3 Reasons Mitt Romney and Republicans Lost Big in Election 2012

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3 Reasons Mitt Romney and Republicans Lost Big in Election 2012

Despite a rotten economy, a miserable foreign policy, and a terrible record of deporting mostly Hispanic immigrants and raiding medical marijuana dispensaries that are legal under state law, Barack Obama handily won a second term as president and Democrats even picked up seats in the US Senate.

Here are three reasons Mitt Romney and Republicans lost big in Election 2012 – and how they might win future contests.

1. Welcome immigrants, don't shun them.

Back in the day, Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to millions and George W. Bush pulled high percentages of the latino vote as governor of Texas and president of the United States.

Mitt Romney and the party's palpable disdain for immigrants – Romney called for "self-deportation" for god's sake – is not only grossly inhumane and un-economic. It's no way to speak to an increasingly mutli-ethnic and gloriously mongrelized America.

2. Pledge Unconditional Surrender in the Drug War.

Voters in Colorado and Washington state have legalized marijuana, a substance Barack Obama once used heavily and now arrests people in record numbers for selling as medicine. The GOP should take the lead in ending the war on drugs, a life-destroying, money-wasting, Constitution-shredding tragedy that is antithetical to limited government and personal responsibility.

3. Stay Out of the Bedroom, For Good.

Marriage equality initiatives won in Maine, Maryland, and Washington and an anti-gay-marriage amendment lost in Minnesota. Republican candidate statements about rape and abortion turned off voters concerned about reproductive rights. There's plenty of room for serious disagreement on these issues, but it's clear that Americans don't want these things controlled by the government.

The GOP should look across the aisle to the Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. The former Governor of New Mexico won over a million votes, the LP's best showing since 1980.

Johnson's success shows that Americans are interested in what the GOP has always said it stood for but never delivered on: A government that stays out of the boardroom and out of the bedroom.

Comments

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

I don't need to watch the video. He lost because the GOP screwed the grassroots activists for RP as well as a significant part of the fiscally conservative Tea Party activists. Voters turnout was what, 12 million lower? Why do you think those people stayed home?

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Should have watched the video. He lost for exactly the reasons Nick listed, which all come down to missed opportunities for the "party of limited government".

Not that the Dems embraced these three points (immigration, drug freedom, sexual freedom), they were just better at fooling the nation into believing they care about them.

[Bill]

Obama made some politically smart moves a few months before the election. He put out some feelers on gay rights and immigration and when the polls showed it would not hurt him, he went ahead with more statements in favor of gay marriage and passed the amnesty for latino college age kids.

Both moves got him more votes. Romney and the Republitatrds are clueless.

[PapayaSF]

I think Obama went for gay marriage when it was clear he wasn't getting money from certain big donors for whom that was important.

[BigT]

Romney lost because he flubbed Bain Capital, the auto bailout, and Benghazi. He should have bragged about the good that Bain did and listed the companies and jobs created in contrast to Solyndra and Green Energy. He should have called out the auto bailout for the corrupt, crony bankruptcy it was. And, of course, he should have repeated the mantra: Americans died and Obama lied.

[PapayaSF]

To an extent, but since Obama triumphed in large part because people thought he "cared about them" more, those things don't seem as crucial.

[The Derider]

Ron Paul is part of the GOP anti-abortion Junta.

[OldMexican]

Re: The Dehydrated,

Ron Paul is part of the GOP anti-abortion Junta.

Now, this is stupid, even for you.

[MSimon]

True that.

[gaoxiaen]

My South African friends usually useb "trudat".

[gaoxiaen]

*use

[Rasilio]

Um, Paul is personally anit abortion but he has made it exceedingly clear that he does not believe that government should be involved in the decision.

[Drake]

The God-Squad Republicans sure didn't help anyone in the party.

[buybuydandavis]

Yes. The party needlessly spit on the Ron Paul voters at the convention - the most motivated and enthusiastic Republican voters. Great way to lose an election.

[gaoxiaen]

That's a fact. There was no way I would have voted for a Republican after that travesty of a primary and that Potemkin village of a convention. And now I'm going to re-register Libertarian.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

"gloriously mongrelized"

I'm going to try and use this phrase at least once a week from now on.

[VG Zaytsev]

They lost because Mitt was a crappy candidate that ran a pussyfied make no mistakes campaign.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Out come the long knives.

Ann Coulter was predictably scatterbrained this morning on Dennis Miller, saying that they lost because they allowed members of Congress to run for the GOP nom instead of just governors. Right, it would have been a much better primary with just Romney, Pawlenty, Perry, and Huntsman. (I doubt she had Johnson in mind)

[Pro Libertate]

Look, however you want to cut it, Romney lost to a terrible incumbent. There are reasons. What are they?

[Sudden]

Vaginas and Envy. Kind of a reverse Freud dystopia.

[Paul.]

The GOP kept trying to run Obama against math.

The math said that no president has ever won in a crappy economy with high unemployment and record high gas prices!

Way before the GOP primary was even underway, I kept finding discussions about how [Cardboard Cutout] polls better than Obama if the election were held today.

I kept warning people, at some point, it won't be [Cardboard cutout], it'll be a guy, with weaknesses, vulnerabilities and says shit on camera.

Unfortunately, they were right on that one point. We ran [Cardboard cutout] and even he lost. And he lost because the ProDem Media was able to paint whatever they wanted to that cutout, and the cutout didn't challenge Obama on any of his biggest weaknesses.

[Pro Libertate]

Well, as you know, I thought the economy was feeble enough to kill Obama all by itself. Apparently, some voters have dared the economy to get worse. An unwise choice, but a choice nonetheless.

Let's see how that works out.

[Sudden]

And when the economy sucks, a rational person thinks "Hmm... that guy that made a shit ton of money might know something about economics. I might think about voting for him instead of that guy that's never held a job not funded by the guy that made the shitton of money."

