December 6, 2012

NYT v. Daily Mail on lessons of Romney's defeat

The winning Democratic and losing Republican campaign strategists just got together for their quadrennial post-election conference to fix prices discuss the lessons of the election.

According to the New York Times, the headline news was the snooze-inducing:
Romney Campaign Manager Says He Regrets Immigration Stance

According the Daily Mail, the headline news was:
Romney's defeat caused by 'extraordinary' drop in white male support as autopsy of failed Republican campaign gets underway

Unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail manages to, apparently, botch up one of the details, but this quote from the end of the New York Times piece is worth noting:
Neil Newhouse, the chief pollster for Mr. Romney, said the campaign was taken aback by the composition of the electorate. He said that the “real hidden story from our side” came from the number of white men who did not vote in the election in some key states like Ohio. 
“When you lose, you nitpick the numbers as you go through this stuff,” Mr. Newhouse said. “The number of white men who didn’t vote in this election compared to white women compared to four years ago was extraordinary.”

But not extraordinary enough to be worthy of a headline.

All voters are equal, but some are more equal than others.

44 comments:

doodle said...

“The number of white men who didn’t vote in this election compared to white women compared to four years ago was extraordinary.”
I'm an ex-SOuth African living in Germany, so I don't have a dog in the race. But I followed the election from the sidelines. I was apalled by the treatment the GOP establishment gave Ron Paul.

If I was a white guy who liked some of Paul's ideas, I would also boycott the GOP for their behaviour. In fact if I was a white guy with some sense of fairness I would be appalled by the GOP establishment's behaviour. People like that don't deserve to be in power.

Anonymous said...

So, I am guessing White men are waiting for a candidate who explicitly talks to their issues. Perhaps even proudly offers himself as their advocate. Then the White men will turn out in droves.

Oh my. We live in interesting times.

PropagandistHacker said...

wow...that difference in the headline really is telling.

PA said...

It's a positive development to see a Neil Newhouse not since, but twice in the same quote refer to "white men" rather than "white males."

Anonymous said...

I remember both Perry's and Gingrich's support in the primaries dropping significantly after they came out in favor of allowing illegal aliens to stay. I think Romeny lost a lot of white males with his war mongering and extreme pro Likud stance. I don't like Obama but he has resisted pressure to invade Iran so far. Romney made it sound like the missles would be launched on January 21.

Frank K. said...

I guess according to some newspaper editors, even voters who can't legally vote are to be courted more than white men citizens. Nice.

Simon in London said...

So, blue collar white men in Ohio (etc) did not turn out to vote for Romney. The lesson would seem to be that he was too doctrinaire free-market, anti-state-support of failing industries, etc.

Lesson: Southern whites will vote reliably along racial lines, but to get northern white working class voters, the Republicans need to actually offer them something!

Bones said...

The "fewer people voted" this election argument is BS. The totals right after the election had not been fully counted, but fools on the Right ran with the idea that "fewer people voted" this election anyway.

Jeez, no wonder the GOP is called the Stupid Party, they never learn.

Bill said...

If the money men behind the Rs really won't let them back away from any of their signature vote-losing issues: open borders, free trade, tax cuts for the rich, and a generally low-wage, pro-capital approach to policy, then the party is finished.

If they react by moving left on social issues to cater to their miniscule coterie of "libertarian conservative," talking head pseudo-intellectuals, then their collapse will be so total that there may even be a new party. I'm rooting for this.

Who knows, though. They could get lucky. Maybe Obama will make some blunder so large that the Rs can parlay it into another couple of election victories.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

White disengagement is an under-remarked trend. Another one is they're buying lots of guns.

Anonymous said...

Well just let the Repubican elite or tea party pick Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz and lose even more in 2016.

Big Bill said...

I did not vote for Romney or for Obama.

Both fight for my disenfranchisement and the impoverishment of my posterity.

Why pick a banker over a banker's handmaiden?

peterike said...

White men (of the not super wealthy variety) are feeling, correctly, like second class citizens, and Romney gave them no reason to feel he would do anything about that.

Still, it would have been smarter to get out and vote for Romney, since the coming alternative is a brutally out-in-the-open racial spoils system that will soon be overtly discriminating against whites.

