A reader writes:
1. House democrats beat House GOP in popular vote
2. Obama has fewer popular votes than Bush 04 but the gap is getting smaller as they count all the votes. Is that lost white vote the Massachusetts moderate thing or the Mormon thing?
3. Nate Silver calculates the GOP needs to win the presidential popular vote by 2% to tie the electoral college.
How stable are biases in the Electoral College? I can recall everybody assuming after 2000 that the Republicans had an advantage in the EC, but then Kerry almost sneaked the 2004 election by winning in Ohio, so it looks like the Dems have had the EC advantage for 3 elections in a row.
4. National polling is skewed GOP by the large white bloc vote and high white turnout in red states
5. Romney won white women
6. Reagan 84 and Romney 12 won the same percentage of the white vote, which would be my biggest concern if I was GOP. Robin Hanson's forager vs farmer is real. The GOP should vote against any Hudson River tunnel or mass transit anywhere that makes it easier to fit a lot of people in cities.
Vote for water projects in Idaho, that kind of thing.
7. There aren't many modern post World War 1 two term presidents and fewer got more than 50% popular vote in both runs. Obama is one of them.
8. Obama has done a lot, but even if you think he didn't, his presence had made it safe to be an open liberal. The climate is such that gay marriage and legal marijuana are now tossups in many states. We're far from freedom fries.
9. Minority GOP candidates are a non starter. No Rubio, no Condi. This makes it too easy for Reagan Democrats to go home. The GOP should go the opposite and find "regulation whites" as was said in Primary Colors, Protestant guys like Rob Portman, Thune, or Virginia's McDonnell. Charisma doesn't matter. Rational whites don't need to be inspired. Sober whites look askance of rhetoric.
I suspect Romney was helpful in nudging the Republican brand a little toward the Responsible Grown-Up direction that it needed to go after Bush.
10. The GOP should focus mid term elections. The GOP has a structural deficit in presidential years (electoral college, Dem machine) so they should try to push important ballot issues and most promising candidates then.
11. An emerging line is Romney was bruised from a long primary fight. For some reason this doesn't hurt the Dems which don't use winner take all system. Maybe the GOP should reorder the process to protect viable candidates, or restrict the field to senators, VPs, and governors. The GOP likes order, they'd tolerate it.
Posts
70 comments:
Obama has done a lot, but even if you think he didn't, his presence had made it safe to be an open liberal.
You have a lot of lefty friends. Obama has destroyed the American economy. His presence has not made it "safe" to be an open liberal - liberals have always been out-and-proud about their liberalism n a fashion which conservatives never are.
The rest of your writers points are equally vapid.
Romney won white women
Hardly a surprise to anyone not hoodwinked by that clown Whiskey. McCain won the white womens vote - it was never in doubt that Romney would do so as well.
Romney also won whites under 30 years old by 7 points... Obama beat McCain with whites under 30 by 10 points in 2008.
http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president#exit-polls
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1
Vote by Age and Race
White 18-29 (11%)[same in both polls]
Obama: 54% – MCain: 44%
Obama: 44% – Romney: 51%
"Obama has done a lot, but even if you think he didn't, his presence had made it safe to be an open liberal. The climate is such that gay marriage and legal marijuana are now tossups in many states. We're far from freedom fries."
This is just incredibly stupid. Medical marijuana referendums won frequently in the 1990's, and even in a couple of red states. Also, the poll momentum on gay marriage predates Obama by a decade, and his Presidency did nothing to accelerate it. Gay marriage been gaining about three or so points a year since the issue appeared circa 1996 regardless of who was President at the time.
Not sure where this "lost white vote" thing is coming from. Eight years after 2004, there are almost certainly fewer white voters in the country. That's basic demography.
I don't really see much hope for the Republicans. Their only option is to run an explicitly populist party line with 3rd way economics, (protectionism, distributionism, union-friendly, tax friendly) while standing up for pro-White interests by fighting against the things that make Whites (often subconsciously) uncomfortable: immigration, affirmative action, and wars for Israel.
However, knowing the kinds of people who run and fund the Republican party, this is literally anathema.
They go A: full diversity. In this, they'll fail horrendously and we'd watch one hell of a show as Republican governors, congressman etc abandon the main party line in order to secure whatever their little piece of the southern pie they still have left.
They go B: We see the same old party, a few "amnesty" band-aids, maybe a black face or two. Whites aren't convinced, we see Romney election 2.0, and the Democrats get closer to being the American National Congress (A.N.C).
Nate Silver calculates the GOP needs to win the presidential popular vote by 2% to tie the electoral college
I'm guessing that the letter writer in question is NOTA, who won't even go on a date without first getting Nate Silvers opinion on the probable outcome ...
If the Republicans can get a little higher percentage of white women, they should be fine. Muzzle the rape and abortion crowd.
"Hardly a surprise to anyone not hoodwinked by that clown Whiskey."
you do realize there was a voting discrepancy between married white women and single white women?