But the average voter thinks "I'm not rich. That guy is. It must be his fault I'm not. Go black guy! Beat that rich white fuck!"

And women don't think. They emote and all emotion emanates directly from their uterus. And the think "get your Mitts off my Uterus" is the highest form of political discourse.

[The Derider]

Or, women refuse to associate with a bunch of sexist assholes.

Either way, Dems win.

[Paul.]

*points up*

Case in point. Romney, most extreme candidate EVAR!

[PapayaSF]

Sadly, Sudden is correct. Otherwise intelligent women seemed to think that a President Romney would send out the black helicopters to confiscate their tampons.

[The Derider]

Whereas NRA members who thought Obama was going to send out black helicopters to confiscate their guns were brilliantly prescient.

[Randian]

Yes, joe, exactly!

[PM]

He's saving "assault weapon" legislation for term 2 if you can believe what he said in the debates.

[[e-mail]]

Seriously, with all the Republican talk about forced vaginal probes and toxic remarks about rape, what were we "otherwise intelligent women" supposed to think? Until the Republicans get off their prudish anti-sex kick, middle-aged women like myself who want to have a fun night with their husbands have no choice but to say f*** y** to these guys and vote Libertarian. It should be easy for me to get access to birth control, Plan B and if I need to, throw $800 on a counter at a local abortion clinic. After all, I pay my taxes, too.

And no, I'm not concerned about black helicopters, but more so Obama and Rehberg's domestic drones as I live along the Canadian border.

[Old Man With Candy]

The issue was NEVER about your "right" to buy birth control or kill your baby, the issue was about who pays. The best the dems could do was find two yutzes who said stupid shit and somehow link it to the Mormon cardboard. It would have been pretty easy to find two dems who said stupid shit and demand that Obama continually explain it, but the reps were too fucking dumb to even do THAT.

Nonetheless, your decision to vote Libertarian was a good one. I don't credit your uterus for that, I suspect it was an organ somewhat closer to the sun.

The only chance the Libertarians ever have to crack the 5% barrier is to find a celebrity to run. Drew Carey would have been in the debates.

[Another David]

One of the guys at Volokh Conspiracy talks in an election post about how even if people thought the stimulus helped the economy, it was dumb to support Obama because of that, since Republicans were for the stimulus too - it got started under Bush, and McCain was in favor. So it shouldn't be an advantage for Obama.

The idea that Obama wasn't running against "generic Republican" but against a guy who had said specific things about the stimulus being a bad idea that hurt the economy apparently never came up. Even when history is supposedly on your side, the candidate fucking matters. This is the lesson everybody should have learned from the Kerry debacle.

[Another David]

(I am not saying the stimulus was a good idea. It's Volokh's hypothetical.)

[Pro Libertate]

That all sounds way too much thought out for this election. Something emotional happened, because there was not a single rational reason to vote for Obama unless you are directly employed by him.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Something emotional did happen. A groundswell of activism in the GOP got snuffed by the neoconservative wing. It took the wind out of the campaign coming out of the convention. Romney had a chance to coopt that enthusiasm, but he fucked them instead.

[Pro Libertate]

I do think some of the antipathy towards the Tea Party and the Paulites was a factor. Whether it was decisive, I don't know. Surely many of those same people despised Obama enough to vote.

That said, technically, I was one of those people. I voted for Paul in the primary and Johnson in the general. I might've voted for Romney if he'd thrown a bone to the libertarian voters in the party.

[Another David]

Sure something emotional happened - people had an emotional response to a candidate whose argument was "vote for me because the other guy sucks." Just because people tend to vote out incumbents in a crappy economy doesn't mean you can lie down and wait for 300 electoral votes to fall out of the sky. The Romney campaign failed to make a credible, affirmative case for their guy - they trusted people to vote out the incumbent regardless of who they were voting in. Didn't work, because while people are stupid, they're not that specific kind of stupid. They need to at least be able to tell themselves that they're voting for a candidate who they trust.

[Bill]

George Bush Sr. was in a position not to lose after the first Gulf War and he managed to f**k that up pretty good and lost as the incumbent in a fairly good economy that was portrayed as bad.

[PapayaSF]

1992 was a classic case of the mainstream media doing their best to help a Democrat: e.g. emphasizing every gaffe (or fake gaffe) done by a Republican, while turning a blind eye to anything shady in the past of a Democrat.

And, of course, when a Republican is President, 5% unemployment is a catastrophe, but for a Democrat 8% is perfectly understandable. A recovery with low-paying "McJobs" is a catastrophe under a Republican, but a worse recovery under a Democrat shows that his policies are working. Etc.

[KalkiDas]

Why does the media favor dems? Is it that all of them are dems, or something more insidious?

[Willis]

Ross Perot didn't have anything to do with it?

[Jumbie]

Also, don't forget Buchanan roughing Bush Sr in the primaries before he even got to Perot and Clinton.

[Brandybuck]

As was stated elsewhere, Romney lost because he was the Republican's Kerry. Both ran against weak incumbents no one liked, both were ultrawealthy nerds out of touch with the populace, and neither could get their based excited. When the only thing you have going for you is you're not the other guy, you really don't have much to offer.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

That is the best analogy going

[Pro Libertate]

Also, we've learned that America doesn't care for Northeasterners.

[MSimon]

Not even Northeasterners care for Northeasterners.

[gaoxiaen]

He was worse. And smarmy.

[gaoxiaen]

He was worse. And smarmy.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

I think some libertarians and conservatives' explanations for the loss are a bit too conveniently "just so", but the fact is that Romney ran an image-based campaign... and got attacked for having the image of a 1%er. That had to have been the worst possible image to portray in this election in particular. Only Rick Perry had worse image problems, IMO.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Santorum was worse. For different reasons.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

For libertarians, certainly -- but image-wise, I think Santorum would have had an easier time of overcoming his image problems if he'd stuck to talking shop about economics.

