Why Did Romney and the GOP Lose this Election?

• rydawg5

  MoldyDog;1315027 wrote:This was an historic election. The lies, deceit, and small mindedness of the Republican far right lost it. From immigration, women's issues, monetary policy, healthcare etc. they were just plain wrong according to the majority of American people.
  
  The first black President won re-election, regardless of the small-minded birthers, and those that would obstruct in any way.
  
  We are also seeing breaks in other areas. Colorado and Washington approve the use of recreational marijuana, just like ending alcohol prohibition.
  The people of Maryland are the first to approve same sex marriage by a vote of the people.
  
  Historic.

  Perhaps "more" people feel that way, but hardly the majority. Over 57 million people voted versus 60 million for Romeny so that means something.
• fish82

  

  gut;1315230 wrote:If they alienate the conservative right, then where do they gain that margin and then some?

  The conservative right will bang their torches and pitchforks, but when all is said and done they won't go anywhere.
• fish82

  

  MoldyDog;1315411 wrote:They are out of touch and that's why they lost.

  Debatable, but whatever.
  

  MoldyDog;1315411 wrote:They view the Constution as the supreme law of the land, but never admit that large parts of it are flawed. It has been amended 27 times, you know.

  As the founders designed. From that standpoint, it's pretty perfect. The idea that the Constitution somehow shouldn't be viewed as such is pretty stupid.
  

  MoldyDog;1315411 wrote:They think borders are important, and they are, but shouldn't be so wall-like that folks that want to benefit themselves and our country would be kept out.

  They aren't. I don't recall anyone saying such. Perhaps you can link a quote of someone stating that immigration should be abolished.
  

  MoldyDog;1315411 wrote:They think fiscal responsibility is of dire importance, and it is, but that should also extend to Wall Street that was the root cause of the 4 year problem we are still dealing with.

  I thought Obie already fixed this? Did I miss something?
  

  MoldyDog;1315411 wrote:And they think there is a distinction between people and the institution of the state. Maybe you remember this one. "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

  I don't think that means what you think it means, El Guapo. :rolleyes:
• MoldyDog

  rydawg5;1315437 wrote:Perhaps "more" people feel that way, but hardly the majority. Over 57 million people voted versus 60 million for Romeny so that means something.

  From Drudge right now:
  Obama 60,085,524
  Romney 57,401,992 That is a majority.
• isadore

  Gosh a ruddies the Republicans did their best to enrage and engage Democratic voters in swing states. Their attempts to use voter ids to prevent people from voting enraged and engages. Their opposition to the auto bailout enraged and engaged. Their efforts in Ohio and Wisconsin to take collective bargaining away from public workers enraged and engaged. The Republican rape lobby with their candidates Todd Akins and Richard Murdock enraged and engaged.
• Bigdogg

  isadore;1315465 wrote:Gosh a ruddies the Republicans did their best to enrage and engage Democratic voters in swing states. Their attempts to use voter ids to prevent people from voting enraged and engages. Their opposition to the auto bailout enraged and engaged. Their efforts in Ohio and Wisconsin to take collective bargaining away from public workers enraged and engaged. The Republican rape lobby with their candidates Todd Akins and Richard Murdock enraged and engaged.

  Great insightful post.
• MoldyDog

  At Fish82:
  
  Maybe debatable, but that's the thread.
  
  Whether by design or not, large portions of the Constituton are flawed and have been amended. I agree with the Founding Father's insight but that doesn't change a thing.
  
  We wouldn't be dealing with the undocumented alien problem if it wasn't so difficult to get in legally. Never said it should be abolished.
  
  Fiscal irresponsibility was one of the major themes of the election. See Josh Mandel, et al.
  
  The quote from Gettysburg is just a more eloquent way of saying Representative Democracy. Note I was specifically responding to "A distinction between people and the institution of the state." There is no distinction. The people are the state.
  