Also, Obama has been hostile to medical marijuana in office, and only decided he was in favor of gay marriage about a year ago. Those are both end-runs around the Democratic establishment--the Democrats in power don't want to legalize pot, and didn't want to discuss gay marriage because it was a good issue for getting out the Republican vote.
As California is now completely in the hands of the Democrats, this should make it possible to try out a Conservative Party in that state - there's nothing left for Republicans to lose.
"11. An emerging line is Romney was bruised from a long primary fight. For some reason this doesn't hurt the Dems which don't use winner take all system."
It didn't hurt Obama this year because he didn't have a primary.
"Maybe the GOP should reorder the process to protect viable candidates, or restrict the field to senators, VPs, and governors. The GOP likes order, they'd tolerate it."
Ann Coulter made a similar point in her column this week ("Don't Blame Romney"), noting that House members never win the nomination, so they shouldn't run and make the process more costly.
Some reports have said that, as a result of the long primary, Romney's campaign didn't have the funds initially to strike back against Obama's negative ad campaign against him in the Midwest swing states. Of course, that raises the question of why Romney didn't just loan his campaign the money for some ads in response. Maybe he thought the Obama attacks were so outlandish that voters wouldn't believe them. Maybe he didn't want to win enough to be willing to get as dirty as Team Obama.
The Republican Party leadership’s seeming embrace of “diversity” following the election should allow them to retire the Stupid Party trophy in perpetuity. All they needed was an increment of a couple of percent to put themselves in the majority in the recent election. So naturally, they now want to sell out the party’s core faithful in a likely fruitless attempt to get it from non-whites. News bulletin: family values don’t stop at the Ohio River. Who are the real “natural republicans”: the welfare dependent mestizos, marinated in anti-white Reconquista culture, or the traditional values, blue collar mid-Western whites who could have been won over with a more populist economic approach? I do realize that demographic changes will make this a moving, and more difficult, target by the next presidential election. Pity it wasn’t tried this time.
I always thought Romney could have lessened the impact of the Democrats and the MSM’s ( but I repeat myself) “man from Bain” line of attack by calling for the re-enactment of the Glass-Stegall Act, outflanking Obama, who somehow managed to not even bring it up over the last four years.
Hardly a surprise to anyone not hoodwinked by that clown Whiskey.
+1 (as the PUA crowd says).
The most striking thing about the polls and the election is this - ALL the polls before the election seemed to show that Romney was leading among independent voters by a sizable margin. But if the exit polls are to be believed, Obama actually carried the independent vote.
Either the pre-election polls were wrong, the exit polls were wrong, or there was a big shift in independent voter preference in the last couple of days before the election.
Romney also won whites under 30 years old by 7 points... Obama beat McCain with whites under 30 by 10 points in 2008.
One of the very few encouraging signs to come out of this election.
Steve,
Your reader writes,
"Reagan 84 and Romney 12 won the same percentage of the white vote, which would be my biggest concern if I was GOP."
That's not even close to true.
Exit polls show Romney won 59 percent of the white vote. See here, for example.
The Roper exit poll for the 1984 election, however, shows Reagan won 66 percent of the white vote.
If Romney had won Reagan's 1984 percentage of the white vote, this election would not have been close. Romney would not have won a forty-nine state blowout, but he would have won the election quite easily.
Going back to 1976, the GOP share of the white vote looks like this:
Ford (1976) - 52 percent
Reagan (1980) - 55 percent
Reagan (1984) - 66 percent
Bush (1988) - 60 percent
Bush (1992) - 41 percent (Perot - 21 percent)
Dole (1996) - 46 percent (Perot - 9 percent)
Bush (2000) - 55 percent
Bush (2004) - 58 percent
McCain (2008) - 55 percent
Romney (2012) - 59 percent
******
Romney did well with white voters - the best any GOP candidate has done since 1988. But electoral history shows he didn't bump his head on the ceiling of his potential support in that demographic.
"DaveinHackensack said...
Ann Coulter made a similar point in her column this week ("Don't Blame Romney"), noting that House members never win the nomination, so they shouldn't run and make the process more costly."
In the last century, only two sitting Senators who ran for President won the election - Obama and Kennedy, both Democrats. Therefore, Senators also ought to be exluded from consideration. Imagine how much better the Republican's prospects would have been if they hadn't wasted time and money on Dole and McCain.
"Obama has done a lot, but even if you think he didn't, his presence had made it safe to be an open liberal."
precisely. i posted in 2009 that once obama was elected, people who hate europeans no longer felt it necessary to hide.
almost all the mexican politicians in the US immediately turned openly hostile, as did most of the jewish liberals. the national change in tone to mocking ridicule and frothing contempt was palpable. only the euro american liberals remained somewhat restrained in their disdain. although they still do not like euro american conservatives, they did all at once open up a brazen, racially specific attack on the founding stock of the united states. because they come from it.
this is also when the network news and cable news networks REALLY started to change all their in front of the camera staff, deliberately removing european men and replacing them with the vibrant and women.
africans never hid their hatred so nothing changed there. they were always free to speak openly about how terrible the people who created america were and how much they'd love to see them gone.
one change i will note: jay leno makes fun of obama now. he is the first major comedian to openly break ranks and take shots at how dumb and backwards all of obama's ideas and plans are. he is, like i said, one of the moderate euro american liberals. eventually some of those guys will see reason. even though he never has to work again and has enough wealth for many lifetimes, leno is pretty connected to reality through his knowledge of cars and the auto industry. he doesn't come from old money.
