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Noemie Emery

Excuses, excuses from the conservative wing for its election failures

Instead, against establishment types who were national figures, the conservative movement flung preachers and pundits (Pat Robertson, Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan), has-beens and losers (New Gingrich and Rick Santorum), and others still worse (Herman Cain, for example), who on second thought lost even conservative primary voters.

To deny all this reality, some movement types invented a conspiracy theory. The Establishment met at the Country Club on alternate Tuesdays to undermine all the upcoming Reagans (who sadly enough never existed). This is untrue, and it keeps these movement types from facing the real problem — the failure of the conservative movement to find and develop successors to Reagan over the space of the past 20 years…

When things worked less well for conservatives who lacked Reagan’s luck and his genius, they decided their failure was explainable only by sabotage — after all, how else could they lose? On the way, the Right developed a sense of entitlement (the Republican Party owed them a nominee of their liking); an embrace of victimhood; a habit of translating their tactical failure to win over more voters into a moral failure on the part of those voters for not sensing their value; and a belief that they can manage to win more elections by purging all factions (and people) not wholly in sync with their views.

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Conservatives, I tell you this as a friend—there is a baaaad tendency to hear someone make a good speech at your church or Tea Party meeting and go all bluegill. Then later on, when we all find out the hard way the candidate is unelectable, it suddenly becomes the GOP’s fault for not polishing his/her poopoo and saving funds for more winnable scenarios.

Sekhmet on March 21, 2013 at 12:08 PM

Your bias is showing. So, a person who speaks at a church or Tea Party is unelectable but the establishment candidate who the RINOs back IS electable. Funny, but that is not what recent political history has proven. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are two glaring examples of Tea Party wacko birds who did win. And more winnable scenerios? You mean like Romney and Mccain? You mean like the 35 candidates Rove spent 400 million on and only 7 won? You talking about those more electable candidates? And tell me why the republican establishment goes out of there way to pile on conservatives being vilified and attacked by the left? O’Donnell was conservative down the line but because she beat the very liberal establishment candidate, who by the way voted with the democrats over 90%of the time, she was vilified and called crazy by the RINO establishment before the left got to pile on. Rove and company lost that seat because they wanted to be right and they wanted to say, as you are saying, that Tea Party and social conservatives are the problem.

I could care less about the republican party. As Palin said, “We are not here to rebrand a party. We are here to restore a country.”

fight like a girl on March 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM

Yeah, Mitt was cruising before those mean Obama ads. Give me a break. Romney was never going to win.

ddrintn on March 21, 2013 at 12:28 PM

He had a small chance after the first debate. Then he went back to sleep.

Seems to be a GOP habit snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

kim roy on March 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM

Nothing will change as long as these self-serving tools retain control of the Republican Party.

novaculus on March 21, 2013 at 12:30 PM

*standing ovation*

kim roy on March 21, 2013 at 12:33 PM

The stampede from candidate to candidate in the 2012 primaries wasn’t a sign of “fickleness” as a lot of the party hacks and shills said. It’s a sign of desperation.

Doomberg on March 21, 2013 at 12:16 PM

To be brutally honest, it was an attempt to find ANYone other than Romney and then discovering that the alternative was no Palin. Truth is truth.

ddrintn on March 21, 2013 at 12:37 PM

Your bias is showing. So, a person who speaks at a church or Tea Party is unelectable but the establishment candidate who the RINOs back IS electable. Funny, but that is not what recent political history has proven. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are two glaring examples of Tea Party wacko birds who did win. And more winnable scenerios? You mean like Romney and Mccain? You mean like the 35 candidates Rove spent 400 million on and only 7 won? You talking about those more electable candidates? And tell me why the republican establishment goes out of there way to pile on conservatives being vilified and attacked by the left? O’Donnell was conservative down the line but because she beat the very liberal establishment candidate, who by the way voted with the democrats over 90%of the time, she was vilified and called crazy by the RINO establishment before the left got to pile on. Rove and company lost that seat because they wanted to be right and they wanted to say, as you are saying, that Tea Party and social conservatives are the problem.

I could care less about the republican party. As Palin said, “We are not here to rebrand a party. We are here to restore a country.”

fight like a girl on March 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM

I was responding to Emery’s article, and noting the one thing the Establishment gets right. Would you rather hear conservatives are perfect in every single possible way, and only RINO conspiracy accounts for our troubles? I would be proving Emery’s hypothesis! If conservatives can’t admit to making mistakes, conservatives cannot learn from mistakes and stop making them.

