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/ 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.