The pretense of racial fairness is crumbling rapidly. Nobody sees any reason to maintain the mask now that Obama is Leader for Life and the Democrats the One Party, so the mask will fall. Goodnight, whitey.

Chicago said...

Instead of being wishy-washy about immigration, Romney could have thrown caution to the wind and come out against massive immigration. He could have taken a firm stance and said things like 'no more, three hundred million people are enough', 'amnesty is out of the question, they must head back home'. That would have marked him as a man of resolve rather than as just another accountant who thinks tweaking tax codes are the answer. The worst that could have happened was what, that he would lose?
White males weren't particularly energized by Romney as he didn't seem to have any real vision about the future but was instead viewed as a competent store manager. Since a large part of the single white female category defected an effort should be made to bring them in rather than wasting time on Hispanics. The leftist-feminist propaganda of the past forty years has blinded many of them, thinking they can go it alone. They need to realize that if white males go down they'll go down too.
People want a candidate with faith and conviction, someone who'll make them want to get out of bed. Romney wasn't the one.

Anonymous said...

Well, Ted Cruz is a hardcore tea party candidate which means he would be lucky to get 30 percent outside of Texas. Rubio is a little more liberal and will at the most get 38 percent. Rubio might win Florida but lost Oh again and that will be basely the end of Republicans going after the hispanic vote.

Traveller said...

About this topic, it is in the first page of Google News the story of a black who pushed an Asian under a subway train.

(aside the fact the black says he was provoked, as usual as they say so)

Impossible not remember the posts here regarding the Asians voting Democrat.

There is a relation between those facts? Maybe Asians are familiar with the karma concept. How many of them are meditating on it? Is this the USA they wanted?

I realize this sounds insensitive, but sometimes it is called necessary evil and I am taking the part of the devil's advocate, sooner or later someone should have done it and let's not put the head under the sand like that bird.

Sorry if this is not strictly on the topic.

AllanF said...

No mention of the colossal Black vote?

It was unprecedented both in terms of turn-out and unanimity of choice.

As you've said, this is now the Dem's, Albatross. No way they are going to get that turn-out (cough fraud) for anyone but another black man. No effing way are blacks going to bother for a hispanic, white, brown, or yellow (heh, Peru).

In fact, if the GOP were smarter, I'd think they were using reverse psychology into goading the Dem's into running a Hispanic themselves in '16. If they were smarter.

Anonymous said...

"In retrospect,” Mr. Rhoades said, “I believe that we could have probably just beaten Governor Perry with the Social Security hit.”" - This much is true, Perry hanged himself with his comments on immigration.

"When asked directly whether Mr. Romney regretted tacking to the right on immigration to appeal to conservative primary voters, the room fell silent.

Stuart Stevens, a senior strategist to Mr. Romney, shook his head no. But after pausing for several seconds, Mr. Rhoades said, “I regret that.”" - If only he'd been even softer, then Obama still would have attacked him on jobs and continued to not mention immigration at all.

not a hacker said...

Traveller, you ought to know better than to use 'karma' here. Not only is it an exclusively lefty trope, it's the greatest example going of confirmation bias and non-falsfiability.

Auntie Analogue said...

Just a feeling, but I suspect that, given the null choice - essentially a Hobson's choice - presented to them by the two major parties' candidates, a good many white men simply said to themselves, "Why bother?"

Then there's Charles Murray's study that showed the dumbing-down, the underclass-bound prole-ization of White Americans, which moves me to think that a lot of white men couldn't have cared less about the last election, that they instead obsessed about which image they'd choose for their next hideous tattoo.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-gEnHSLLpY

Wolfe on Silber at 48:00.

heartiste said...

anti-gnostic: "White disengagement is an under-remarked trend. Another one is they're buying lots of guns."

Yes, all time high gun purchases and civic disengagement are signs of a sick society unraveling at the seams. Social cohesion is fraying, both within classes and between them, and diversity is a big reason why. It turns out diversity is more our wariness than it is our strength.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry but the idea that white males are turned off by a pro-Likud stance is silly. These are low interest voters that do not even know that Likud exists. This kind of observation basically just advertises oneself who can't stand the State of Israel and will make no effort to make one's opinions conform to reality.

Matthew said...

