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Taxcutter
11-12-2012, 02:22 PM
No.

The election was a lot closer than many make it out to be. If 450,000 votes (out of 118 million cast) in four states had changed, Romney would have been President-elect. Hardly a mandate.

Some of it is strictly technical. One forum poster invoked this link http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07...ped-obama-win/ (http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/) describing how the Hussein Obama team better managed its data. The GOP’s “ORCA” was a poorly developed loser.

OK. That’s entirely possible. Adventures in IT. Better databases and information systems can be developed and the GOP can get cracking on that right now. There are tens of thousands of very capable IT types out there looking for work. If they get after it and invest some of the money spent on TV, they could be at least at parity by the middle of next year.

Another GOP weakness in tactical politics was too much emphasis on the air war in the battleground states and not enough emphasis on the ground war nationwide. A better ground war would have at least partially offset the ennui of the Ron Paul types who sat out the election. (More on that later).

TV is an over-rated medium. You need only spend enough to offset and rebut the Democrat/MSM message. The saturation carpet-bombing of Ohio was a colossal waste of money better spent on good information and volunteers and paid canvassers. TV is in a long-term decline and Americans get numb to advertising at an early age. Most Americans were just glad to have an end of both parties’ ads.

The GOP as a whole and the Tea Party and the religious right have to invest some time and money in training candidates on how to face a hostile MSM. Few people have the natural media gifts of Ronald Reagan (even his ability came as a result of four decades in front of a camera). The GOP lost two Senate races of the basis of a few sentences blown all out of proportion by the MSM. GOP candidates simply have to remember that the MSM is the enemy. Just as one should immediately lawyer up with interrogated by the police, GOP candidates must be trained to stay on-topic and not let the MSM lure them into blowing their campaign on some imaginary redefinition of rape.

Candidate training is a tough thing for political candidates to swallow. By definition, these people are very self-confident. But so are boxers and boxers are smart enough to train for the fight.

To some extent, there needs to more “smoke filled rooms” prior to primary season. Too many primary candidates force (usually the marginal) candidates to take outlandish positions jockeying for attention. This gives the opposition way too much ammunition for the general election. By having the campaign leaders get together prior to the primary season, the marginal guys are promised a place at the table if they drop out and support the eventual winner. Winnow the field to two candidates before the primary and even there limit the scope of the issues they are going to fight over. Limiting the primary field and the primary issues also has the salutary effect of getting the general populace on board even if only in the vaguest of ways.

Conley
11-12-2012, 02:24 PM
The GOP isn't dead -- far from it -- but they've squandered some real opportunities to put the country back on track. I think they'll do better in four years and have a much better Presidential candidate.

Taxcutter
11-12-2012, 02:24 PM
The Tea Party needs to grow up, politically. It simply has to become more organized and focused on its core beliefs. It does need to develop an official spokesperson to keep their agenda simple and on-topic. Let’s say ol’ Taxcutter held that job. When Michelle Bachmann comments while claiming the Tea Party imprimatur on a social issue, ol’ Taxcutter would immediately issue a rebuttal: “Ms. Bachmann may hold positions congenial to the Tea Party agenda of less spending, less taxation, and less government, but her comment s of last night outline her position on (the social issue in question) but not those of the Tea Party. As such the Tea Party does not support her stated position on (the social issue in question).” This adherence to topic must be as disciplined as that shown by GW Bush. You may not agree with his politics, but you have to admire his self-discipline.

The religious right needs to grow up as well. Rather than stridently demanding all sorts of picayune measures making abortion inconvenient, they should simply go to the pre-primary meetings and demand of the top candidates that the candidates for President (and Senate) that they will appoint (and confirm) SCOTUS justices amenable to overturning Roe v. Wade. Abortion as a political issue is going nowhere as long as Roe stands, just as Jim Crow was going nowhere until Plessy v Ferguson was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education. At that point the religious right keeps their efforts low-key and geared mainly toward supporting the GOP candidate.

Likewise, the religious right should lead the effort to reach out to the Hispanic community. They have much in common.

Politics on a big scale involves coalition and sometimes makes for strange bedfellows. How the Democrats keep the enviros and the unions from strangling each other is a mystery, but they do it. The religious right and the fiscal right and the strong-defense right simply have to get along because they are not going anywhere without the others.