  Not real sure if you meant I'm handsome or a ladies man... either way, OK.
• HitsRus

  

  I hardly think that 49% of the vote means your ideas are dead...it means you didn't convince 1 person out of 100 that you were a better candidate. It means you didn't get your message across the right way. It means that the other side did a better job. And in this case, it means the Republican strategy for the last few weeks of the campaign was shit. You should have been able to run a German Shepherd against Obama and win. Obama has been a terrible president. His foreign policy is weak, his handling of Benghazi incompetent. 4 years of record deficits, record unemployment, and an inability and paralysis with working with congress. Partisan passing of a huge entitlement that roughly half the people abhor ...even as funding for previously existing entitlements is failing. How do you vote for this guy without smoking something?
  
  Let's look at 8% unemployment (as if that isn't bad enough.) How many of those counted as working are UNDERemployed. That is, working in menial jobs below their training? When the President got on and started spouting about funding college education, Romney should have looked right into the camera and said, "Mr President, that is noble sentiment...but what good is a degree if you can't get a job. How many parents have adult children living at home because they can't find gainful employment? How many of you recent graduates or soon to be graduates expect to work hard in college and get your degree only to come out and find the only job you can get is is waiting tables at Applebee's. How many of you parents sacrificed to send your kids to college only to get this ?
  
  I could go on and on about Benghazi, but again poor advice. Romney gave Obama the 3rd debate in an area where it was teed up to hammer it home and nail down the election.SMH. Romney came off as milquetoast.
  
  Obamakare was constitutional only becauuse IT IS A TAX....a huge tax and one borne by everyone, especially the middle class....and yet how poorly was this exploited. Romney allowed himself to be painted as the enemy of the middle class, without deflection. SMH.
  
  When you combine these tactical mistakes with a media that has become the American equivalent of Pravda....you end up losing.
  
  ...and speaking of the media....alarm bells should be sounding in the heads of EVERY freedom loving American. When your major news organizations are nothing more than mouthpieces of the government, they are no longer free and independent journalists. They are propagandists.
• QuakerOats

  If you look at the trend, it actually somewhat favors the repub's. After the '08 election the repub's simply dominated the '10 election, and in the '12 election obama got 10 MILLION FEWER votes than he got in '08. It appears that the liberals have lost more votes since '08, so the bizarre call for conservatives to abandon their principles to try and gin up votes is premature at best. For losing 10 million votes and barely squeeking by, as an incumbent, I think obama needs to re-think his positions and his radical policy agenda.
• isadore

  ]that ten million number is wrong, they do not show florida totals.
  but more importantly you folks are demographically on the wrong side. with ethnic groups, with social issues. gosh check out how gay marriage did in this election.
• MoldyDog

  Hits:
  
  Based on the spread (I listed Drudge's #'s earlier) 1 out of a hundred wouldn't do it, nor two, three would have.
  
  Actually Obama has been a very good President. He was re-elected. His foriegn policy is so good that Romney scored few points in the debate against him. Benghazi was a very unfortunate incident, as I have posted on that thread some time ago, but really quite minor in the scheme of things.
  
  And you know you can thank his predecessor for the record deficits and unemployment problems. As for working with the legislative branch, McConnell clearly stated he wanted to limit Obama to one term. That's real co-operative.
  
  I guess I have a different view of college grads and unemployment. I graduated two kids from college during his term('09 and '10) and both have decent career path jobs now. One makes more than me.
  
  There were several ways the Court could have decided, and approved the Affordable Care Act. Perhaps Roberts was handing the Republicans a gift when he called it a tax. They fumbled it.
  
  As for the news, I ask you who owns the major news outlets? Big Corporations...and we know deep down inside how liberal they are.
• like_that

  

  rmolin73;1315430 wrote:95% of blacks voted for Gore and 93% voted for Kerry. That's what tipped the election in Obama's favor smh:rolleyes:

  MUCH higher turnout.
• wes_mantooth

  

  like_that;1315556 wrote:MUCH higher turnout.

  
  Exactly
• HitsRus

  

  moldy...
  
