Take Away

UPDATE:  Accord.  Accord.

"... social issues continue to hurt Republicans with women, young voters, and suburbanites. The problem is not just a matter of their stance on the issues, but their tone. It’s not just that Republicans oppose abortion or gay marriage, but that they often sound intolerant and self-righteous in doing so. Romney himself may not have put much emphasis on social issues, but the Republican brand was too easily associated with the words of Todd Akin."

    I think that assessment has a lot of truth to it, particularly when Democrats and their media allies are already going to distort these positions.

    Unskilled candidates who run on a platform of religious purity marginalize themselves to the point that it overshadows any sensible fiscal plans they may have. It's not just women and young voters who tune out these people, but other conservatives who don't want to have to make excuses for them.

    The truth is that there are legions of conservatives who are able to articulate their views on social and economic issues without having to invoke religion. If there is a backlash within the movement it won't be over issues, it will be over how to broaden the appeal of the conservative message. Positions on social issues themselves didn't cost Romney or Republican Senate candidates in this election. Abortion is still a 50/50 proposition and actually weights pro-life. Same-sex marriage is still a minority view and is likely to be decided by Courts anyway. What loses elections are insulated candidates who invoke religion as a justification for their political positions or are prone to saying moronic things. There may be legitimate concerns about the legal and social consequences of same-sex marriage, but arguing against it "because the Bible said so" in a political agrument in this day and age is going to reduce your appeal.

    Akin in Missouri and Mourdock in Indiana proved this. Republicans cannot afford another cycle with such candidates. The focus of campaigns and the quality of the candidates is what needs to change, not political ideology. 

    The Right needs more happy warriors (Reagan was), and fewer angry moralists. 

    At the outset of this cycle, I wrote that we had a slate of B team candidates. That turned out to be true. Fortunately, this cycle may serve as a lesson. The new generation of conservatives is about to take over the Right and the A team of candidates who are smart, enthusiastic, and in touch with the center-right nature of this country are on the event horizon.

    I believe that a majority of Americans are fiscally conservative, but more divided on social issues. With regard to the latter, conservatives need to open the debate intellectually and accept that in order to win elections, libertarian views have to be acknowledged. Similarly, a better non-religious based conservative argument for positions on social issues needs to be articulated. In the end, there has to be room for both. 

    Democrats are the party of big government. They should lose every election because of that. But they aren't in large part because the conservative message is disjointed, co-opted, overly moralistic, and poorly and inarticulately expressed. 

    The Right can broaden its appeal to more women, younger people, and minorities without selling out ideas. But it is going to take a new message and better messengers to do so.

    Out with the old, in with the new.

Comments

[Kim]

Yep

[Joe Guarino]

Sam, after this election, I don't think a majority of Americans are fiscal conservatives.

Romney did not run on the social issues. I don't think the social issues beat him. His base of support would have collapsed if he had taken positions that are socially liberal (again).

Obama simply could not have won if the majority of Americans are truly fiscal conservatives. Romney ran on fiscal conservatism and the economy.

The fact is that the opinions of Americans on fiscal conservatism is much more complex. Despite all the economic turmoil and the looming debt crisis, Americans are still in the mode of not wanting their taxes to be raised-- but also not wanting benefits and programs to be cut.

[bubba]

The fact of the matter is that conservative turnout didn't happen in the four state that mattered: OH,VA,FL, and CO. Romney failed to match McCain's tally in one, and broke nearly even in the others

A lack of 390k Romney votes throughout those four states caused the loss. An average of FOUR percent increase for Romney in those states would have yielded 70 electoral votes, and the election win.

FOUR percent.......only ONE more in addition to each 24 needed.

[bubba]

Theme song for the next four years.

[Spag]

Joe, I agree with your last paragraph. But I'm looking beyond Romney to the long term. Demographics are changing and the way conservatism is marketed has to change.

I firmly believe that the majority of Americans are fiscally conservative, it's the other issues that create the greatest divide. The Right would be better served by focusing on that common ground.