Of course, given that we're talking about Santorum, there would have been almost no chance of Ricky dialing back for his own benefit.

[The Derider]

Tell that to all the Blah people out there.

[--Rick]

Ann Coulter is a religious bigot who serves more to damage the move back to smaller government and more expansive private property rights than she of any help. Her and her ilk should be dropped, and I propose doing so by creating a conservative party based on first principles of small government, national security and peace through strength and laizzes faire capitalism with minimal checks and balances on participants, just as we would impose checks and balances on foreign currency manipulators and others.

Drop her and all those like her and let the Democrats have them.

[Libertymike]

National security and peace through strength are statist propositions utterly divorced from First Principles.

Besides, national security and peace through strength have given us a 20 trillion dollar debt.

[Libertymike]

But I do agree with your take on MS. Coulter.

Do love the legs though.

[Bill]

How about her horse face? Do you like that?

[C. Anacreon]

Used to look a lot better. She's in her 50s now, cut her some slack.

[gaoxiaen]

Doggie-style.

[MSimon]

America totally agreed with you in the 1930s. It got the roaring 40s as a result.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Virgil Goode is your man.

[Alex the wolf]

I dont agree with the minimal cheks and balances. Count me in for the others

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Reason flattering itself once again. You have any idea how much of the GOP side of the ledger would be lost by taking on these positions?

Plus, last I checked, abortions were usually not performed in bedrooms.

[Libertymike]

Do you mean the great unwashed who voted for victorious GOPers would not have voted for the same because they actually campaigned upon limited government principles?

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

2/3 of these so-called reasons have zilch to do with limited government. Open borders and gay marraige are leftist stances that Reason and its cosmo allies attempt to sneak in as libertarianism.

Do note that Ron Paul would disagree with 2/3 of these positions that Reason is pushing.

[The Derider]

Yeah, but he cares about being elected, so fuck him.

[Calidissident]

Ron Paul is not the final authority on libertarianism first off. Second, Paul doesn't support allowing anyone to come across the border at will, but he does support expanding legal immigration. His biggest concern there is security (he talked a lot about bringing the troops home from overseas to secure the border), which doesn't have to be some sort of huge roadblock for people coming here. Third, Paul wants the government out of marriage all together. If the government is granting marriage licenses, I do think denying them to homosexual couples is anti-liberty, and I also think arbitrarily saying who can and can't move here, who you can and can't hire or sell your property to, etc are also antithetical to libertarianism. Just not your personal brand of "Law and Order" "libertarianism"

[Cytotoxic]

Open borders and gay marraige are leftist stances

Fuck off Tulpa. Your not in charge of libertarianism. Christ I've seen you defend Eminent Domain on utilitarian grounds. You could hardly be less dignified this fine evening.

Thanks for the shitty candidate btw.

[The Derider]

What republican seeking the nomination would have been a more successful candidate?

[Cytotoxic]

Cain.

[The Derider]

Haha. Good one!

[Cytotoxic]

WTF was wrong with Cain that couldn't be fixed? Cain's ignorance is fixable. Your shortness is unfixable.

[Randian]

Point to Cyto!

[Alex the wolf]

I think over 100 women accused him of sexual harassment.

[Cytotoxic]

He's black, just like Clinton. So the charges just make him cooler.

[Big 'Orra]

He's black, just like Clinton. So the charges just make him cooler.

Yeah, but he's not "black, black."

/ Whoopie

[Alex the wolf]

I think over 100 women accused him of sexual harassment.

[BigT]

A feature not a bug, if you play it right.

[Paul.]

What republican seeking the nomination would have been a more successful candidate?

My neighbor Chip who collects old hubcaps and has a 77 Impala on blocks in his backyard.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Har dee har.

I see a lot of certainty that it should have been easy to beat BO around here... and not many plausible ideas on how one would go about it. And no, "be someone besides Romney" is not a plausible idea.

[Cytotoxic]

It's more plausible than Romney's 'campaign strategy'.

Are you seriously implying that BO was not easily beatable? Are your walls padded tonight?

[SIV]

End the war on drugs? So much for the women's vote!

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Funny, everyone thinks Romney lost because Romney didn't agree with them, or didn't campaign on their own pet issues.

[Paul.]

I'm not convinced Romney campaigned on anyone's pet issues.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Seamus!

[gaoxiaen]

Goldman Sachs and Bain?

[Sudden]

I don't. I think I have a decent read on it. He lost because the GOP nominated Mr Moneybags in the immediate aftermath of the 99%/OWS bullshit without bothering to get a guy that could actually explain how that fucking 1% games a rigged system, not a market one. And he lost because women, especially SWFs, vote only with their vaginas and lack the ability or care to think about deeper issues that will fuck them over so hard in the long run that they'll be praying for a clitterectomy.

[FD]

Agreed. This is a better read than the editors' straw-grasping attempt to hairsplit on social policy. (Although to be fair, the piece was not solely about Romney.)
They lost because they perceived Obama would protect them better than Romney would in this ongoing economic malaise.
End of story. Everyone's on the dole. Accept it.

The immigrants, and abortion and...
Cripe, puh-leeze. Reason, if you want to write about these issues and advance the righteous and absolutely correct libertarian position then do it in the appropriate _context_ and forum. But this is not why Romney lost.
Not sure the masses would embrace someone who could explain the "rigged system" but it would've been worth a try.

[Sudden]

FD, I don't recall seeing you around here much before today (albeit I am off and on in my commenting and can be a bit oblivious at times). But I appreciate the things you add to the discussion and hope to see you around.

Also, please forgive what seems like my rampant misogyny today. It's just venting from the female vote yesterday after I spent the week before the election talking about how I thought the Dems womyn strategy was absurd and insulting and women would demonstrate that.

[The Derider]

Why are you mad at women, and not blacks or latinos?