"Romney's defeat caused by 'extraordinary' drop in white male support as autopsy of failed Republican campaign gets underway"

So working/middle class white men stay home instead of voiting for yet another pro-amnesty, pro-tax-cuts-for-the-rich Republican and the moral of the story is...that the GOP needs to give every Hispanic man a blowjob.

Just fabulous.

Paul Mendez said...

Then there's Charles Murray's study that showed the dumbing-down, the underclass-bound prole-ization of White Americans, which moves me to think that a lot of white men couldn't have cared less about the last election...

In 2001, I heard Nick Griffin of the British National Party speak at an American Renaissance conference. He said that while common wisdom is that the people who don't vote are the stupid people, we should stop to consider if perhaps they might actually be the smart people. Smart enough to see that both parties are controlled by the same interests. And maybe we're the stupid ones for thinking we can change anything by voting.

Anonymous said...

Duh, this was by design. The Obama people went early and hard against Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat specifically to get white guys in the Rust Belt not to vote for him. They gambled (correctly) that even if they couldn't get them to pull the lever for O, it would be enough to get them to stay home. And it worked.

Anonymous said...

"I'm sorry but the idea that white males are turned off by a pro-Likud stance is silly."

Male, bluecollar pro-military type voters were economically as much turned off by Bush as by Romney but the patriotic wave from 9/11 was strong enough to compensate for Bush with that type of voter. However that wave has faded out because of the endless wars and so wasn't strong enough to compensate for Romney's anti-patriotic globalist economics.

So not technically Likud but definitely mid-east war related.

Andrew said...

Republican House candidates aggregated statewide won the popular vote in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Colorado, and just narrowly lost Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

This means the mushy moderate 5-7% middle of the electorate voted Obama for President - Democrat for Senate - Democrat for Statewide Row Offices - Republican for House - Republican for State Senate, Republican for State House.

The moderate middle is, as seen by election returns by precinct, a 2-4 percent subset of the suburban middle class whites, and 10-20% of suburban lower middle class ("working class" ) whites, along with 1-3% of urban blacks, whites, and Hispanics. Working against this is the 5% racist vote among urban whites against Obama.

Instead of agonizing over Hispanics, Republicans should be asking themselves how their House candidates outpolled Mitt Romney when Congress has a 11% approval rating.

Bob Arctor said...

"This kind of observation basically just advertises oneself who can't stand the State of Israel and will make no effort to make one's opinions conform to reality."

As opposed to people like you, who can't stand traditional America and spare no effort to support open borders policies that are actively destroying this country.

But yes, do complain about some anti-Zionist on the internet who has no power over Israel. If only all you people could do is whine on the web this country would probably survive just fine.

Truth said...

"Yes, all time high gun purchases and civic disengagement are signs of a sick society unraveling at the seams. Social cohesion is fraying, both within classes and between them, and diversity is a big reason why. It turns out diversity is more our wariness than it is our strength."

But hey, Sport, we still have "Game."

Cail Corishev said...

"So working/middle class white men stay home instead of voiting for yet another pro-amnesty, pro-tax-cuts-for-the-rich Republican and the moral of the story is...that the GOP needs to give every Hispanic man a blowjob."

Yeah, it makes so much more sense to try to woo away one of the other party's most reliable supporters, rather than just trying to convince someone who voted for you last time to bother to show up again. Especially when there are more of the latter than the former. Brilliant strategy.

Anonymous said...

Even poor working white guys were paying attention enough to realize that, when the banks went broke, it was oh, my, government's got to fix this as fast as possible! With their money of course. So the GOP runs a Wall Street bankster fund type money guy who is on record as saying those car companies should just be allowed to fail without so much as a "sorry, Bub", but somehow didn't seem to convey that attitude about the financial industry or folks in the financial industry. Oh, yeah, he's on their side, sure.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully this can be the beginning of the end for the MSM "wisdom" that the winning candidate should "pander" to the base during the primary and then veer to the center to win the election.

In this era where we have the racial spoils party vs the defacto white party that doesn't seem to realize it yet, it is all about what you can bring to your supporters. The opposition ain't gonna vote for you.

Vermicious Knid said...

"If the money men behind the Rs really won't let them back away from any of their signature vote-losing issues: open borders, free trade, tax cuts for the rich, and a generally low-wage, pro-capital approach to policy, then the party is finished."