I think that social issues need to be addressed in terms of policy and societal impact rather than Biblical reference. This means that there is going to be a greater area of disagreement, but we are never all going to agree on everything. If we act like liberals and demonize disagreement with broad strokes then we won't convince anyone and they are more likely to tune us out when it comes to other issues where we could use their support. Like I said, we need more happy warriors.

As women and minorities make more economic gains, they too will feel the brunt impact of big government on their wallet. The problem now is that they view the Right as being hostile to them making gains. Of course we know that is simply not true, but with such crappy messengers and in some cases, abject incompetent candidates as our spokesmen, the people who we need and who can be swayed just tune out. See Akin and Mourdock for proof.

There is still a great deal of economic uncertainty out there and we know that Obama's path isn't the right one. He didn't even offer a new plan this time around. It was the same old resentment argument. I don't think he won because he convinced a majority of Americans that he was right, and if he did the populace will soon learn just how wrong he is. Sometimes people have to learn the hard way. But when they do, we have to show that we have the right answers. We didn't do that very well this time around in large part because we didn't have great candidates.

Keep it all in perspective. Our loss last night was nowhere as bad as the Democratic loss in 2010. But a change in focus and direction- not ideology- is required.

[Joe Guarino]

Sam, I think the loss last night was nearly catastrophic because Eurosocialism is now solidified into the American character and identity. And Obama gets presumably one or two more Supreme Court nominees to legislate from the bench and vote the Democratic party line on the high court.

The nation is inevitably going to be weaker over the long run-- economically and militarily.

I am not sure the Republican Party should survive this debacle. It is certainly clear to me, at the very least, that the national establishment Republican leadership needs to go.

I agree with you that conservatives need to appeal more to Hispanics, blacks and other minorities-- without compromising core principles. Yes, candidates need to communicate in an astute fashion when discussing social issues. BTW, neither Romney nor Ryan faltered in this regard. I do not think social conservatives need to fade into the woodwork or give away the store.

Let's remember that moderate/establishment Republican US Senate candidates also lost their races. It was not just Akin and Mourdock.

[Joe Guarino]

One thing to add. To maintain perspective, we need to acknowledge that Romney should have won in a landslide given the economic situation. This should have been a blow-out.

[bubba]

"With regard to the latter, conservatives need to open the debate intellectually and accept that in order to win elections, libertarian views have to be acknowledged."

As well we know from local experience, Dems/Lefties/"Progressives" don't debate intellectually. They debate on emotional talking points, and on distortion of facts.

The national media enables that sort of nonsense, and the public is often not smart enough to figure that out.

[Spag]

Yeah, I but we're not trying to win over the liberals. I'm referring more to the divide between libertarian conservatives and traditional conservatives.

[Jim Buie]

Sam, it's good to see a little introspection here after so many years of blaming all problems on "liberals," Ed Cone, and "the other." But of course the introspection needs to go a lot deeper to be meaningful and transformative.

You might ask yourself about all the wishful thinking propaganda you posted on this blog that now looks laughably out of touch with political reality. Just a few samples from a quick search of your blog:

The Center No Longer Holds: Obama Losing Support of Independents

Majority of Americans Disapprove of Way Obama Is Doing His Job

Obama: Incompetent Leader (following) Path of Failure Like Jimmy Carter

Obama Looking A Lot More Like Jimmy Carter

You told us how the Tea Party was a powerful and positive conservative movement rather than the disaster it has turned out to be for Republicans, causing them to lose a huge opportunity to make gains in the Senate.

You told us how Obama's administration is "about to run out of fuel, a recipe for a spectacular crash....he is on the precipice of a downward spiral
in approval among the public that will reach new, unrecoverable lows." Best of all, you called him "clueless." Who's clueless now? Time to eat a lot of crow.

[Spag]

Oh do you mean when I wrote those articles back before the 2010 elections when Obama and the Democrats did take a beating?

Continue to believe in a new liberal majority. You guys did that last time, too and then 2010 came. This was a close election and the polls still show that Obama does not have majority support on many major issues. Nobody ever said he wasn't competent at winning elections. He still hasn't shown he can govern and it's going to be much harder now particularly if he insists on moving to the Left.