Because sexism is OK around here, but racism isn't?

[Sudden]

Frankly, a few reasons:

1. Blacks and latinos almost always break heavily Dem. I didn't expect that to be any different this time around, especially with a non-white as the Dem nominee.

2 I don't feel like blacks and latinos voted almost uniformly for a very narrow and self-centered interest. I think they in large part they voted for what they generally feel is best for the overall situation. I think by and large they're wrong, but I think they look at the totality of things as important. Sure, everyone likes their freebies and public assistance and generally votes in that interest but I think latinos in particular would've broke more in GOP favor if they felt Romney measurably better on economic matters.

3. I remember thinking how insulting some of the campaigning geared towards women by the O campaign in the last weeks was. Even resident female libertarian HazelMeade was aghast at how the left seemed to think that women thought exclusively with the vag. I thought it was crass folly and would backfire severely when women realized that the O campaign thought all decisions in their lives emanated through their uterus'. I am particularly upset that I was wrong in overestimating the intelligence of the average woman.

[The Derider]

Wow, even your token woman was shocked that women voted for Obama?

I think it's pretty telling that you think latinos and blacks voted in their own self-interest, but women were somehow incapable of doing so because of deficits in their intelligence.

Here's another view: Women actually care about abortion rights.

[nicole just can't even!]

Some women do actually care about abortion rights. But somehow they have gone from "hands off my body" to "my rights are being violated unless someone else picks up the tab for my abortion." Now, is it in their, at least short-term, self-interest to act this way? Perhaps. But that doesn't make it ethical. And I, like Hazel, find it outright offensive to suggest that I am too much of a delicate little flower to take care of myself.

[Sudden]

Beyond that, while abortion may be an important, or even the most important issue to you, I'm sure you analyze it within the context of all other issues. For example, a candidate who is in favor of unrestricted abortion access but is in every other way anathema to your worldview would likely not get your vote. Whereas a candidate who was in favor of some mild restrictions on late term abortions but was otherwise aligned with you in every other important policy area might be someone you would consider if you felt the other issues were of the most critical importance at the moment.

Joe here (the derider) fails to get this. He views the world entirely through collective groups and considers any deviation from that group thought to be a heresy of the highest form (except if you're a white male deviating from the collective, as white male though is inherently wrong/evil and needs to evolve into progressivism).

[PapayaSF]

One thing that annoys me about "abortion rights" is the widespread but false belief that it all hinges on Roe v. Wade. It does not. Even at the time of the decision, about 30% of the country lived in states with liberalized abortion laws, and the trend was continuing. So if Roe were overturned, it would go back to the states, and very few states would ban it. For those that did, Planned Parenthood could buy women plane tickets to a pro-choice state.

But federalism is a foreign concept to many these days.

[The Derider]

If Roe were overturned, every Southern state, except for maybe Florida, would ban abortion the next day. Supreme Court decisions are the only thing protecting abortion rights in any form for half the country.

I'm sure you were on the side of federalism when it came to ending segregation, too. "Federalism" did not convince blacks to back the republican party, and it won't get women, either.

[Sudden]

I'm sure you were on the side of federalism when it came to ending segregation, too. "Federalism" did not convince blacks to back the republican party, and it won't get women, either.

Of course you would resort to equivocating carrying a fetus you conceived through your actions to term as somehow akin to a state-mandated systematic denigration and dehumanization of an entire immutable class of people on the basis of ethnicity.

[The Derider]

You realize people like Rand Paul oppose the civil rights act because of Federalism, right?

[Sudden]

You realize people like Rand Paul oppose the civil rights act because of Federalism, right?

No, his basis for opposing a particular section of the CRA (Title II) not on the basis of federalism, but on the basis of freedom of association. Namely, a "public accommodation" is privately owned and operated and it's proprietor should be free to be a racist asshole against whomever he damn well pleases. The govt should not require someone to provide a service to someone they don't like no matter how stupid that person's rationale or how pure the govt's intentions.

It's also worth noting that this particular provision of the CRA hurt a lot of minority businesses in the south that had sprung up to provide an alternative to the public accommodations that were held by assholes.

[The Derider]

You're right in the particular, but it's a distinction without a difference.

Calling the civil rights act "unconstitutional" didn't get blacks to vote republican, and calling federal abortion protections "unconstitutional" won't get women, either.

[MSimon]

Vagina police are not an attractive proposition.

[Big 'Orra]

If Roe were overturned, every Southern state, except for maybe Florida, would ban abortion the next day.

I WISH that was true, but southern states ain't restricting abortion either. People tend to want democracy when the majority agrees with them, dictatorship every other time.

[Sudden]

So if Roe were overturned, it would go back to the states, and very few states would ban it.

THIS THIS A THOUSAND TIME THIS.

I live in California, as do you. There is no way in hell California ever outlaws abortion in my lifetime. Yet no less than half of the women I've spoken with about this election actually believed that Mitt Romney would threaten their access to abortions (disregarding of course the lengthy process that would have to occur for Roe to even be examined by a sympathetic court, and the reality that even if Roe were overturned, California would be abortion free for all and there will never be a 3/4 majority for a Constitutional amendment outlawing such).

That total lack of interest or engagement with the actual machinations of govt and the actual nature of federalism is the most infuriating aspect to me.

[nicole just can't even!]

Yep, this too.

[The Derider]

I promise you that women are not the only group of people that do not have a detailed knowledge of Federalism, or a lack of engagement with the actual machinations of government.

[Sudden]

I promise you that women are not the only group of people that do not have a detailed knowledge of Federalism, or a lack of engagement with the actual machinations of government.