I don't really see much hope for the Republicans. Their only option is to run an explicitly populist party line with 3rd way economics, (protectionism, distributionism, union-friendly, tax friendly) while standing up for pro-White interests by fighting against the things that make Whites (often subconsciously) uncomfortable: immigration, affirmative action, and wars for Israel.
I'm personally sympathetic to almost all those things. But you can't blame their lack of political success on "the kinds of people who run the GOP". When given the chance to do so, Republican voters refuse to vote for those things. I'm talking about the primaries, where people from Buchanan to Hunter to have tried running on basically that platform and gotten zero support.
Romney got the same share of the white vote as Reagan? I understood Reagan got around 66% of the white vote 84. Romney by contrast got 59%.
I could be wrong, but I'd like a source on this info.
>Muzzle the rape and abortion crowd.<
Unfortunately, Christian mullahs wield much power in the GOP. Al-Quaeda ("the base") of the party ain't gonna let go of Jesus and His opinions on abortion, legitimate rape, diaphragms, creationism, and the Holy Land (which they believe is another country, not the USA).
"this should make it possible to try out a Conservative Party in that state"
They've already been fractured into liberal and conservative (Republican Assembly) factions. In fact, California GOP is a good idea where it's going nationally.
I'm personally sympathetic to almost all those things. But you can't blame their lack of political success on "the kinds of people who run the GOP". When given the chance to do so, Republican voters refuse to vote for those things. I'm talking about the primaries, where people from Buchanan to Hunter to have tried running on basically that platform and gotten zero support.
Because the media (for Buchanan at least, never heard of Hunter) paints them as crazy extremists well outside the mainstream. Same thing happened with Ron Paul, because he wouldn't fall in line with TPTB.
There's a number of fronts from which to attack Obama which Romney never tried.
1) Sonia Sotomayor (the quota queen). Romney ought to have hammered away at that appointment -- her decision in Ricci v Destafano was an open assault on the white working class. This would have negated Bain; it would have definitely helped in Ohio (and a few other places). Obama, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, is an affirmative action fanatic. Fine, force him to defend it on the stump. Finally, Romney should also have pointed to Sotomayor's (former) membership in La Raza and watch Team Obama try to defend that.
2) The Fast and the Furious. Come on -- the Obama administration arms Mexican drug gangs and loses track of the guns which are used to kill, among other people, a US border agent? This was like Willie Horton -- the Republicans used to know what to do with these types of stories.
3) Arizona. Declare your support for the state and governor and force Obama to defend his position. Hint: the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with Arizona.
4) Finally, yes, absolutely muzzle the loons on abortion and birth control, but at the same time, hold up people like Sandra Fluke as examples of the sort of sense-of-entitlement feminoids that fill the Democrats' ranks. Romney had a real chance here as well to defend freedom of religion -- which might have increased his Catholic vote -- and at the same time possibly weaken the anti-Mormon bias.
Romney's going after Obama on the economy wasn't wrong, but he and his team needed to attack on several fronts, not just one.
I'm personally sympathetic to almost all those things. But you can't blame their lack of political success on "the kinds of people who run the GOP". When given the chance to do so, Republican voters refuse to vote for those things. I'm talking about the primaries, where people from Buchanan to Hunter to have tried running on basically that platform and gotten zero support.
Real power lies with the media, the schools, and armies of lawyers
Unfortunately, Christian mullahs wield much power in the GOP. Al-Quaeda
The sort of nitwits who think the GOP is controled by "Christian mullahs" are never going to vote GOP in any case. The natural home of ignorant bigots has always been the Democratic party.
One key difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats can bring in immigrant allies from almost anywhere in the world: a Euro immigrant is usually a lefty; an African immigrant is a straight-ticked Dem voter; a Mexican votes Dem 70% of the time.
The GOP does not have any offshore source of immigrant support.
The only way for the GOP to get back a demographic majority in the U.S. is to absolutely close down the borders and implement measures to increase childbearing by whites.
But big GOP corporate donors like hiring low-wage immigrants, and a program like this would be relentlessly attacked by the left as being xenophobic, racist, and planet-destroying. (It is only the increase of the white population that seems to endanger the planet. Blacks in Nigeria and Zambia can have astronomical fertility rates, and environmentalists never seem to mind.)
"Obama has done a lot, but even if you think he didn't, his presence had made it safe to be an open liberal."
