Yes, Romney was the problem
The reality is that Romney was one of the worst GOP presidential candidates in modern times. He was not the first choice of most conservative voters but he managed to rise through the ranks in the primary due to conservatives being split 4-5 ways, but also due to a slew of endorsements from conservative leaders and groups that had no business endorsing him – such as Ann Coulter. Repeatedly, Coulter assured conservatives that Romney was one of us and that he would be the “best possible candidate” to face Obama. But as any conservative from Massachusetts knew, Romney was a liberal at heart who, as Governor, led the nation in passing three of the left’s most sacred issues: Same sex marriage, Cap and Trade, and government control of health care. …
The fact is liberal Republicans do not win presidential races. The obvious reason for this is that RINOs do not offer much of a contrast to a Democrat, or at least a contrast so weak it does not motivate voters to support them. You would think we would have learned this lesson from the McCain and Dole debacles. To make things worse, Romney even agreed with Obama on numerous occasions during the debates, missing great opportunities to instead attack the president. With the economy collapsing all around us, voters were simply not looking for Obama-light.
Moreover, Romney’s strategy of looking presidential but saying nothing controversial was an asinine strategy. All one has to do is watch the old Reagan/Carter debates to see how Reagan strived to showed contrast with Carter at every opportunity. While Reagan was always civil in the way he stated things, he tore Carter’s head off every chance he got.
Blowback
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You cannot fix “My Views are Progressive” by saying, I like mandates, mandates work…
Terrific candidate? only in your deranged little world. I am betting that god planet of Romney’s will never exist, but you will go to your death bed convinced that Romney is GOD. I can care less if you proclaim to be a catholic, worshiping someone other than God indicates that it JUST AINT SO.
astonerii on November 28, 2012 at 6:14 PM
No, YOU said that. What’s hard to understand is that if Ham Sandwich could have beaten Obama, why was it so imperative that we all hold our noses and vote for Mr Unelectable? You know, the juggernaut who in his entire political career had won ONE election, and that with under 50% of the vote?
LOL, hilarious. Romney lost after being touted ad nauseam by all sorts of sycophants and Red Team cheerleaders here and elsewhere, but he didn’t REALLY lose, you see. He wasn’t a drag on the ticket.
ddrintn on November 28, 2012 at 6:16 PM
EXACTLY. + a gazillion.
ddrintn on November 28, 2012 at 6:18 PM
Terrye, explain why GWB talked about his being a “compassionate conservative” instead of being a Conservative. It really is simple, for anyone who knows history, to understand the reasoning: He was not one of those people. Those people were mean-spirited and cold-hearted, just like the Mainstream Media, the Democrats, the Ruling Class Republicans told you. Those people were right-wing kooks. But those people were the true Conservatives. GWB was a fraud, just like Paul Krugman is a fraud as an economist.
NCLB was Bush seeing a problem — pub ed a dismal failure — and coming up with a Big Government Statist solution. Big Brother/Nanny Government growing bigger and stronger, and the local public where the school is located becoming evermore disconnected from what’s left of their control over the local pub school. That is not Conservative. That is Liberal.
Bush’s massive Medicare expansion came straight out of the Big Government Liberal playbook and had not one iota of Conservatism in it.
TARP was a Socialist move to control the economy, and a total failure, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars we didn’t have and couldn’t afford to spend. Nothing at all Conservative about that.
So, no, he was not at all a Conservative. At all.
Get your facts straight, Terrye, and quit sucking on the Statist propaganda spigot.
John Hitchcock on November 28, 2012 at 6:18 PM
Bonus points round?
Damn skippy. If the best cannot win, then we should field the most conservative to work towards changing the electorate though a billion dollars of advertising and large amounts of time in the media.
Personally, Perry or Gingrich would have been better, and I think either had a better chance of winning.
astonerii on November 28, 2012 at 6:22 PM
Because you brilliant squishy arbiters of electability would be b1tching and moaning and trashing and booing and hissing non-stop til that “electable conservative alternative” would have to give way to someone more “acceptable”, someone who will win independents and moderates and disaffected Dems and left-handed lesbian former nuns. Lather, rinse, repeat.
ddrintn on November 28, 2012 at 6:23 PM
Ok…you are proving your point in this hypothetical universe. When you can provide some evidence that it happened in this universe I will be all ears.