I don't think many people truly understand the way policy is made or the implications of certain changes. As much as I disagree with you on a number of issues, I respect that you do. What I don't respect is that you would willingly use scare tactics and misrepresentations in order to get your guy the SWF female vote in a state like California that would never outlaw abortion by appealing to their fears instead of saying "well, frankly abortion access shouldn't be as high a priority for you as X because you live in California and will likely never have to worry about it"

[The Derider]

My question is, if most people do not understand federalism or government, why do you single out women for this failing, and attribute it to their intelligence?

[PapayaSF]

I promise you that women are not the only group of people that do not have a detailed knowledge of Federalism, or a lack of engagement with the actual machinations of government.

No shit, Sherlock. Hence Obama's re-election.

[Cytotoxic]

Good point.

[The Derider]

Dude, you're the one suggesting that women voted for Obama because they lacked the intelligence to vote for someone else.

[The Derider]

Todd Akin didn't lose because he was against federal funding for abortion, he lost because he thought abortion rights for rape victims were unnecessary because rape doesn't lead to pregnancy.

Richard Mourdock didn't lose because he was against federal funding for abortion, he lost because he said raped women should be forced to carry their pregnancies to term because it was "God's will".

Women voted overwhelmingly for Dems this cycle because Dems were the only party making an impassioned case for abortion rights. Shit, Gary Johnson's abortion position is to the right of Mitt Romney's!

[nicole just can't even!]

The Dems really don't make much of an impassioned case for abortion rights, unless your biggest concern is someone else picking up the tab.

[The Derider]

Oh bullshit.

Every single republican is against government funding for abortion. Why did Akin and Mourdock lose, while the remainder were unaffected by this stance?

[nicole just can't even!]

Akin, because he's completely retarded. Mourdock, because people don't like to face the reality of the logic of their own religion. I completely disagree with him, but I can respect someone who has logical principles.

The Dem's perennial "safe, legal, and rare" line doesn't win them any love from me.

[The Derider]

Right, Akin and Mourdock lost because their views on abortion were so far to the right that they lost women's votes.

This isn't rocket science.

[Big 'Orra]

Democrats supported slavery ... Democrats support abortion. It's not that really hard to understand, some pigs are more equal than others.

[Sudden]

The Dem's perennial "safe, legal, and rare" line doesn't win them any love from me.

Generally speaking, that which is free or subsidized is hardly rare.

The rare line always cracks me up though, as does the "I don't personally support it but I wouldn't outlaw it for someone else." If you think it should be rare, you concede at the very least some moral ambiguity to it. If you would personally never go that route, it's likely because you consider it an actual person. It's the equivalent of saying "Well, I'd never shoot someone in the face, but if it's your bag, who am I to criticize?" If you oppose it personally, it's because you think it wrong. And if you think an act is wrong in this case, it's because it's taking a life. There is never any justification for that other than self-defense.

I have far more respect for the person that says, "dude, it's a fucking ball of cells with no sentience. I believe life requires sentience. You wanna stop the mitosis, go for it."

[nicole just can't even!]

Yep, exactly.

[The Derider]

If Republicans weren't enabling the religious right, Democrats wouldn't have to tip toe around bullshit like this.

You can't say "dude, it's a fucking ball of cells" and get elected in 75% of congressional districts.

[nicole just can't even!]

That's not because of the religious right, it's because of the mushy middle.

[PapayaSF]

The "rare" part was actually deleted from the latest Democratic Party platform.

[Sudden]

Your response to "The Dems really don't make much of an impassioned case for abortion rights, unless your biggest concern is someone else picking up the tab."

was "Every single republican is against government funding for abortion."

You pretty much restated Nicole's case.

[The Derider]

If women really were only concerned with the government paying for their abortions, every Republican would have lost. They didn't.

Only the Republicans who were the most extreme and outspoken against abortion rights were defeated.

Clearly the issue of abortion rights was more important to women than the issue of free abortions.

[nicole just can't even!]

And if women were concerned with what I was concerned with, anyone offering "free" abortions would have lost.

[Big 'Orra]

The Dems convention had an entire night dedicated to abortion, birth control and the Dem's version of pussy love ... the left claims that women are just like men, but clutch pearls the moment freedom and responsibility are mentioned ... freedom is anathema.

[Sudden]

Akin is a dipshit, no doubts about it. And I'll not defend a single thing he said.

But the idea of a "rape exception" to a criminalized abortion situation within a state is something that men should be profoundly concerned with.

If a state were to outlaw abortions with the exception of rape, incest, and life of the mother, those who sought to have an abortion would first consider if they had any plausible way of claiming one of those exceptions. That could lead to a rash of perfectly consensual sex becoming alleged as date rape. I doubt girlfriends or wives would be accusing their SO of rape, but if it's a one-off deal with a guy in a frat house and you had a drink or two prior to getting busy and failed to latex-up, I could see some heartless person looking out for their own interests alone alleging rape in order to obtain an abortion without regard for fucking up some poor dude's life.

[The Derider]

To protect men from being accused as rapists, women must bear their rapists' children.

This sounds like an excellent argument for making all abortions legal.

[Sudden]

Hardly. If anything it's to me one of the most persuasive arguments to convince men that they should care about abortion rights for women. That said, I still have my qualms with it based on my own conception of where life begins and once you've established something as human life, it is has a right not to be killed. Nor am I someone who is particularly receptive to voting strictly on my narrow self-interest (you may find the great irony that most libertarians, while we believe in the economics of self-interest, are rarely interested in the politics of self-interest but instead seek what we believe the "right" course of action). But having said that, I don't care to get involved in a discussion on the merits of abortion of per se, I am more concerned with the perceptions of it as a pressing policy for a California female since that strikes me as the most asinine policy priority for such a person.

[The Derider]

So when you were slurring the entire female gender as lacking intelligence above, you really only meant to slur women in California?

Oh, OK.

[Sudden]

I have a low opinion of human intelligence overall, and that would likely include many of the people that I generally agree with. I'm far more of a misanthrope than misogynist. Having said that, I'm mostly astonished that women weren't outright offended by the very narrowly tailored message that was being pitched to them. And it's less an issue of lacking intelligence than it is an issue of absolutely narrow self-centered voting behavior.

