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Thread: Is The GOP Dead?

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    Taxcutter's Avatar Senior Member
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    Is The GOP Dead?

    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.

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    Original Ranter
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    Conley's Avatar Senior Member
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    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.

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    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Conley View Post
    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.

  5. The Following User Says Thank You to Cigar For This Useful Post:

    Kizzume (11-13-2012)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cigar View Post
    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 $#@! up.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GrassrootsConservative View Post
    Shut the $#@! up.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Conley View Post
    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.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Cigar View Post
    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

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kabuki Joe View Post
    ...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?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cigar View Post
    Well then ... why didn't they go with Newt?

    ...politics...


    Kabuki Joe

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