This is nonsense. What he has done is screw things up pushing through Obamacare, etc. And when has it not been safe in half a century to be a liberal in the US? Most Americans think they are dolts, but tolerate them. The visceral hatred is exhibited towards the conservative majority, Ward and June Cleaver.
"Not sure where this "lost white vote" thing is coming from. Eight years after 2004, there are almost certainly fewer white voters in the country. That's basic demography."
Basically, you're almost certainly innumerate. The relative percentage of the population that's white has declined by about two percentage points from 2004-2012, but the absolute number (which is what is under discussion) of White Americans has increased by about ten million people in that time span.
Obama has done a lot, but even if you think he didn't, his presence had made it safe to be an open liberal.
Wtf?! You're either a troll or so deluded that I'm surprised you are even allowed out of the house (or on the internet) without supervision.
Romney's going after Obama on the economy wasn't wrong, but he and his team needed to attack on several fronts, not just one.
And as they are so blatantly obvious, the failure to act upon them only fuels my suspicions that the whole thing is a set up.
the new conventional wisdom is correct. the republicans can never win at the national level again.
the new counter-conventional wisdom, that the republicans are actually not doomed at the national level because, for whatever reason, their voter turnout was low and if only a few more million people had turned out and voted for romney, he could have won, is wrong.
the republicans lose 1 to 2 points permanently every election cycle to demographics. and that's if nothing changes. so even if those missing voters do turnout for whoever the republicans run in 2016, they'll be matched by new democrat voters. new mexicans, new africans, new asians, new muslims, new single women, new single moms who got pregnant and abandoned the rate of which increases every year, new union voters, and new government employees of the ever growing federal government.
and that's if nothing changes. if everything keeps steadily progressing over the next 4 years. but what can change in the next 4 years?
1) amnesty for mexicans
2) puerto rico approved for statehood
either one of those permanently closes the door for the republicans.
now let's look state by state. here, pat buchanan is exactly correct. every election, the democrats start out with california, new york, and illinois already won. and now it looks like pennsylvania will always vote for the democrat now too. pennsylvania is not deep blue, and is mostly a conservative, well run state, where republican governors and senators are regularly elected. but now there are just about enough africans in philadelphia, one of america's worst cities, that it almost doesn't matter how the rest of the state votes. a couple million africans in philadelphia voting 99% for the democrat every time means pennsylvania goes about 300,000 votes in favor of the democrat president every time. not a huge margin in a state with 12 million people, but it's reliable now. it always happens. pennsylvania has not voted for the republican since 1988.
that's 4 of the biggest 6 states. so it's all over.
the new conventional wisdom is correct. in 4 years, it won't matter who turns out to vote. the democrats will always win from now on.
The relative percentage of the population that's white has declined by about two percentage points from 2004-2012, but the absolute number (which is what is under discussion) of White Americans has increased by about ten million people in that time span.
If that's correct - and you offer nothing to back it up - then all the talk about sub-replacement white birth rates must be utter bunk.
Are you sure you're not looking at studies in which Hispanics are lumped in with whites?
Numbers.
House democrats beat House GOP in popular vote
More egg on Donald Trump's face!
He was stupidly assuming that Romney had won the popular vote "by a huge margin" despite the heavily Democrat and populous west coast not having come close to finishing their counts; and based on that very stupid assumption he tweeted that America needs a revolution because the election process is so unfair.
Wonder how he will spin the House GOP winning a comfortable majority of seats despite losing the popular vote....
"When given the chance to do so, Republican voters refuse to vote for those [populist, protectionist, anti-immigration] things. I'm talking about the primaries, where people from Buchanan to Hunter to have tried running on basically that platform and gotten zero support."
They've always been running uphill, while their own party throws boulders down at them.
I remember when Buchanan won the NH primary in 1992. Yes, won it. Came in first. Blue ribbon, gold medal. As soon as it was over, the take from the token Republicans in the media like George Will was that Pat had run a nice race and brought some conservative ideas to the table, but now it was time to put the silly season behind us and pay attention to the real candidates.
Had the party gotten behind Pat instead of acting like his win was meaningless and sort of rude, who knows what could have happened? But it didn't; it pushed the "approved" party hacks and told everyone Pat was just a bomb-thrower, and people fell into line.
If rank-and-file Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) wouldn't vote for Buchanan-ite policies, then why do they poll so well? Polls showed that most Americans supported Arizona's attempt to slow illegal aliens, despite the media demonizing the state over it. Anti-abortion may not be a majority position, but something like 80% support some reasonable restrictions on it like the ban on partial-birth abortions. Ending affirmative action in areas like college admissions gets good support, and even won a majority in liberal California a while back (judges had to override the people). With unemployment rising, I don't see how a little sensible protectionism could be a losing plank. Just talk about how we need to start making things in this country again, and let people vote for you to make themselves feel better about shopping at Wal-Mart.
People can't vote for a candidate like that because the party has never given them a chance to. We've seen what happens when we try to pick the guy who will offend the least number of people. Either we lose, or we "win" with a liberal like Bush. Could we try it the other way, just once? What's the worst that could happen -- we'd lose?
you do realize there was a voting discrepancy between married white women and single white women?