[nicole just can't even!]

Having said that, I'm mostly astonished that women weren't outright offended by the very narrowly tailored message that was being pitched to them.

I was somewhat surprised at this--I hesitate to say astonished--but what has been a much bigger turnoff was the immediate "you should be so proud to be a woman, women women women, we are women and we elected people who believed in women's rights" reaction. What team are you talking about, guys? The issues that are important are not defined by my gender, and I don't vote as a block with my gender, because I reject every aspect of identity politics. It's that that is degrading, and I'm sad that more women don't think so.

[Sudden]

Well, I respect you immensely and apologize for any remarks I made today that might've written off your whole gender. While I am not going to blind myself from propensities of populations, I fully recognize that there are always members within an identity group that buck the norms, and that is almost universally for the better.

You are such an individual, one worthy of my greatest respect, which I extend wholeheartedly and emphatically.

[nicole just can't even!]

Oh Sudden, I've been writing off my whole gender all day long (not really, of course, but you know, as you have). But thank you, that's very nice.

[Calidissident]

Gary Johnson's position on abortion is to the right of Mitt Romney? Maybe the Romney of 20 years ago

[Samiam]

THIS.

[Kw33n]

Thank you very much, I am more than financially capable of paying for my own birth control and abortions as most women are. And I'd even go so far as argue that to pay for poor women's abortions is beneficial because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the welfare bill we're going to pay for that child for the next 18 years! Seriously, if you want us women to make decisions solely based on the economy then stop dragging our uteruses into the equation. Get over it! Women don't want to be treated like breeding stock. We want birth control and when that fails abortions. I will continue to vote Libertarian until the GOP stays the hell out of my healthcare decisions. It's no different than Obamacare.

[Sudden]

No GOP candidate ever threatened to take away abortions. The GOP position on birth control was that if a religious institution doesn't offer it as part of it's current health care policy, it shouldn't be forced to. If you don't like that, don't get your insurance policy through that institution. And it wasn't the GOP that brought the abortion topic up, it was the Dems, in the most disingenuous way possible. Granted, the GOP is still the "pro-life" party, but the they were trying to run on was not abortion. The thesis here is that the Dems targeted women in a way that I thought was insulting, suggesting that the only thing they care about is abortion and Sugar Daddy Govt picking up the birth control tab, and they actually captured a lions' share of the female vote in doing so, and in many cases in states where even if Roe were overturned, it would have NO impact on abortion access whatsoever.

As for the subsidized abortion being cheaper than welfare, sure it would be. But permitting the govt to murder nearly one-half of the citizenry would be arguably efficient governance, but it would nonetheless be something with a moral dimension that makes it a bit cringe-worthy. While I can respect your position that abortion is not killing a living human being, I would think that you could equally respect how some people might have bioethical qualms enough where they'd be outright appalled by govt subsidized abortions.

[Big 'Orra]

Here's another view: Women actually care about abortion rights.

The majority of pro-lifers are women ... the majority of pro-aborts are men.

[Kyfho Myoba]

Not in my experience. Got any authority on that ratio?

[Alex the wolf]

Dont underestimate the power of free contraceptives

[Corning]

Why are you mad at women, and not blacks or latinos?

Because sexism is OK around here, but racism isn't?

Why is being "mad" at black voters racist?

Because of the color of my skin I am not allowed to have opinion about how a particular group votes?

Are you "happy" with Black voters? If you are isn't that also racist?

Note: My real feelings about black voters is confusion.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Basically this.

[Samiam]

+10000

Unfortunately a lot of single women bought the bullshit that because the Repubs didn't think health insurance should be required to pay for contraception they opposed contraception and supported rape.

[Sevo]

Tulpa (LAOL-PA)| 11.7.12 @ 6:14PM |#
"Funny, everyone thinks Romney lost because Romney didn't agree with them, or didn't campaign on their own pet issues."

Sorta. My pet issues have to do with not being a pale Obama.

[dinkster]

When you can't fit a sheet of paper between two candidates, what difference does it matter who wins? Hence the 22 million apathetic voters who didn't turn up.

[Nicholas Card]

Of these issues, the only one that's reasonably possible for the GOP to adopt is the first one. Republicans won't, at least in the next decade or two, embrace drugs or drop the drug war. Neither will they give up their abortion position. They may loosen slightly on the gay marriage issue, but I don't see that happening.

However, back on the immigration issue: this is not only something the GOP should adopt, it is something the GOP will adopt. And it's really the most logical place for the GOP to go. The social conservatism of Republicans is a perfect match for Latinos, if the Republicans get on board with immigration. If immigration "activists" like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio become the standard bearers for the GOP in 2016, you could see the "minority coalition" that defines Democrats falling apart.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

That's probable but it sucks balls. The GOP will continue down the path of big gov't as a result.

[Fatty Bolger]

I'd like to see these three things happen, but I doubt they have much to do with why Romney lost.

[FD]

Amen to that.

[The Late P Brooks]

everyone thinks Romney lost because Romney didn't agree with them, or didn't campaign on their own pet issues.

Tell us, oh Wise One, what the fuck DID Romney campaign on?

"I'm (slightly) different than the other guy!"

[Sevo]

A lighter tan?

[FD]

He campaigned on "I'll get you all employed again and working for me"
vs.
Obama who campaigned on "I'll send you checks even if you're not employed."

Staying home and collecting a check was the preferable option.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

He campaigned on being a competent executive and job creator, and the need to have a pro-business and pro-market federal government.

True, if you look into the details of his plans there was a lot of anti-market stuff there, but that's the way campaigns operate.

[Cytotoxic]

In other words, his campaign was as confused and meandering as we all thought it was.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

No shit. That's a successful campaign in modern America.

