) became 5th President 1824—Andrew Jackson (lost to John
Quincy Adams) became 7th President 1836—William Henry Harrison (lost to
Martin Van Buren) became 9th President 1844—James Buchanan (lost to James K
Polk) became 15th President 1856—Millard Fillmore (lost to Franklin
Pierce) became 13th President 1860—Andrew Johnson (lost to Abraham
Lincoln) became 17th President 1864—Ulysses S Grant (lost to Abraham
Lincoln) became 18th President 1888—Grover Cleveland (lost to Benjamin
Harrison) became 24th President (after
already serving as 22d President) 1960—Richard Nixon (lost to John F
Kennedy) became 37th President 1976—Ronald Reagan (lost to James Earle
Carter) became 40th President 1980—George H. W. Bush (lost to Ronald
Reagan) became 41st President
No.
If you don't push registration drives among your potential followers, they will never vote, and if they don't vote your dead and severely disabled will vote ~ through their absence!
Politics aside, Romney will be pushing 70 by 2016. The GOP needs to go more youthful to capture the dummy youth vote. Imagine a young vibrant Latino running against that fugly fossil Hillary or “white dentures” Biden.
I like RINOmney, but if he runs again, I will not vote.
The GOP may be stuck on stupid, but at least they pass the baton to the next guy in line, rather than sticking with the guy who just lost.
Romney should still be more than welcome to help behind the scenes, if he's committed to putting his fundraising and organizing abilities to work for the benefit of the party as a whole, and not just himself, but he's done as far as a "front facing" role is concerned.
LLS
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.