  Haven't really looked at the numbers lately but if it's 51-49, you only need to change one mind out of 100 to even it up.
  
  Romney's lack of scoring in that debate wasn't that Obama was good, but that Romney's strategy was bad. He could have and should have put Obama on the defensive. If Obama can't take care of the 'small things" how do you think he would handle the big picture? Romney's hammerring away at this would have forced the MSM to report on it. Instead they ignored it, and the Pres fumbling of the crisis did not become the issue it should have.
  
  
  Blame Bush? How did he get away with that! Another Romney miscue. Obama has had 4 years! At what point does he own it? Where are all those trillions going? China? They sure are not helping here.
  
  I know a lot of young adults that cannot find employment in what they were trained for. I know a lot of 20 somethings still living at home.
  
  Big corporations give and take money from both sides of the aisle. Strange that the only thing that got reported on Benghazi was what Fox ferreted out. Strange that the only information coming out of the White House was what came from Fox's investigation. Strange that a media member interrupted the debate to incorrectly 'fact check' Romney....oops... she was wrong was reported buried in the back pages.. Strange that a major network CBS kept hidden an editted clip of an interviewwith Obama on Sept 12 that would have shed light on the controversy...until it didn't matter.
• MoldyDog

  Hits:
  Of course Obama now owns the crap he was handed. And it has been improving steadily, but slowly on almost all fronts.
  
  If you are talking about the trillions in debt that China supposedly owns, actually as of September they own about $1.15 trillion.
  
  Do you invest in losing propositions?
  Of course not.
  
  Neither does China. The United States is a winner, not a loser.
  
  I know how hard my kids worked in school to get where they are. I don't know how hard the twenty-somethings you know worked. That's why I guess I have a different view on it.
  
  Again, Benghazi was a very unfortunate incident, but minor in the bigger picture.
• gut

  "Recovery" started over two years ago. Wasn't that Biden's famous "summer of recovery"? It's stagnant. Things are not getting better it's been just anemic for tha past 2 years.
  
  I'm surprised how many people were blaming Bush, still, for the current state of the economy. Just goes to show you that people will believe what they want to believe, or how stupid they are. It's a toss-up.
  
  Now cue the crowd that keeps claiming those of us actually out there working and talking with business leaders that make these decision are full of shit. This must be the case in order for them to live in their alternate reality where Obama's policies are working and employers are lining up to hire people.
• BoatShoes

  gut;1315602 wrote: Now cue the crowd that keeps claiming those of us actually out there working and talking with business leaders that make these decision are full of shit.

  The "business leaders" who complain about Obama looking at them funny being the problem are full of shit because they are in reality deeply biased and partisan against the president anyway...much in the same way the poll mystics telling us the polls were wrong and that Obama was actually losing and a Romney victory was a sure thing...like yourself...were also full of shit.
  
  You've been wrong about everything and it's enjoyable.
• BoatShoes

  Social Issue hardcore wingers definitely cost the Pubs the Senate again lol. But we should also come to terms with the fact that Obama ran transparently on a campaign to tax higher incomes and Obamacare remaining the law of the land whereas Romney transparently ran on reducing marginal rates...there's no good reason to think that right wing's economic ideas weren't similarly rejected.
  
  Stop blaming it on bible thumpers...the whole GOP is repudiated and this was their last hurrah...they're never going to acquiesce to teh illegals charging across the border in the dark of night, etc.
• gut

  BoatShoes;1315617 wrote:The "business leaders" who complain about Obama looking at them funny being the problem are full of **** because they are in reality deeply biased and partisan against the president anyway...much in the same way the poll mystics telling us the polls were wrong and that Obama was actually losing and a Romney victory was a sure thing...like yourself...were also full of ****.
  
  You've been wrong about everything and it's enjoyable.

  Like I said, Dems WERE oversampled, and the pollsters got it horribly wrong on Romney with independents. You couldn't understand then, I doubt you do now. So my mistake was in assuming the polling data was actually accurate, because I was pretty much on the money as far as turnout.
  