If you try to be consistent and ideologically pure you wind up with a Ron Paul-type showing at best, as you're guaranteed to piss off a lot more people than you inspire. It's certainly not optimal but it is what it is.

[Cytotoxic]

That's a successful campaign in modern America.

Which is why Romney won -OH never mind.

You see Tulpa you actually have to have a coherent message to sell. 'Er uh please listen to me monologue about nothing much' was your candidates 'message' or lack thereof and it failed.

[Cool Story, Bro]

The GOP lost because:
1) Fucking Christians
2) Mitt was the wrong color. HE should have been the same color as Jesse Jackson, Jr
3) No one gives up an entitlement after being convinced it is a "right"
4) The MSM has built an impressive personality cult around that one guy with the extrajudicial Kill List who, incidentally, has a fucking Nobel Peace Prize
5) Fucking Christians

[Bingo]

The GOP has permanently assumed the mantle of The Stupid Party. Dems still undecided if they want to be known as The Evil Party or The Other Stupid Party.

[Jerry on the road]

If Jeb wins in 2016, we can have 24 years of Bush presidencies.

[FD]

+1

[Libertymike]

Math?

GHWB - 4 or 12?

GWB - 8

Jeb - 4 or 8?

[FD]

4 Bush the elder.
8 W.
8 (W continued by Obama).
4 or more Jeb
=

at least 24

[Sudden]

Math =

GHWB 4 Years + GWB 8 years + Obama (Bush III) 8 years + Jeb 4 years

4+8+8+4=24

[Bingo]

All of the policies that W put into place are now fully embedded into the Washington power structure, so we could theoretically see unlimited years of Bush presidencies (until the collapse of the republic).

How about that for a happy thought.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

GWB is truly the wicked stepfather of our country.

[Jerry on the road]

No, Jeb also gets 8 years, just a straight 24 years 🙂

[Bill]

The first George Bush was only Prez for 4 years, unless you are counting his 4 years as V.P. ?

[Big 'Orra]

It's Bush's all the way down? I thought it was turtles?????

[Kyfho Myoba]

GHWB was pulling a lot of strings '80-'88. Also, Clinton was put in place by Pamela Harriman, and Prescott Bush worked for the Harriman family. (Funny how GHWB & Clinton hated each other during the campaign, but after Clinton retired, they're all buddy buddy.) So in reality, we've had 32 years of Harriman policy.

[RoninX]

If Hillary runs against Jeb, we can be guaranteed to have at least 24 years (and up to 28 years) of Bushes + Clintons!

[Sevo]

BTW, CA has decided single-party rule is the way to go:
"Democrats get supermajority in Legislature"
http://www.sfgate.com/politics.....015861.php
Of course, the problems facing CA are the result of all those Repubs passing all those laws, right?
If you think CA is screwed now, just sit tight!

[Libertymike]

If Joe from Lowell were a California resident, I would feel even for him.

[A Serious Man]

Yes, yes we are.

[Sudden]

As we go, so goes the nation. (as in you poor saps will be bailing out my shitfactory of a state).

[Art Vandelay]

As I said in the AM links thread:

"Taxes will increase until the economy improves!"

[The Heresiarch]

Whatever brings the apocalypse quicker to this state, I welcome. I just wish they wouldn't take so much of my money in the process.

[PapayaSF]

The complaint is more that Republicans have stopped Democrats from raising taxes enough. But yeah, we're boned.

[tagtann]

He lost because he is a LIAR! The American people are not as naive as he thought! Way to go sheeple!

http://www.post-anon.tk

[PapayaSF]

^Flag as spam. You are getting tedious and annoying, tagtann.

[Tman]

The whole "47% of the country won't vote for me because they want free stuff" was particularly problematic because it offended the people Mitt needed the most in places like Ohio and Michigan. Some of that 47% might have voted for him had he not said something that stupid.

As with many GOP candidates this year, saying dumb shit -even in private off the record- will sink you to the bottom. Democrats can say dumb shit all the time (see Biden, Joseph) but the media will ignore it so no one cares.

Add that to the fact that Romney decided to go full blown social con, plus he never shook off the Romneycare stink and you have a recipe for failure.

[The Derider]

The dumb shit Romney said was bad because it reinforced the narrative Dems had built around him-- he doesn't care about poor people.

This is the same reason that "you didn't build that" had legs.

[PapayaSF]

This is true. Also, the "let's spend more on the military" fit into the Republican Warmonger and Tool of the Military/Industrial Complex meme. If he had said we could defend the country better while spending less (which I think we could do), I think it would have helped.

[The Derider]

I totally agree.

[Cytotoxic]

The GOP nom's problem is walking into narratives/caricatures, even if people agree with those positions.

If Romney had come out a bit against the War on Drugs, not everybody would have liked it but they would have liked Romney more.

[PapayaSF]

True. Republicans don't often articulate their values convincingly, or in a way that undercuts the caricatures of them.

[A Serious Man]

1. He's Mitt Romney
2. He pissed off and alienating too many groups, from libertarians to Hispanics
3. Obama had the media, a cult of personality, and the leverage of state welfare working for him

In the end Americans would rather be taken care of by the Dear Leader than take personal responsibility and the liberty that comes with it.

[PapayaSF]

Also, Obama waged a very negative campaign, and that worked. Romney never went negative in return.

[Corning]

Romney got less votes then McCain.

[Cytotoxic]

Pathetic.

[Whahappan?]

So did Obama.

[T o n y]

According to Chuck Todd Mitt didn't lose because of any reason--policy ideas, debates, Sandy--other than demographic reality. There just aren't enough white people left who break Republican. The Obama campaign studied the census and targeted every county it won in 2008 and registered new voters, and it practically won them all again (with more turnout among its target demographics, even young people!)

[Sudden]

According to Chuck Todd Mitt didn't lose because of any reason--policy ideas, debates, Sandy--other than demographic reality.