I hope you were directing that question to Whiskey, since he seems blissfully unaware of said discrepancy. But in any case the discrepancy is not relevant to the claim made as if it were somehow startling and noteworthy - that "Romney won white women".
Obama has done a lot
Indeed he has:
1. He saved America from a second Great Depression and the world from a financial meltdown.
2. He saved the auto industry.
3. He passed health care reform that numerous presidents from Republican Teddy Roosevelt to Republican Richard Nixon to Democrat Bill Clinton tried and failed to do.
4. He killed Bin Laden, who Bush and his neocons had allowed to escape from Tora Bora.
5. He got rid of Gaddafi.
6. He ended the Iraq War.
7. He reformed Wall Street regulations.
8. He instituted equal pay for women.
9. He turned the rest of the world from hating the American President to liking him for a change.
10. He lowered the loan burden on college students.
Etc, etc, etc....
"It didn't hurt Obama this year because he didn't have a primary."
obama is unique in that he is almost always campaigning. he prefers campaigning to performing his duties in office. so he has a big advantage there. he and his staff spent at least 2 years campaigning for re-election WHILE HE WAS PRESIDENT. after the 2010 congressional elections he went immediately into campaign mode. he doesn't like being president, but he loves the adulation of the campaign. he had 1 full YEAR of campaigning for 2012 under his belt before the republican primaries even started.
what's mind boggling is that he campaigns on no platform. what was his platform in 2012? can anybody explain it? they can't, because he didn't have one. obama campaigned on "Romney is a poo poo dum dum head." that was the campaign.
"Of course, that raises the question of why Romney didn't just loan his campaign the money for some ads in response. Maybe he thought the Obama attacks were so outlandish that voters wouldn't believe them. Maybe he didn't want to win enough to be willing to get as dirty as Team Obama."
romney had zero intention of ever striking back, just as any republican has no intention of ever retaliating against obama. it would be racist, and it can't be allowed. they would rather lose gracefully, and they did. jared taylor's latest video is dead on accurate about this. everybody should watch it.
i kept trying to tell my friends and family that romney is not even trying to win. that he is wasting our time and money, and just wants to lose in an amicable and cordial way to obama. the media calls romney a scumbag, a loser, a moron, and a joke, obama concurs, and romney doesn't even respond. they do this every day for a year. romney never responds or tries to attack obama once. what is the average IQ 100 voter supposed to think after hearing that for a year.
of course romney will have some trouble attacking obama, due to the media, even if he decided to attack. but he could still attack, and effectively. there were many ways to attack obama. he picked zero of them.
post-action reports have analysts simultaneously blaming romney for:
A) being way too conservative. "Please, please, please drop the abortion and religion stuff!" which romney never campaigned on. if it was ever brought up, it was the liberal media trying to entrap romney into talking about it. the abortion and religion things are total BS. romney did not campaign on those, or on any social issues. again, as pointed out several times, romney really tried to avoid those as much as he could, and campaigned on
1) the economy
2) the economy
3) the economy
B) not being conservative enough. which is true on 2 critical issues at least. instead of establishing a clear choice between himself and obama, romney said he would keep most of obamacare, and allow the dreamer mexicans to stay. so he provided no clear distinction between himself and obama on issues critical to coservatives.
Romney's going after Obama on the economy wasn't wrong, but he and his team needed to attack on several fronts, not just one.
You're being ridiculous. People who cared about Benghazi and Fast and Furious and Supreme Court justices and the rest of it voted for Romney. (Except for a tiny minority of them who are really stupid) Meanwhile the people who voted for Obama cared nothing for these issues, at best. You're imagining an electorate which doesn't exist.
"I don't really see much hope for the Republicans. Their only option is to run an explicitly populist party line..."
A little historical perspective is in order. Over at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates blogged about how it took the Democrats along time to find the right approach, and the Republicans had their work cut out for them. But that's really not true.
Democrats have been running on essentially the same economic policies since FDR: more social welfare spending and higher taxes (though a recent change is that now they only want higher taxes on the top 2% of earners, which will make all that social spending even less sustainable).
As Steve wrote recently, it's always 1980 for Republicans. And it's always 1932 for Democrats. Today is more like 1932 than 1980, so Dem econ policies win. And since Republicans can't outbid Dems on doling out government largess, they may just have to wait for Democrats to screw up. Which will happen, of course, sooner or later.
Who knows? Second term Obama might end up being the Democrats' W.
I voted for Gary Johnson although I wanted Romney to win mainly due to tax and economic issues. On the other hand, Obama hasn't invaded Iran which Romney was probably going to do, and Bibi doesn't like him both of which are a plus in my book. Both Obama and Romney would give amnesty to the Mexicans so the election wouldn't make much difference on that front.
Romney lost younger White women, who are mostly not married. Duh. And MOST younger White women are increasingly, not married.