Read the tea leaves wrong at your own peril.

[Spag]

Joe, the moderate Republicans who lost were in Blue states. Akin and Mourdock are in Red states and had significant leads on their opponents until they made stupid, tone deaf (and misinformed) statements about rape and abortion. That is why they lost.

[bubba]

"Read the tea leaves wrong at your own peril."

Buie is, as always, best ignored, or just used as theobject of laughs and pointed fingers.

[bubba]

The larger issue needed to be addressed is why Romney failed to match the number of popular votes earned by McCain in 08, for the reasons I specified earlier..

[bubba]

"To maintain perspective, we need to acknowledge that Romney should have won in a landslide given the economic situation. This should have been a blow-out."

Joe, if exit polls are to be believed, a plurality of voters thought the economy was improving.

"But the big factor, I think, is that almost 40 percent of Americans believe the economy is getting better, while only 30 percent believe it’s getting worse. Is the plurality correct? It’s not clear. But 2012 has been a better year than 2011, so at a minimum, it isn’t irrational to hold the plurality view. And that view, even if not held by a majority, coupled with the majority’s understanding of how bad things were trending when Obama took office, provided Obama with just enough of an argument to prevail.

The Romney view presumably did enough polling and focus group testing to know what the exit poll reveals to the rest of us. This probably explains why Romney kept saying talking about the “weak recovery” and why he told voters that we don’t have to settle for the high unemployment we’re experiencing — that we can do better. The positive response Romney seemed to get from this line of attack in the debates, especially the first one, made me believe it might well carry the day.

It almost did, but fell a little short. And that, I think, is the main reason why Romney fell a little short of winning the presidency."

[Spag]

He really did fall just a little short. The margins in the states that decided the election were close. Is it demographics? Certainly some of it is. Was it Romney? Certainly some of it was. Was it ideology? Not likely. Obamacare still draws majority opposition and more than half believe government is too big. However, those two don't appear to be the voting issue for most people.

I do think that a lot of it may relate to Romney being a wealthy man and a lot of Americans are still mad at Wall Street. Obama did a good job early painting Romney as one of that crowd. I think that may explain a lot of the underlying demographic argument. Young people are in rebellion and will grow out of it once they have to start paying taxes and I think the "rich white guy" narrative did repel some women voters along with Latinos. In comparison, Obama seemed so much more middle class.

Romney may just have been the wrong guy for this time.

The GOP did quite well in House races and those candidates were more conservative than Romney.

Mitt is a good guy, but let's face it- we did run our B team this time around. The next time around, the Democrats don't have anyone (Hillary and Biden will both be senior citizens and will seem politically dated). In contrast, we have a whole crop of talented, young conservatives. If there ever was a GOP A team, it will be in 2016. Rubio, Ryan, Christie, Jeb, Jindal, maybe Ayotte.

If Democrats have a hard time in 2016, they can always blame the last President. Henceforth, Obama will have a hard time blaming Bush. He too will have to lay his failures on the last President- which is him.

[bubba]

I understand that some 3 million registered Republicans did not vote. I'm going to see if i can find the breakdown of those numbers in OH, VA, FL, Co, NH, IA, and PA.

[bubba]

Mitt was a better candidate than McCain, and ran a better campaign, but apparently not better enough.

[bubba]

"Obama seemed so much more middle class"

With his arrogance? His vacations? His wife spending $10 million gallivanting across the world with her friends and kids?

[Joe Guarino]

Romney is a decent man who was a very flawed candidate. He ran a fairly good campaign during the month of October, but it was not enough for reasons I explained at the Guardian. He and his establishment Republican friends failed to close the deal, to deliver the knock-out punch. They failed from a tactical standpoint. They alienated the Paul crowd. They failed to inspire.

I don't think the party's conservative base abandoned him during election season. But I think, as Bubba suggests, some Republicans and conservatives did not get turned out to vote.

We also need to remember that the Democrats were defending many more Senate seats than the Republicans were. Not winning the Senate was also a huge failure. Romney's campaign was responsible for this in part. You can't pin that overarching failure on Mourdock and Akin. There were lots of seats up for grabs.