Romney wasn’t a drag on the GOP, the GOP was a drag on him

The Republican Party did not do a good job selling itself this year. I think part of the problem was, we assumed that Obama’s incompetence had undone most of the damage done by the SubPrime Mortgage Crisis.

This isn’t a fundamental break from reality however, looking at Obama’s numbers, it’s clear that Obama and the Democratic party has been damaged, but that damaged hasn’t sent people flooding back to the Republican party.

Because we assumed Obama was fatally flawed goods, and that we weren’t, we spent most of our time attacking Obama and did a poor job selling ourselves. Romney too, probably spent too much time attacking Obama, but unlike the rest of the field he did successful make a case for his own Presidency. On most the issues, Romney was chosen as the more competent and capable of the two candidates, it was likability that ultimately killed Romney, and even that may not have mattered had things gone ever so slightly differently.

I think it’s clear that, next time, it’s insufficient to merely trash the democrats track record, no matter how bad it may be by then. First, we’ll have to define our nominee before the media and the democratic campaign does it for them. Second, we have to build enthusiasm for that candidate, as a party we don’t really trust anybody right now, so this will be difficult, but its really important. Finally, our nominee has to hit his opponent on the issues, while building his own credibility.

This third step is where Romney excelled tremendously. His debates and talking points left no real doubt that he was intelligent, and idiocy is one of the democrats most useful labels.

It’s said that democrats attack their opponents as one of three things. Old and white, stupid, and evil. While old, that label never really worked on Romney, and he was clearly not stupid either, so instead the Obama campaign tried to relentlessly pass him off as evil.

The Republican party in general however, they more generally attacked as all three. The media ignored minority speakers at the Republican convention, were eager to showcase embarrassments like Akin and Mourdock, and I think those two may have covered the evil card as well. It’s also to point out that several of our candidates were old white party rehashes, which doesn’t help at all against the old and white label.

So Romney performed better, but only because democrats could only attack him with one of they’re three usual smears.

WolvenOne on November 14, 2012 at 10:01 PM