Romney just could not take enough White women to win. Or rather, win so decisively that Obama could not cheat. If Obama was such a wonderful guy that independents ... unlike ANY OTHER PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, broke for him late instead of the challenger, then why did not the GOP lose the House? Instead they held it, IIRC gained a seat or two.
The GOP is doomed, because it can't get to 75% or more, of Whites, to prevent widespread cheating. Voting machines are trivial to hack, compared to the known exploits of say, hackers against TJ Maxx. Sandra Fluke won't vote GOP, neither will the SWPL, various union people, etc. And the GOP can't fight the cheaters, the machines, the goons. Hacking voting machines, phony voters, etc.
I don't get how Obama won with ... far lower turnout, lower percentages than he had in every demo save Hispanics (and that not much) than against McCain, the economy having high unemployment, gas prices up, etc. With all the polls showing a slight Romney lead and depressed Obama rally turnouts mirrored in ten million fewer voters.
My guess is he didn't win. He lost, slightly, but stuffed the ballots.
To Anon at 1:26pm 11/10:
I'd give you a round of applause if I could.
Romney had a bunch of punches in this race he kept pulling. Whether it was through oversight, Mormon niceness or a fear of offending various voting blocs (who probably wouldn't have voted for him anyway) I don't know.
The Republicans need to start hammering the Dems on affirmative action. The majority of whites are opposed to it and one poll suggested even a majority of 18-30 year old whites are opposed to preferences as I mentioned a day or two ago.
Free trade may be popular with libertarian academics and writers, but a dose of protectionism would help the GOP with the working and middle class I believe. Pass a modest tariff, or a balancing tariff that DaveInHackensack linked to. Or follow Pat Buchanan's suggestion from '06 and levy an equalizing fee on imports to match the VAT rebates foreign exporters get.
Contrary to what many think, the GOP shouldn't abandon a pro-life position. Many millions of people believe abortion is wrong and these votes shouldn't be tossed aside to become Democrat Lite. But every rule has it's exceptions. The GOP position should be "illegal except in cases of rape, incest, life of the mother." The pro-life absolutists who would tell a raped woman she must keep the baby should be told to scram though.
Hispanic vote be damned, the GOP needs to press the case against illegal immigration and even high levels of legal immigration.
It's about time the Republican Party did something for it's voters.
bluegrass said...I don't really see much hope for the Republicans. Their only option is to run an explicitly populist party line with 3rd way economics, (protectionism, distributionism, union-friendly, tax friendly)
Can we be union friendly but not government-worker union friendly? The latter will be the death of us.
Finally, yes, absolutely muzzle the loons on abortion and birth control
How does the party keep loons from expressing their views?
After Libya, it's amazing that there are still people who think they can predict what Obama will do militarily in places like Iran.
The sort of nitwits who think the GOP is controled by "Christian mullahs" are never going to vote GOP in any case. The natural home of ignorant bigots has always been the Democratic party.
What about libertarians?
9. He turned the rest of the world from hating the American President to liking him for a change.
They only like Obama because he's black. They still hate him for being American.
No demographic group of native born Americans has a birthrate above replacement.
Our population has increased by 50 million in just 20 years.
We need a no growth policy for the sake of our environment. When people move to the US their per capita energy consumption skyrockets.
We need to enforce immigration laws immediately.
The GOP won the House with fewer votes because of the Voting Rights Act, which in Southern states creates overwhelmingly Black C.D.'s.
Both Black Dems and The Southern GOP like it that way.
Perhaps the GOP should make a deal with Hispanics to do the same in the Southwest.
" Anonymous said...
Obama has done a lot
Indeed he has:
1. He saved America from a second Great Depression and the world from a financial meltdown."
- Nonsense. He kicked the can a bit further down the road, at best. When the bill comes due, as it eventually will, it will be all the more worse for his actions.
"2. He saved the auto industry."
- He helped his union friends. Saving the auto industry is nonsense. Free markets correct themselves. If it is a sick business, it goes under, and a healthy replacement (without union employees) takes its place. It was his union friends that screwed up the auto industry in the first place by ruining their ability to compete against Japan. All he's done is kick the can down the road (again).
"3. He passed health care reform that numerous presidents from Republican Teddy Roosevelt to Republican Richard Nixon to Democrat Bill Clinton tried and failed to do."
- You sound like the libnuts at my workplace, "Obama is a hero for Obamacare, blah blah blah". For the average, healthy person, they are worse off under this. But admittedly, the lazy, illegals, etc will be better off. Most people are against it, and Obama pushed it through under what are probably illegal methods. He wants more of the economy and more of the power to be in gov't hands. That's the real reason.
"4. He killed Bin Laden, who Bush and his neocons had allowed to escape from Tora Bora."