ChrisL on November 28, 2012 at 6:28 PM
Comedy gold.
tom on November 28, 2012 at 6:31 PM
Almost true. His only relevant experience was a a single term as governor of a blue state where he was hardly a rousing success, and knew better than to try to run for a second term.
His Harvard MBA/JD GPA was totally irrelevant to voters, as anyone with half a brain already knew.
It’s a pleasant fantasy to believe that business experience is relevant to being president, but there’s still no evidence to support such a claim. If anything, business experience seems to be a detriment. CEOs don’t have to get their message through a hostile media, for one thing. Also, presidents have a hard time firing Congressmen. Though I’m sure Obama would like to try.
tom on November 28, 2012 at 6:40 PM
I am describing a universe where Reps & Dems were about even in Voter ID, but where more Ds than Rs actually showed up to vote.
And guess what; that is exactly what happened on Election Day.
Everyone had predicted a D+2 or so electorate; and we got a D+6.
Why? Because liberals turned out, while conservatives sat home.
Norwegian on November 28, 2012 at 6:44 PM
Hey smartest kid in the room. romney LOST. Which part of that do you not understand. romney LOST he lost he lost. Terrific canddidates don’t lose they win. Romney LOST. Put up someone like Romney again and he will LOSE too. Liberals only win national leections if they are a member of the dem party if the liberal is a republican they LOSE. How many more times do we have to go through this. Ford lost Reagan conservative won two LANDSLIDES bush the first running as Reagan’s heir won running as a liberal lost Dole moderate lost Bush the 2nd running as a conservative won twice, McCain liberal lost Romney liberal lost. Is the picture clear to you yet or do you need more data points maybe we should throw 2016 and 2020 away too to prove to you and people like you that if you thought Romney was a terrific candidate you are wrong. Losers aren’t terrific they are just losers
unseen on November 28, 2012 at 6:47 PM
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/335297.php
Ace brings wisdom
thebrokenrattle on November 28, 2012 at 6:51 PM
the fact that he went to havard should disquailify him from running in the first place. the havard/yale crowd has utterly destoryed this once great nation.
Give me someone from Eureka College over Havard any day of the week or year or decade.
unseen on November 28, 2012 at 6:52 PM
ROFL. Ace is an idiot of the first order. anyone that reads him needs help
unseen on November 28, 2012 at 6:53 PM
Wow, unseen. You’re normally better at posting than that. You had a lot of very good points, but they were lost in the midst of all the commas and periods that also found themselves lost.
John Hitchcock on November 28, 2012 at 6:55 PM
They can’t do it. All they like to do is complain. They have nothing to offer.
bluegill on November 28, 2012 at 7:01 PM
But most Senate candidates got less votes than Romney, so he obviously got more moderate votes, if the ABRs voted down ticket, as you say.
Or Norwegian is right and the ABRs didn’t vote down ticket. That would mean that they are unreliable and don’t even vote for conservative candidates. That would make them irrelevant.
Gelsomina on November 28, 2012 at 7:03 PM
Um, help?
thebrokenrattle on November 28, 2012 at 7:06 PM
I think they want to throw 2016 and 2020 away and the rest of the nation with it.
I think these people are the double agents. The same kind that communists and socialists got into the school system, into the media and into congress in order to transform America.
They started their work back in the late 19th century and by 1911 had gotten one of their greatest victories at the time. One they got rid of States rights by making the Federal Government the only entity with any power through the popularly voted into power senate. They also got the Republicans to submit the income tax amendment.
Now they are infiltrating the Republican party, and using their Obamafication of the Republican party to force everyone else to shut up. They use the SEIU thuggery, the OWS attacks and the Wisconsin Teachers Unions bully tactics. They came with Romney. Like Obama, no amount of failure on Romney’s part will ever be looked at for what it is.
astonerii on November 28, 2012 at 7:07 PM
just tired of having the same argument over and over. How many more times do we have to play this game? Liberals lose conservatives (or at least liberals that can pretend to be conservative ) win. The problem is that the GOP moderates are really liberals except for tax policy. Therefore going after them is abandonning the Reagan democrates who are conservative in everything but the tax policy. It is why liberals use class warfare. Maybe the GOP should worry more about middle class morals then they do about the wealthy class’s pocket books.
unseen on November 28, 2012 at 7:07 PM
or the Reagan dems stayed home. Obama got almost what 9 million less votes? those votes should have been Romney’s but for some reason the Tea party/reagan dems didn’t want to vote for someone that reminded them of their boss imagine that.
unseen on November 28, 2012 at 7:10 PM
The worst thing about this whole discussion is to see that some people steadfastly refuse to learn anything. “No,” they say, “there was nothing wrong with Romney. He was the best possible candidate.”