For the money men, those are the whole point for having a Republican party. If something is going to change it won't come from them.

Bill said...


Anonymous said...

The Obama people went early and hard against Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat specifically to get white guys in the Rust Belt not to vote for him. They gambled (correctly) that even if they couldn't get them to pull the lever for O, it would be enough to get them to stay home. And it worked.

You sound like an English Department Post-modernist. Is the underlying reality of the situation at all relevant?

It's easy to paint an out-of-touch plutocrat as an out-of-touch plutocrat. You don't even need to use any paint.

Anonymous said...

Working against this is the 5% racist vote among urban whites against Obama.

???

Could you expound? Thanks.



Matthew said...

"For the money men, those are the whole point for having a Republican party. If something is going to change it won't come from them."

At this point, the GOP money men have to realize they can have some of what they want, but they can't have it all. If they continue to insist on neofeudalist Republicans, Americans will increasingly choose to vote for neocommunist Democrats.

Anonymous said...

I said Obama's biggest vulnerability was bending over backward for Wall Street, but GOP wouldn't be able to capitalize on it cuz it's even more pro-Wall Street.

Problem with GOP?
Superrich and Jews are mostly pro-Democratic, but GOP is more slavish to them than the Democratic Party is.

Carlos the Bunny said...

I'm a white and normal, aka racist, guy who did not vote. However, I would have voted for Obama before Romney. At least with Obama, the anti-white agenda is right in our faces and keeps the issue front and center.

Romney is just as anti-white but with him in office, 80% of white men would go back to their couches and watch football for 4 years thinking everything is under control. And Romney seemed eager to wage more wars for Israel, err I mean the Likudniks of Jersey Shore.

Romney was a lose lose for white men.

Andrew said...

Working against this is the 5% racist vote among urban whites against Obama.

???

Could you expound? Thanks.


About 5% of urban lower class white voters are inveterate racists. While they voted uniformly for all manner of liberal Democrats in every race, when it came to Obama, suddenly they voted against him. This is the opposite of the behavior of most other urban and suburban whites, who favored Obama, but then voted in higher numbers for various downticket Republicans.

The phenomena is uniquely found in some mostly white neighborhoods of some major cities. The only other place you see it is in the remaining appalachia/dixiecrat counties in West Virginia, Arkansas, etc.

Anonymous said...

But hey, Sport, we still have "Game."

Truth is the perfect handle for such a 21st Century American idiot. No convincing counter argument is required. Call yourself "Truth" and dispense the zingers! Truth's immigration solution for America? Have poor small towns bid for the opportunity to have more poor immigrants move into their town and revitalize it! Nothing solves poverty like more poverty. It's a great idea that has lots of people talking. So far the post on his website has 3 comments.

Truth said...

" So far the post on his website has 3 comments."

Thank you for reading my blog.

ATBOTL said...

Talking to under 30 white males, many of them are libertarian leaning and most strongly oppose the current high level of LEGAL immigration. Many are also opposed to GOP polices on trade, wars, military spending, crony capitalism and civil liberties. Overall, they see the GOP as old, stupid, corrupt and not to be trusted.

The GOP is paying the price now for years of wrong policy decisions and failure to follow through with promises.

The Paleocon/libertarian critique of modern conservatism is becoming mainstream among younger whites, many of whom are reading about sort of HBD-lite science/social science stuff in mainstream sources.

Don't underestimate how much the GOP has been hurt by support for big SUV's, big box stores, big dumb wars, big police state crackdowns on civil rights, big greedy corporations, creationism and fundamentalism. This has all contributed to the perception among the young that the GOP favors some kind of Idiocracy-like future for the country.

Conservative sneering at organic food, local products, sustainability, environmentalism, civil liberties, science in general and concerns about growing income inequality is a big turn off to younger whites. Again, they come off as wanting younger Americans to be poor, jobless, to only have access to shitty products from China and to have no rights or privacy. That's not appealing.

ATBOTL said...

"I'm sorry but the idea that white males are turned off by a pro-Likud stance is silly. These are low interest voters that do not even know that Likud exists. This kind of observation basically just advertises oneself who can't stand the State of Israel and will make no effort to make one's opinions conform to reality"

Younger white males are turned off by the prospect of more wars in the Middle East, which is the goal of American Likudniks.