-Clinton had the best chance before Obama to kill him but didn't. I'm quite sure if Bush had the information Obama had, he wouldn't have hesitated to approve it. And probably wouldn't have looked like a JV wet behind the ears school boy in the official picture doing it. Obama has pledged to get rid of Guantanamo, by favoring Muslims, Black Panthers, etc done many things that put this country at more risk than what Osama was currently causing. Look at his handling of Benghazi. Obama pledged that if the winds of fortune change direction, he would stick with the Muslims. With that, with his 20 yr support of a preacher who damns America, etc Do you really think a person like that cares in the slightest about punishing a Muslim to exact revenge for American suffering? He did it to have at least something that could resonate with middle America, and he and his sycophantic MSM have boasted it to every person on the planet a hundred times since it happened.
"5. He got rid of Gaddafi."
- Actually he fumbled the hell out of Libya. Even not including the Benghazi debacle; It was the Libyan people themselves who handled Gaddafi.
"6. He ended the Iraq War."
- After continuing it for a long time, and escalating drone attacks. There's still troops in the region. At best, he did what he did to keep half his party from dumping him at election time.
"7. He reformed Wall Street regulations."
- Probably for the worse; he and his buddies like Barney Frank screwed the economy up and created the Housing bubble/derivative crash in the first place.
"8. He instituted equal pay for women."
-You assume (wrongly) that they were being shortchanged in the first place. In any case, screwing with the invisible hand ALWAYS has negative consequences. So chalk this up to another (eventual) screwup.
"9. He turned the rest of the world from hating the American President to liking him for a change."
-He started with an approval rating through the stratosphere for all of the virtue of simply being an intelligent black liberal empty suit promising vacuous notions like hope and change. With all the headwind and good will, not to mention a compliant MSM, etc. he proceeded through screw up after screw up, and blatant tribalism to reach one of the lowest approval scores of modern times.
"10. He lowered the loan burden on college students."
See #1. Again. This lets the bubble grow to even more dizzying heights by allowing colleges to get away with charging even more. The eventual consequence, of course, will be even worse because of it. Another screw up.
"Etc, etc, etc...."
- I agree, 10 screw ups of this magnitude are more than enough from one president. That he is getting a chance to do it all over again, however, is a screw up of at least as great of a magnitude by the population at large.
"Perhaps the GOP should make a deal with Hispanics to do the same in the Southwest."
That already part of the Voting Rights Act. The problem is rotten boroughs: Districts are drawn based upon residents, not upon citizens, registered voters, or actual voters. So specially contrived Hispanic districts tend to have lots of illegal aliens, children of illegal aliens, felons, apathetics, etc. and not many voters.
Look at SoCal. For example, Congressman Xavier Becerra got re-elected in a contect with 106,000 votes cast. Lucille Roybal-Allard was re-elected in a race with 99,000 votes cast.
Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills was narrowly re-elected in a race with 248,000 votes cast. Republican Dana Rohrbacher of the beach was re-elected in a battle with 262,000 votes cast.
Hispanic voters are wildly over-represented relative to white and black voters, but other than Judge Posner in one decision along time ago, nobody cares.
>7. He reformed Wall Street regulations.
8. He instituted equal pay for women.<
Haven't seen anything about those. The others, basically yes. At least he didn't get in the way of some of them (e.g., Iraq War end).
You could also make a solid list of his failures. The chief one: he is appalling on constitutional rights; his insistence on the provisions in the NDAA permitting indefinite detention of American citizens without charging or trying them is the mark of a genuine dictator, and so are his "kill lists": Obama routinely issues summary execution orders for people, including American citizens, Constitution be damned. Another fault is his willingness to use executive orders to bypass Congress. This fault is certainly not unique to him, but he seems to have no scruples about it. (That other fella would have retained all these powers without batting an eye.)
The Left, of course, merely shrugs sadly when these things are pointed out, but a few of them are putting up a fight. Chris Hedges and others have sued Obama over the NDAA.
If rank-and-file Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) wouldn't vote for Buchanan-ite policies, then why do they poll so well? - Cail
A few years ago blind polling showed that most British people approved of the policies of the BNP. They approved until they knew that these were BNP policies. Once they knew the BNP angle, support fell away.
Thus showing that the emotionalistic, demonising tactics of the MSM et al are still the most powerful tools available.
Link: here.
There will absolutely be a deal on amnesty or the mainstream media will relentlessly point out that there wasn't and that will do no good for Republicans.
Maybe the GOP should reorder the process to protect viable candidates, or restrict the field to senators, VPs, and governors. The GOP likes order, they'd tolerate it.
I.e., the GOP should restrict the field to allow only Republican Establishment princes, earls, and dukes to run. Did the real Steve Sailer write that?
That would bar Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Joe Arpaio, or Pat Buchanan from being GOP candidates.
That rule would also have prevented Dwight Eisenhower or Abe Lincoln from running for Prez. on the Republican ticket.
I voted for Gary Johnson although I wanted Romney to win
Libertarians .. they exist so that the question "Is it possible to be dumber than a box of hammers?" can be answered in the affirmative.
"2. He saved the auto industry."
- He helped his union friends. Saving the auto industry is nonsense. Free markets correct themselves. If it is a sick business, it goes under, and a healthy replacement (without union employees) takes its place..."
