GOP Governors Say Party Lost On Strategy, Not Issues
"...I knew it would be close. The Obama machine, the ground machine, is absolutely incredible," McCrory says. "I saw it in , when I ran for governor and lost. ... I was blindsided by it. This time I wasn't blindsided by it, but I still think they have a much better ground machine than the Republican national party."
McCrory's take on the ground game is both true, and for Republican governors, politically convenient. The consensus in Las Vegas was that Obama won, not because Americans agreed with his positions on raising taxes on the rich or health care, but because Republicans got out-organized by the community organizer. Therefore, the president has no election mandate, because the reason he won had nothing to do with issues.
The other consensus was that Republican Mitt Romney wasn't a great presidential candidate.
"I really think this is not as much about Republican or Democrat, but about people are looking for leaders and they don't care what party they come from," he says. "I think what happened with Gov. Romney is he let himself be defined before he defined himself."
This analysis also lets Republican Party ideology off the hook. It was widely agreed that nothing needed to be changed except perhaps the tone. For example, the idea that more than 70 percent of Hispanics voted for the president because of Republican positions on illegal immigration was rejected by the Republican governors....(more at link)
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/18/165379...egy-not-issues