Posted on 11/15/2018 5:35:02 AM PST by Kaslin
The good thing about screwing up is that you can learn from your mistakes and do better next time. That, of course, assumes you are not a Republican Party official, because the GOP Establishment seems largely incapable of learning from its mistakes.
We should try again anyway.
We won some races, but we lost a lot more. Losing has one advantage over winning – pain is a better teacher than joy. After all, winning generally teaches you the wrong lessons. It makes you complacent. Look at Texas. The governor did worse than expected; Ted Cruz had a close call, and down ballot the Texas GOP got thrashed. In Texas. With a great economy. Because the Texas GOP got soft from too much winning.
Look, there are sometimes reasons for poor performance that are beyond our control. Tex Kennedy poured $70 million into the race, and the Democrat transcriptionist media nearly flooded Houston all over again slobbering all over that skateboarding goof. It’s no surprise that these factors had an effect – I don’t blame Ted Cruz, but I do blame the guys who were supposed to be keeping the Lone Star State red. The Dems went out and mobilized people who had not been mobilized before. The GOP should have done the same with its own people long ago – it should have had its grassroots wired. But it didn’t, because for a couple decades it didn’t need to. Well, it needs to.
Lesson One: Never get into the mindset that you can’t lose. Always play like you’re 10 points back, which is what saved Ted Cruz.
Let’s look at Arizona. If resumes were competing, Martha McSally, A-10 pilot, would have crushed Pinko Barbie. But resumes don’t run for office; people do. My AZ pal Jon Gabriel has a deep dive post-mortem, but there are some key lessons we have to draw from this ~1 point debacle. McSally is an admirable person who decided to run on “I’m impressive and not one of those conservative kooks” instead of on “Here are the things I stand for that I will get done.” Now, Sinema also ran a campaign based on personality – “I’m nice and oh so moderate.” So why would the average person pick McSally over Sinema if the only difference was “Impressive” versus “Nice?” What was McSally for?
Not being either Sinema or a conservative?
Hardly inspiring. Here’s an alternative idea. How about you embody the conservative values the GOP base wants? How about you not channel Jeff “18% Approval” Flake by launching Operation Desert Sasse and imitating the gutless weenie vibe of the same dork who you were seeking to replace because the GOP base fired him for not being conservative enough?
Trump endorsed her, but like he had a choice. It kind of shows the mindset that led to this fiasco – Well, these conservative dummies will be dazzled by Trump’s thumbs-up of necessity, so we don’t need to pay attention to them. Wrong! McSally had a bloody primary against Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio – say what you want, but they stood for something, and it was something the GOP voters liked. But did McSally go on stage with the defeated primary candidates to show unity? Not that I know of. I do know she skipped out on conservative events and cancelled appearing on the Mark Levin Show. That is certifiably insane.
She ran away from being conservative, and – surprise! – when she looked back the conservatives were not behind her when she needed them. As my new book Militant Normals: How Regular Americans Are Rebelling Against the Elite to Reclaim Our Democracy explains, we’re tired of being disrespected by GOP candidates who seem to find their own voters slightly icky. That 2% edge McSally needed to win was right there for the taking among the Ward and Arpaio fans, but she shunned them. She didn’t want to scare the neurotic suburban mommy demo that these squishes always seem to chase and never quite catch. Falling into that trap was the insight of the out-of-state consultants McSally hired and listened to – diss the people who would vote for you in order to suck up to people who would never vote for you. But those conservatives voted for Governor Ducey, and in droves.
Lesson Two: Be for something – specifically, conservatism. Nail down the base by not buying into the Fredocon notion that true conservatives should be ashamed of being conservative.
Florida is always close and crazy, being full of Floridians, but we need to understand that the “Why looky here, a whole bunch of new votes” thing is the wave of the future. Today, every blue enclave is Chicago, and if it’s close they will cheat. It’s going to happen. They are already planning on it. Remember, election theft is a part of the Democrat campaign plan just as much as ads about Republicans murdering grandmas; it’s neither an aberration nor a rarity, but a deliberate strategy that has worked in the past. The people who will steal our elections are not Russians; they are the nitwits who are babbling about Russians stealing our elections.
Lesson Three: We need to be ready. We need lawyers prepositioned and poised to fight wherever we expect the corruption to happen. And we need to win races outside the margin of fraud.
We got slammed below the fold. We lost 300+ stage legislature seats on November 6th. Remember how smug we were about winning 1000+ seats during the Obama years? Change is inevitable, and in a split nation we have to lose some seats sometime, but 300+? Do we have a coherent plan for recovering them? The state government seats are our farm team of future talent and they will have a huge effect on redistricting after the next census. A seat in the Idaho House of People Who Live In Idaho is not as glamorous a US Senate race, but it’s important.
Lesson Four: We need to get back in the fight down ballot. Who is the GOP leader in charge of that nationwide? If the answer is “Shrug,” that’s the wrong answer.
Finally, we need good candidates. They are out there. The search for our stars in 2020 started November 7, or at least it better have. We need a solid candidate on every ballot. Again, who is the GOP official in charge of recruiting? What is his/her/xir name?