  No, I'm rarely wrong, and I'm not this time either (because unlike you I don't talk out my ass but only stuff I know). You've got your tinfoil hat and just can't recognize that Obama is bad for business. But of course you've well demonstrated that your level of information is half-assed at best, which is why you can't even distinguish between who is right and wrong. Par for the course - deny deny deny what people actually working with and talking with these execs are telling you because it's simply not what you want to believe. Same way you're incapable of recognizing the failure of deficit spending around the globe because you're all-in on a policy no one practices.
• gut

  BoatShoes;1315620 wrote: Stop blaming it on bible thumpers...the whole GOP is repudiated and this was their last hurrah...they're never going to acquiesce to teh illegals charging across the border in the dark of night, etc.

  Or more likely after 4 more years of failure the sheeple will again overreact and panic and elect anything without a "D" next to the name.
  
  It's nice to know that we can still elect failure in a bipartisan manner.
• majorspark

  

  BoatShoes;1315620 wrote:Social Issue hardcore wingers definitely cost the Pubs the Senate again lol.

  The founders envisioned the senate to be a body of statesmen insulated from the whims of the electorate. Representing the will of their respective state governments. Hardcore wingers would stand little chance of getting appointed by state legislatures. One of the many reasons the 17th amendment was a huge mistake.
  

  BoatShoes;1315620 wrote:But we should also come to terms with the fact that Obama ran transparently on a campaign to tax higher incomes and Obamacare remaining the law of the land whereas Romney transparently ran on reducing marginal rates...there's no good reason to think that right wing's economic ideas weren't similarly rejected.

  I may disagree but this thought is a far more reasonable...
  

  BoatShoes;1315620 wrote:Stop blaming it on bible thumpers...

  Than this. The bible thumpers candidate (Rick Santorum) lost handily in the primary election to the establishment's chosen economic guru. Perhaps it was the democrats successfully marketing Romney to the electorate as Santorum incarnate. I dunno. One thing is for sure the republicans are seeking a scapegoat and it appears to be the the religious right. Far more likely it as you say based on economic policy. Willard was not able to effectively communicate to enough Americans that he could create a secure economic environment that would allow individuals to thrive on their own. So voters hedged towards the security of government.
• Footwedge

  sportchampps;1315232 wrote:A few points to make.
  
  There are women out there who base their vote solely on abortion. There are also homosexual men and women who base their vote entirely on gay marriage. I know this because I worked at a restaurant while I was in college with people who did exactly that. Everyone wants to pick a side so they choose issues that are close to them and they understand, not always the most important issue. For many younger people they have no grasp on how the economy will affect them. Since they don't understand those issues they identify with the social issues. Democrats will always win the social issues because almost anyone who isn't a church going right winger agrees with them including a large percentage of republicans.
  
  Globalization is here to stay whether you like it or not. My girlfriend works in corporate retail as a buyer. She has worker for Payless Shoes, Express, The Limited, and is now helping create the brand elloqui. The price of materials have risen worldwide. When she left Payless their prices had reached a point where a tennis shoe there cost almost the same as a low end Nike tennis shoe. If they had to produce a shoe in America using minimum wage workers you wouldn't be able to produce a shoe for less the. $120. Clothing is the same way. The margins retailers are making on clothes has dramatically decreased in recent years. For companies to maintain their advantages they have to go overseas. For America to create manufacturing jobs it's going to take new technologies and innovation. Even services are being outsourced these days. There are hospitals who can't afford to have a full staff on at night so they have an x-ray tech take images and email them to a Dr in India for diagnosis. The jobs are gone and their not coming back.

  Wow. Two full paragraphs of corporate koolaid bullshit. Impressive. Do you have a clue as to what the "corporate advantages" you cite actually entail? Well, list them then.
  
  Let's debate this.
• MoldyDog

  gut;1315628 wrote:Like I said, Dems WERE oversampled, and the pollsters got it horribly wrong on Romney with independents. You couldn't understand then, I doubt you do now. So my mistake was in assuming the polling data was actually accurate, because I was pretty much on the money as far as turnout.
  