Cigar
11-12-2012, 02:26 PM
The GOP isn't dead -- far from it -- but they've squandered some real opportunities to put the country back on track. I think they'll do better in four years and have a much better Presidential candidate.



Maybe they need to have a Come-to-Jesus moment with some of their Right Wing Nuts and remind them that they are not the only Americans, as the election count proved.

GrassrootsConservative
11-12-2012, 02:32 PM
Maybe they need to have a Come-to-Jesus moment with some of their Right Wing Nuts and remind them that they are not the only Americans, as the election count proved.

Shut the fuck up.

Cigar
11-12-2012, 02:34 PM
Shut the fuck up.

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b137/chasc5/president.jpg

Deadwood
11-12-2012, 02:53 PM
The GOP isn't dead -- far from it -- but they've squandered some real opportunities to put the country back on track. I think they'll do better in four years and have a much better Presidential candidate.

Considering they came to the table with a semi-lame, gaffe prone and on the charismatic deficit end of things, the greater concern should be on what did the Democrats NOT do. They re the party that went no where and had the incumbency thing on their side. With jobs finally on the upswing, and the unions solidly behind him, the question has to be why they didn't get control of the house.

That will cost them. So afraid, they were about the big war, they forgot a few little battles that could snag things up a tad going
"Forward"....as if they had.

Kabuki Joe
11-12-2012, 03:15 PM
Maybe they need to have a Come-to-Jesus moment with some of their Right Wing Nuts and remind them that they are not the only Americans, as the election count proved.


...you miss the point, the reason they didn't get the support for Romney they wanted was because Romney wasn't conservative enough, not the opposite...


Kabuki Joe

Cigar
11-12-2012, 03:28 PM
...you miss the point, the reason they didn't get the support for Romney they wanted was because Romney wasn't conservative enough, not the opposite...


Kabuki Joe


Well then ... why didn't they go with Newt?

Kabuki Joe
11-12-2012, 03:30 PM
Well then ... why didn't they go with Newt?


...politics...


Kabuki Joe

Calypso Jones
11-12-2012, 03:51 PM
I believe the repub party is on its last legs. They have allied themselves with the evil party in order to oust teaparty candidates. I think that will get worse. They will openly ally to destroy actual conservativism and they will adopt an abortion platform along with free contraceptives for any and every idiot. so. There will be a hard fight...and we, conservatives may lose. But who cares. The rest of the country will lose too...worse.

Cedric
11-12-2012, 05:41 PM
Considering they came to the table with a semi-lame, gaffe prone and on the charismatic deficit end of things, the greater concern should be on what did the Democrats NOT do. They re the party that went no where and had the incumbency thing on their side. With jobs finally on the upswing, and the unions solidly behind him, the question has to be why they didn't get control of the house.

That will cost them. So afraid, they were about the big war, they forgot a few little battles that could snag things up a tad going
"Forward"....as if they had.

Pretty much Obama limped across the finish line, and that's why even the leftwing press is not talking about any mandate outside of raising taxes of the reasonably affluent in this nation.

Obama lost ten million votes between 2008 and 2012 because despite all the spinning and covering that media outlets could do for him during the last four years too many voters decided that he was just barely good enough to be going on with. Romney, they decided, was enough like Obama that it didn't make sense [we are talking low information voters here] to swap out political lightweights.

Captain Obvious
11-12-2012, 06:18 PM
The GOP is at a crossroads. Will they stay firm in their principals or will they integrate?

I'm guessing the latter, I never had faith in the GOP which is why I changed parties.

wazi99
11-12-2012, 09:46 PM
They are no more dead than the Democrats where when Regain won 49 dates.