And we need to be picky in our primaries. You know the guy who lost to Flattop Jerk in Montana? Turns out he had some baggage those of us out here in the rest of America did not know about. Montanans voted for Trump by pretty big margins; they didn’t turn into SJWs in the last two years. But they felt that liberal creep Jon Tester represented them better than the GOP candidate – why? What were their concerns that our party ignored, that our GOP voters ignored in the primary? Let’s vet our candidates better – not just the party functionaries but those of us who vote in the primaries need to be much more careful.
Lesson Five: Candidate quality matters. No more losers.
Losing sucks. But you know what sucks worse? Losing twice in a row. So we Normals need to get militant and demand that our GOP Establishment try something new – like learning from its mistakes.
Latinos Will Never Vote For A Republican, And Other Myths About Hispanics From 2016
Speaking some truths will get you shunned. The GOP is not the grassroots. It never has been and never will be. There are some fine Republicans, but the party is as corrupt as the Democrats.
To put it simply, the GOP is Lucy with the football and the team keeps falling into line to kick it. The party hates Trump because he kicked Lucy in the face and stole the ball. The question is who’s really on his team?
I know most on here probably already have but a good step forward is quit giving money to the RNC.
Followed by this:
WHERE is the RNC?
The second is the result of the first.
how many states beyond NJ have signature comparison as the only way to determine voter id... unless voter rolls book says “ID REQUIRED”?
To the contrary, the "normals" need to take over the party. The GOPe is fine with being in the minority and cutting deals with Socialists. There will be no "learning from mistakes" by the GOPe because they are accomplishing exactly what they want to accomplish - disenfranchising conservatives and creating bigger government. Trump has exposed them for the frauds that they are.
I don’t care what some stupid NPR article says. If what your saying is true, then where is this Hispanic Conservative wave in California? There isn’t one, California has been lost forever thanks to Reagan’s amnesty. Just like we lost New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, and now Texas is in serious danger. All these states used to be GOP strongholds BEFORE the demographics shifted, and now they aren’t.
How many states do we have to lose before people stop pretending this isn’t DELIBERATE policy of crushing the electoral chances of Republicans?
This is just desperate pleading on the scale of “Here’s how Bernie can still win”. I’m not holding my breath because the Hispanic votes went from 80% Democrat to 66% Democrat. The Democrats would have NEVER won a presidential election if our demographics were at the same levels they were prior to 1965.
Don't leave out MS. The life-long Democrat that the GOP chose over McDaniel made some stupid remark that could be construed as being racist (not saying it was). That seat should be solid R, but there is still a runoff to be had. With the GOPe's weak performance post-election, nothing is certain.
And hearing from people who have met him in the Oval Office (Scott Adams, Michael Savage) he makes the people he talks to feel very important.
P.S. Enjoying your tweats, LS. Don't know how you can keep up to the daily grind of producing them, but much appreciate the great commentary.
Larry Schweikart (@LarrySchweikart) | Twitter
I'd also like to second your endorsement of the brilliant essay, Biological Leninism.
Republicans are perfectly capable of winning elections as long as their message resonates with people who work and pay taxes.
The more important trend we should be looking at here is urbanization, not demographics. People who live in cities are socialist by nature simply because their lives are built around having other people take care of 90% of their needs. That is what has been driving some of the most destructive policies we've seen in this country in recent decades -- including "free trade" and mass immigration. Basically, people who aren't allowed to own slaves will figure out other ways to get access to them.
My God! she is an awful candidate. She needs to be in CA running an animal shelter
GOP definitely did not do their best recruiting...
Of course they also COMPLETLEY yielded the entire upper midwest... didn’t even bother to take the field there.
#5 Can be blamed on FAILED entrenched establishment party chairman - the party is full of patronage hacks at every level. This is how McCain and Dole made it, also how so many terrible Congressional candidates get chosen.
The second is the result of the first.
= = = = = = = =
Granted...but it is their own fault AND they still expect ‘us’ to fund them
Catch 22 at the very least
Right.
It is not just about the candidate, it is more about what the candidate can do for the voter, that is what the voter wants to hear.
That said though, Arizona needs to be challenged, Sinema is winning on fraud.
Also wondering if the Democrats could have used the online University, University of Phoenix in some way to manufacture votes, among their tactics.
Learn from their tricks.
I couldn’t agree more with this analysis.
I could sense James was scripted even through the TV set.
I am originally from Michigan but now live in Tennessee. We have seen John James ads and other “news” events featuring him. To me he came off wooden and canned talking his “check boxes”. He did not seem personable at all.
You’re twisting yourself into pretzels to ignore the obvious. Urbanization is not the cause of this. Southern California was urbanized in the 1970s and 1980s, and it was a beautiful place to live in. Now it isn’t. Detroit used to be one of the richest cities per capita and now it’s in ruins. Even Minneapolis used to be nice, and now it has turned into little Mogadishu.
Immigration is the cause of all of this and we would have ZERO of these problems if these people weren’t even here in the first place. I seriously find it hard to believe you don’t already know this.
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