The US has three auto companies, two of which would have gone under without the bailouts, causing nearly a million American jobs.
We once had dozens of American auto makers, DeSoto, Studebaker, AMC, etc., and as they died, no healthy replacements jumped up to take their places.
That moron Romney originally said the same thing you are, with the added caveat that he would have secured private financing, of course, somehow forgetting that the American banks that had that level of capital needed to be bailed out at the same time.
I remember when Buchanan won the NH primary in 1992. Yes, won it. Came in first. Blue ribbon, gold medal. As soon as it was over, the take from the token Republicans in the media like George Will was that Pat had run a nice race and brought some conservative ideas to the table, but now it was time to put the silly season behind us and pay attention to the real candidates.
George Will can express whatever opinion he likes, it's a free country. (For a little while longer) His opinions don't force anybody to vote for one candidate rather than another. I was urging people to vote for Hunter in 2008. Even on the right wing blogs where his platform was what people wanted, nobody seemed interested in him.
My sense is that people want the polices they like, but they also want those policies to come from approved "establishment" candidates and not from some guy they never heard about.
A few years ago blind polling showed that most British people approved of the policies of the BNP. They approved until they knew that these were BNP policies. Once they knew the BNP angle, support fell away.
More than likely that has to do with the fact that the BNP is portrayed as toxic in the media. So once they realized those policies were BNP, they had to dissociate from them regardless of how they initially felt.
An analog to this is an experience I once had with a coworker. He told me Pat Buchanan was an extremist. Later I asked him if he felt anchor babies of illegals warranted US citizenship and all the bennies that entails. He said no. I told him that he agreed with Pat Buchanan on that issue. He seemed put off.
Obamacare will kill poor black people who aren't connected to the 'community health organizer' graft schemes it has embedded in its 1000s of pages.
Not that anyone voting for him knows any details of Obamacare, of course.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Obamacare will kill poor black people who aren't connected to the 'community health organizer' graft schemes it has embedded in its 1000s of pages.
Not that anyone voting for him knows any details of Obamacare, of course."
Nor, indeed, did most of the Congressmen who voted for Obamacare.
"There will absolutely be a deal on amnesty or the mainstream media will relentlessly point out that there wasn't and that will do no good for Republicans."
The media is not looking to do any favors for the GOP or increase its popularity or power. Why would you let your enemy tell you what's "good" for you?
Republicans could save a lot of money on polling and strategizing, by simply opening a newspaper, seeing what the media think they should do, and doing the opposite.
"Obamacare will kill poor black people who aren't connected to the 'community health organizer' graft schemes it has embedded in its 1000s of pages. "
Since any poor black people who refuse to be "organized" will be suspected to be traitors to the cause, it seems like the people in charge would be fine with that.
Re: You're being ridiculous. People who cared about Benghazi and Fast and Furious and Supreme Court justices and the rest of it voted for Romney. (Except for a tiny minority of them who are really stupid) Meanwhile the people who voted for Obama cared nothing for these issues, at best. You're imagining an electorate which doesn't exist.
1) Guess what? Most people didn't give a rat's ass about Willie Horton until the Republicans turned it into an ad.
2) Guess what? I didn't mention Benghazi (in part because I agree).
3) My point was that Obama's extremist positions on immigration and affirmative action (completely ignored by the media) would in fact have hurt him with the white electorate had Romney put them in play. Romney didn't.
Corn said...
To Anon at 1:26pm 11/10:
Contrary to what many think, the GOP shouldn't abandon a pro-life position. Many millions of people believe abortion is wrong and these votes shouldn't be tossed aside to become Democrat Lite. But every rule has it's exceptions. The GOP position should be "illegal except in cases of rape, incest, life of the mother." The pro-life absolutists who would tell a raped woman she must keep the baby should be told to scram though.
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A one-minute googling shows that when one compares abotion rates by race with population percentages by race, one sees that African-American women undergo more abortions than white women - per woman - in almost all states.
Abortion help keep the demographics in a range where a democrat win is not a foregone conclusion, at least in the short term.
A better take on abortion would be to fund them in full for poor women, and get some brownie points among independents.
Shut up about rape, period. If non-democrat candidates want to bring up abortion as a topic, it is best to leave that to PAC´s, that can show pictures of partial-birth abortions (google if you are not at work)to get the ick factor to work against democrats.
The message is simple: Show some bloody pictures of partial-birth abortions, alongside with a portrait of the democrat politician that has voted for it, with the caption: He/she voted for it! No need to be subtle.
In re: point #11
You have to get rid of the Iowa Caucuses. The combination of being "first-in-the-nation" and requiring a 3-hr process to "vote" predictably leads to both extremely low turnout and primacy of place to far right ideologues.
RNC should just say that caucuses only count 1/5th as much as primaries in the nomination process. A move towards primaries will mean more mainstream nominees.
How do you get more mainstream Republican than Bush, Dole, Bush, McCain, and Romney?
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