  No, I'm rarely wrong, and I'm not this time either (because unlike you I don't talk out my ass but only stuff I know). You've got your tinfoil hat and just can't recognize that Obama is bad for business. But of course you've well demonstrated that your level of information is half-assed at best, which is why you can't even distinguish between who is right and wrong. Par for the course - deny deny deny what people actually working with and talking with these execs are telling you because it's simply not what you want to believe. Same way you're incapable of recognizing the failure of deficit spending around the globe because you're all-in on a policy no one practices.

  I'd say you should probably take off your tinfoil hat and get out with normal people and stay away from the Fox cluster that just self-reinforces their own beliefs. It's a circle jerk.
  
  Most businesses are doing pretty well, given the stock market increases over Obama's first term. They're just sitting on a ton of cash right now.
  
  As to polling, read what Rasmussen says in this article(please forgive the source, you probably will deride it, just look at the quotes).
  
  http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/11/07/scott_rasmussen_explains_why_his_polls_didn_t_forsee_an_obama_win.html
  
  A lot of conservative PACS are gonna be pretty ticked off that they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on those stupid commercials we all saw in "swing" states that weren't really swing, based on his polls.
  
  And they should be.
  
  On the other hand, maybe all those dollars improved the local economies in those states enough to move them into the Obama column.
• MoldyDog

  Hits
  Actually I was wrong. 2, not 3, people per one hundred would have done it if we really had a national election for President. But we don't. We have 50 seperate elections. You wouldn't, for example have to convince anyone in Texas, which overwhelmingly went red, on the other hand you would have to convince 10% of voters in Califonia, which went blue by 20. Further complicating it is the # of electoral votes by state. Not so easy as convincing 2 out of a hundred.
• majorspark

  

  Zombaypirate;1315417 wrote:The GOP needs to reorganize. Drop the religious right immediately. There are people who do not want your religion pushed upon them, drop it NOW. Abortion, liquor sales on Sunday etc. The non-religious do not need the religious ideals and morals shoved down their throats. It is apparent with Maine and Maryland getting gay marriage with a popular vote let alone all the other garbage the religious right want. Don't want to buy liquor on Sunday don't buy it!! Stop with the religious nonsense..

  Apparently you live in a community that regulates your liquor purchases one day out of seven. I suggest you plan your purchases accordingly or convince the members of your community to change those regulations. Another choice would be to move. There are thousands of communities across the nation that allow liquor sales seven days a week. Find one and live happy. I live in a community that bans the sale of alcohol every day of the week. I live on the edge of the jurisdiction and I am a five minute drive from a drive thru that serves my wants seven days a week. Neither of the two parties are advocating nationalizing liquor sales. It was not a factor in the election.
  
  Yet another. The religious right was the reason Willard lost? OK. The republicans held a primary. The religious right's preferred candidate was Rick Santorum. He was handily defeated in the primary in favor of the moderate Romney. I could understand this logic had Santorum got the nomination. But you people are in the twilight zone.
  

  Zombaypirate;1315417 wrote:Stop being misogynistic, women clobbered the GOP. Stop oppressing them.

  How so and why. Be specific.
  

  Zombaypirate;1315417 wrote:Fix foreign relations war is a final answer NOT the first answer like the GOP wants it to be.

  Neither party has adhered to the constitutional prerequisite for war in recent times. In protracted engagements we have not always fared well. History has proven such. But since you make the claim the GOP wants it to be the first answer. Do tell.
  

  Zombaypirate;1315417 wrote:Stop with the idiocy of gay marriage and drop the tea party. This will help the GOP with the new younger crowd that will be taking over this country.

  Iggypride made a good point on this on another thread. 2yrs ago the tea party supposedly ushered in a host of elected representatives for the GOP at the state and local level. State legislatures were turned to favor the GOP in a census year which allowed them to gerrymander congressional districts in their favor that will span at least a decade.