Calypso Jones
11-12-2012, 11:59 PM
"The delight of leftists over winning Tuesday’s election and granting Barack Obama four more years in which to wreak his havoc on the nation will only be rivaled by their glee in the upcoming weeks as they offer yet more “advice” to our side on how to achieve victory in the future. The short answer is, of course, that the GOP must promise to govern like liberals. This is the core of their “wisdom” on every occasion, and whenever aspiring Republican candidates accept it, electoral disaster is all but guaranteed.
Worse yet, this transparent effort is almost invariably aided and abetted by the entrenched “moderates” of the GOP establishment, many of whom abhor conservative principle, and are themselves devoted to gaining acceptance from the opposition. This, we are told, is the essence of “compromise” and “bipartisanship,” the net result of which is that regardless of which party holds the reins of power at the highest levels of government, liberals somehow still remain in control of the agenda."

read the rest at http://www.theabsurdreport.com/2012/risky-election-post-mortem-by-christopher-g-adamo/

Mainecoons
11-13-2012, 08:10 AM
But the real answer is to give Obama and the left what they want and the consequences that are inevitable with it. The left despite all their desires and emotion has not rewritten the basic laws of economics. The outcomes from their policies will not be different than the outcomes in history from the same ideas and policies. You print money, at some point money becomes worthless. You kill the spirit of entrepreneurs, at some point they give up and stop creating the jobs that employ everyone, including liberals.

Time and time again in history, we've seen government try to manage economies and substitute make work "employment" for the real thing. Time and time again, it has failed. Because the other thing that liberals can't change is human nature. I think almost everyone would love that the left's socialist uptopia could be created, that there would be no poverty, everyone would have free medical care, plenty of food, nice housing. Only the most churlish of humanity would not want to see prosperity for all.

But that isn't how it works on this planet. Whether you are a member of a herd of Gnus on the African plain or a member of a herd of humans in a country, some do better because of accident of birth, environment, genes, or just plain dumb luck. And some fall by the wayside. The only proven method for minimizing the size of the latter group is capitalism, and no that is not state capitalism or crony capitalism.

The fundamental breakdown of liberalism is that it tries over and over again to repeal the law of nature, expecting a different result. The result is always the same, it always ends in failure and then a recycling/rebuilding. And it will continue to do so.

Cigar
11-13-2012, 08:15 AM
But the real answer is to give Obama and the left what they want and the consequences that are inevitable with it. The left despite all their desires and emotion has not rewritten the basic laws of economics. The outcomes from their policies will not be different than the outcomes in history from the same ideas and policies. You print money, at some point money becomes worthless. You kill the spirit of entrepreneurs, at some point they give up and stop creating the jobs that employ everyone, including liberals.

Time and time again in history, we've seen government try to manage economies and substitute make work "employment" for the real thing. Time and time again, it has failed. Because the other thing that liberals can't change is human nature. I think almost everyone would love that the left's socialist uptopia could be created, that there would be no poverty, everyone would have free medical care, plenty of food, nice housing. Only the most churlish of humanity would not want to see prosperity for all.

But that isn't how it works on this planet. Whether you are a member of a herd of Gnus on the African plain or a member of a herd of humans in a country, some do better because of accident of birth, environment, genes, or just plain dumb luck. And some fall by the wayside. The only proven method for minimizing the size of the latter group is capitalism, and no that is not state capitalism or crony capitalism.

The fundamental breakdown of liberalism is that it tries over and over again to repeal the law of nature, expecting a different result. The result is always the same, it always ends in failure and then a recycling/rebuilding. And it will continue to do so.

The Right has been afraid to allow The President anything for fear he just might be right.

Taxcutter
11-13-2012, 09:54 AM
If the same number of Republican voters came out that came out in 2008, Romney would have won easily.

A lot of Republican voters (Ron Paul types) were put off by the fact he was Establishment. His Mormonism put off a lot of the religious voters.

roadmaster
11-13-2012, 10:43 AM
If the same number of Republican voters came out that came out in 2008, Romney would have won easily.

A lot of Republican voters (Ron Paul types) were put off by the fact he was Establishment. His Mormonism put off a lot of the religious voters.
Ron Paul would have had a better chance. He would have gotten more of the independent voters and the ones that leaned a little left too. Some could look over Mitt being a Mormon but some couldn't. I believe Ron would have done everything to prevent a war if possible but would have not left people defenseless. Our service men are not just bodies, they have family at home.

Taxcutter
11-13-2012, 02:41 PM
Ron Paul's mouth would have killed him.

In an environment where two sentences killed candidates, Ron Paul was lucky to last as long as he did.

Ron Paul is kinda like Newt in that he thinks out loud and in public. That's not to say what he is thinking is necessarily off-base, but it is often too unrefined to put out in front of the biased MSM.