Right, the nation elected the President in a free election, but they "lost". Fortunately the GOP leadership is smart enuf to see the facts and adjust to them. A wise man changes his mind....a fool, never.
republicans lost because millions of evangelicals would not vote for a mormon and millions of fiscal conservative tea party or ron paul types saw Romney's lack of specificity as more establishment republican horse crap. It was more of the same establishment b.s. We had to trust him and many did not.
I suspect many in the republican party establishment agree with RCG or at least would like to if they could get away with it. Their focus is gaining power, period. From power, money flows in all directions. Campaign contributions, lobbyists, cush jobs for paryty hacks, etc. cutting spending is a tough pill for these people to swallow because when you cut spending, you piss off someone who writes you checks. If you've just lost a national election, you can't afford to piss them off because they might not answer your phone call anyway. Vote to cut their favorite mega defense spending boondoggle and they damn sure will not call you back. The last thing these party types want is a showdown over principles. They still carry the scars from the last government shutdown when Clinton gave them a keelhauling. A fight to the death over principles could mean the end of their careers, so they have zero stomach for it. If the alternative is selling out their voters, well, they'll probably forget about it before the next election, and anyway, it's not like they are going to vote for Hillary or someone worse. For the party base, the true believers, the situation looks very different. They see a party that ran a disorganized, amateurish campaign which managed to lose to an incompetent socialist with the worst economic and approval numbers of any incumbent to ever be reelected. Now he is out talking shit about his "mandate" and how he is going to do all this far left stuff he deferred before the election. The horror of these voters is expressed by secession petitions. Tens of thousands of normal voters, not white power hate groups, put their names on petitions actually calling for a breakup of the country they love. These are not people who want to be told that their leaders are only too happy to drop their pants and bend over for obama. The republican party faces some tough choices among unappealing alternatives. In fairness, they are in a bed they made for themselves, or more accurately, that George Bush and that arrogant prick Karl Rove made for them.
So far I've avoided all of the post-mortem analysis of why Romney lost so decisively because most of it seemed to have been written by liberals and so there was lots of gloating and BS involved. Your analysis is short and I thought it was probably meaningful like many of your posts are so I'm sitting here trying to understand what you are saying. Basically it asserts that christians, catholics and observant jews would not vote for a mormon. I get that. Then in addition the fiscal conservatives would not vote for Romney because he couldn't/wouldn't be specific about the 12 million jobs he claimed he would add to the economy. I understand that as well. Then the Ron Paul part... you're saying that very few of the Ron Paul supporters would vote for Romney. So they stayed home or did they vote for Obama? Was there enough Ron Paul supporters to give the election to Obama? Did Ron Paul supporters actually want to see Obama win? Most of the Ron Paul supporters here in P&R were very clear, they wanted Ron Paul to become President but short of that outcome they would vote Republican and support an ABO candidate. I can't remember one of them saying he would stay home or switch and vote for Obama. Can you clarify what you meant in the Ron Paul related part of your short analysis? Thanks.
The real GOP, the moderates, want nothing more to do with the extreme sect. When Jindal calls the GOP the Party of Stupid, it pretty much summed it all up. Before responding to that, let me say that I think the GOP IS NOT STUPID, just time to trim the ranks from the angry old white guys, which will happen automatically in upcoming years. A few like Luke will try to hold onto the past, but the smart people in the GOP will figure out a way to re-examine their core intent, to win power. And to do so, they have to cut away all the crap. Nothing more to be said.
CNBC had the CEO rom Overstock say something to the effect Ron Paul and no income tax or no vote. When I met Ron Paul supporters here in CA.. many of them were in their 20s. I doubt they voted for Romney.. They probably stayed home. There are liberals old school and new... who identify with bigger personal freedom / less govt, strong military but no wars of aggression no nation building/ be isolationist / no overseas military installations and a no personal income tax agenda. I suspect you put that all together... and explain more personal freedom means more religious freedom and more no religion freedom and you could still bring the evangelicals along. Govt will not be sanctioning gay or straight marriage or buying birth control or condoms. Ron Pauls pitch coming out in a coherent manner would be very compelling. (he just needs a workable ME policy)