I’m sorry, but that makes no more sense than claiming that McCain was the best possible candidate. People are now arguing that Romney surpassed McCain’s vote by half a million, as if that’s something to brag about. The country has grown in population by something like 8 times that number in the last four years.
But that still misses the point. In 2008, Obama was a brand new candidate with no record to run from, on the heels of a fiscal crisis that could easily, if falsely, be blamed on the previous administration, and pledging a new era of openness, hope, and change.
In 2012, the economy was a wreck, unemployment was horrible, businesses were not growing, and Obama was campaigning as negative as he could get.
This was the very best chance Romney had to win his long-held goal of the presidency, and he couldn’t pull it off. Let’s at least have the decency to admit that Romney failed. More to the point, let’s learn the lesson that running a candidate slightly to the right of the Democrat is a losing proposition. The biggest numbers of voters is your own base. First give them a good reason to vote for you, and then you only have to sway enough in the middle to win the election. But Romney tried to appeal to the independents and assume the conservatives would vote for him anyway. And while most conservatives did just that rather than see Obama win again, Romney lost more conservative votes than he gained independents.
And this actually makes sense, if you realize that independents are the group most likely to be swayed by the media. And we know whose side they are on.
tom on November 28, 2012 at 7:12 PM
They also got enacted a way to rob the avg citizen of power by limiting the house of rep to 435 people in 1904. Lenin referred to these people as useful idiots and sadly I have to agree with lenin on this one.
unseen on November 28, 2012 at 7:13 PM
Well, they are taking over the Republican party now. I do not see any evidence that once entrenched, the way Romney did it at the convention, these useful idiots can be dislodged.
astonerii on November 28, 2012 at 7:17 PM
Yes, because the Democrats convinced the voters that ALL Republicans are like Akin and Mourdock. You remember the dancing vaginas, “vote as if you lady parts depend on it” and headlines like “Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, and Redefining Rape”?
Gelsomina on November 28, 2012 at 7:19 PM
Again – why did the more conservative Senate candidates get less votes than Romney?
Gelsomina on November 28, 2012 at 7:22 PM
Because the computer programs were only designed to change Romney votes to Obama.
astonerii on November 28, 2012 at 7:26 PM
So conservatives win everywhere but REpublican primaries….is that really the argument?
ChrisL on November 28, 2012 at 7:37 PM
You are describing that universe but not proving that is what happened. Lots of people predicted a D+6 electorate. In fact, most predictors predicted exactly that. Remember…thats how Nate Silver was so right.
If conservatives alone can win elections, why can’t they win Republican primaries?
ChrisL on November 28, 2012 at 7:41 PM
What voters did Romney target? Independents and non-conservatives.
What Senators do independents and non-conservatives vote for? Non-conservatives.
By the very nature of Romney’s campaign, it was clear that he would have little or no coattails.
That doesn’t really answer your question completely, but only because I don’t believe Romney was effective in reaching the voters he was trying to reach.
The rest of the answer to your question is simple: Obama was the incumbent in a horrible economy. You would expect people to vote against the incumbent in such a case.
tom on November 28, 2012 at 7:59 PM
I th
Here are 2 people that constantly told us that Romney was the only electable candidate. We told them that Romney’s vicious campaign against the conservative candidates was going to lose him some votes in the general. They blew us off with their own nastiness. We told them this nastiness is going to lose them votes, they didn’t care. Romney lost, we are to blame in their eyes. Good job moderates.
Garym on November 28, 2012 at 8:34 PM
Your logic is unsound. Romney had a better percentage than Pence or Mourdock obviously, but it was the moderates who didn’t vote for the conservatives.
Garym on November 28, 2012 at 8:40 PM
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