Sekhmet on March 21, 2013 at 12:40 PM

Then later on, when we all find out the hard way the candidate is unelectable…

Sekhmet on March 21, 2013 at 12:08 PM

The problem is, who’s the arbiter of “electability”? You find out the “hard way” about “electablity” by only one method, an election. Mitt Romney, Mr Electability himself, proved to be utterly unelectable. Some learned that the hard way.

ddrintn on March 21, 2013 at 12:41 PM

O’Donnell was conservative down the line but because she beat the very liberal establishment candidate, who by the way voted with the democrats over 90%of the time, she was vilified and called crazy by the RINO establishment before the left got to pile on. Rove and company lost that seat because they wanted to be right and they wanted to say, as you are saying, that Tea Party and social conservatives are the problem.

I could care less about the republican party. As Palin said, “We are not here to rebrand a party. We are here to restore a country.”

fight like a girl on March 21, 2013 at 12:32 PM

COD would have been a reliable R vote. Isn’t that the goal in the senate? Isn’t that why we put up with idiots like Scott Brown because they *MIGHT* vote R once in a while?

I remember that vividly – Rove going on Fox and just eviscerating her after she won the primary. I was simply stunned at the level of vitriol that he tossed out there. She was never able to recover from that. She might have weathered the “witch” BS, but we’ll never know.

kim roy on March 21, 2013 at 12:44 PM

Romney was the GOP nominee because he won the most votes. Emery’s bottom line is dead on:

The GOP owes conservatives nothing beyond a chance and a hearing. The onus is on them to win over the voters.

cam2 on March 21, 2013 at 12:46 PM

If conservatives can’t admit to making mistakes, conservatives cannot learn from mistakes and stop making them.

Sekhmet on March 21, 2013 at 12:40 PM

This conservative admits to the mistake of thinking that the GOP has a clue about conservatism and winning elections.

This conservative admits that perhaps it is high time to look elsewhere for conservatism and take her support elsewhere.

kim roy on March 21, 2013 at 12:47 PM

Romney was the GOP nominee because he won the most votes. Emery’s bottom line is dead on:

The GOP owes conservatives nothing beyond a chance and a hearing. The onus is on them to win over the voters.
cam2 on March 21, 2013 at 12:46 PM

LOL Then maybe she shouldn’t be blaming the conservatives for the ‘election failure.” Romney LOST i.e., HIS ELECTION FAILURE because he didn’t get the most votes..

BTW, I owe the GOP nothing beyond a chance and a hearing…

melle1228 on March 21, 2013 at 12:54 PM

The problem is, who’s the arbiter of “electability”? You find out the “hard way” about “electablity” by only one method, an election. Mitt Romney, Mr Electability himself, proved to be utterly unelectable. Some learned that the hard way.

ddrintn on March 21, 2013 at 12:41 PM

He lost by 4% against an incumbent that had no primary challengers and no third part stealing votes from him (the only two situations in recent decades that have lead to an incumbent losing).

Perhaps there was a candidate that would have been able to close that gap, but, we’ll never know because that candidate was either unwilling to go through the primary process or unable to win the primary process.

An unwilling candidate is a moot point as they don’t run. As for the candidate that’s unable to win the primary…well, I have my doubts that someone that couldn’t win in the primaries would have had a sophisticated enough machine to win in the general. It’s possible, but, I have yet to see anyone provide evidence of it being the case.

JadeNYU on March 21, 2013 at 1:01 PM

The problem is, who’s the arbiter of “electability”? You find out the “hard way” about “electablity” by only one method, an election. Mitt Romney, Mr Electability himself, proved to be utterly unelectable. Some learned that the hard way.

ddrintn on March 21, 2013 at 12:41 PM

You can find out the hard way a candidate is not electable when Bill Maher starts showing tapes from his old show where the candidate runs her yap. You can find out the hard way a candidate is not electable when he goes on about womens’ bodies stopping rape sperm. I’m not talking someone sitting in a country club and picking out who they like, I’m talking about unelectability POST stepping-on-own-John Thomas, and usually when it is too late to run anyone else.

This happens when the conservative movement falls in wuv from the get-go instead of waiting on the vetting. All information critical of Candidate Wuvvy Dove is automatically the RINO Establishment conspiring against him/her, and all flaws are glossed over until it becomes impossible to hide.

Sekhmet on March 21, 2013 at 1:02 PM

Sekhmet on March 21, 2013 at 1:02 PM

Akin was the candidate of the left, not the Tea party. But once selected, as a rock solid conservative, he should have been defended and pushed to the victory line rather than hamstrung and left on the side of the road to die.
His only mistake was believing a left wing propaganda point that was taught 40 years earlier and hammered into his head but the left wing nut jobs. The thing about that though is that he could be taught the truth and was still a 97% conservative.
But they had to throw him under the bus, because he was conservative.

astonerii on March 21, 2013 at 1:20 PM