Tony, you seem to be missing the larger point. What reason is trying to show what policies cost them among certain demographic groups (immigration reform = latino votes; Ending WoD = youth votes; laying off the abortion/gay marriage = women votes). By making those demographics more competitive, the GOP would've gained votes that might've put them over the top in certain key states.

Of course, Reason is wrong here. Hispanics don't really give a shit about immigration reform as much as they like the free shit, the kids were gonna vote for the "hip black guy" even if he sent drones over their university to kill every pot head on the campus, and whatever women they gain from giving up on abortion and gay marriage bullshit will be offset and then some by evangelicals leaving (besides, it's one thing to say "have you abortion" but it that ain't as good to the "fairer" sex as "I'mma make that rich motherfucker pay for your abortion!")

[T o n y]

I see, so only fat, old, angry, high-school educated white men shouting at their tv sets are decent human beings.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

If that's what turns you on.

[Sudden]

Consider my language to be a little literary license. Ultimately, anything that the GOP were to cave in on those things would be a Dem-lite strategy, as in the Democrats could say "whatever he does, we do BETTER!" I maintain the immigration reform, while an issue that hispanics by and large care about, is actually lower on the priority list of those who are already legally permitted the vote than "govt assistance". I call it freebies 'cuz that's what it is, but if you want less connotative language, there you have it.

[nicole just can't even!]

I'm a single, extremely pro-choice woman. But paying for contraception and abortion are my responsibility. So, no.

[Contrarian P]

How did you get that out of what he said?

I'm pretty sure he is pointing out that despite President Obama's rather shameful record on issues that should be a concern to immigrants, the young, and women, they continue to vote for him (not to mention your continuous whitewashing of said behavior). I didn't see anybody claiming that they are bad people because of it, nor was there any endorsement of angry old white men. Seriously, where did you get that from?

[American]

Tony is right. Hispanics are supporters of Obama Socialism. Acording to one poll they are more likely to support Romney Immigration policies than they are to support Romney Econmic policies.[1][2]

1. http://www.vdare.com/articles/.....ris-kobach
2. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MS.....sample.pdf

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

BO had 10M fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008.

[American]

I agree.

[christopher fisher]

If only Repubs start endorsing murder of babies, they might win. How ethical of you.

[dinkster]

It didn't have anything to do with kicking Ron Paul supporters in the nuts?

[T o n y]

He was busy anyway

[Corning]

Lets see Romney got 3 million less votes then McCain and 9 million people who voted for anti-war candidate Obama in 2008 disappeared in 2012....

nah....you are making crazy talk.

Those millions of potentially election changing votes just had better things to do.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Next video: Reasons Gary Johnson and Libertarians Lost Very Very Very Big in Election 2012.

I'll be waiting.

[General Butt Naked]

Dude, the election's over can you puhleeeeaze quit with the tedious "GET YOUR MITTS OFF OF MITT, LOSERDOPIANS!*sob*" campaign.

Jesus, man.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

My enforcement of journalistic standards doesn't take a vacation just because the election is over.

[Cytotoxic]

Your tears are pretty tasty Tulpa.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

[Cytotoxic]

You whine like a bitch.

[tarran]

It's tulpa.

One of his modes of behaviour is to get peeved when people deride his emotional rationalizations.

Arguing with him only encourages him.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Yeah, I'm the one with emotional rationalizations going on, which is why I'm bringing arguments to the table and you're bringing insults. As you have for quite some time now.

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were sick of losing arguments to me. And I'm not sure I know better.

[Cytotoxic]

"Arguments"

[Contrarian P]

I don't believe anybody was expecting the Libertarian party to win the election (while a great many people expected the Republicans to unseat the president). They did put up a very good showing considering they had zero coverage in the media and laughable resources when compared to the elephants and donkeys. I'd say that polling one percent is a success story. Not much of a news story to be had there.

[Rasilio]

Um, not hard at all...

1) Because there is a prevailing belief in this country that there are only 2 political parties and even among the relatively small number of voters who realize that 3rd parties do exist they know nothing at all about them or the candidates they field.

2) The media consistantly ignores 3rd parties save for one off puff pieces that focus more on their wierdness than their policies

3) No name recognition, not media coverage means no money, no money means few to no advertisements on television and never during programs that are watched by significant numbers of people and not much money to build a ground game and actually travel to campaign.

Of course the real fact is that on a relative basis this is either the best or 2nd best showing the LP has ever had and so it is rather hard to consider it a "big loss".

[Thomas O.]

I guess it's going to take a couple hundred million in contributions to the LP and a full-scale media blitz for the candidate to make even a dent in the polls. As no billionaire is that brave enough to resist the siren songs of the donkey and elephant yet, we're screwed.

[Archduke Pantsfan]

All the liberal gloating over the Donald's, the GOP's and Fox News collective meltdown is taking away all my own personal enjoyment over it.

[The Derider]

You're trying to free-ride on our delicious schadenfreude.

[GroundTruth]

Hey, love the transcipt idea! Thank you!

And all three points are right on. The GOP can either embrace the libertarian "fringe" (i.e. 20- 25% of the American population) or go the way of the Whigs.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

I hope you guys realize that Ron Paul being the nominee would not fix 2/3 of these supposed losing issues, right? That's a sign you're embarking up the wrong tree.

[dinkster]

Wut?

"Ron Paul on Gay Marriage: None of the State's Business"

"Ron Paul: Immigration Not Solved By Barbed Wire And Guns"

"Ron Paul: Drug War Could Be Bigger Failure Than Prohibition"

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

The first two are still not enough to meet what Reason is asking for here.

The third one is why I put 2/3 instead of 3/3.

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Yeah, but it would have been enough to retain some youth in the GOP outside of Bob Jones University and Ole Miss. As it stands now, the GOP is screwed for the long term in terms of generational appeal.

But that happens when you don't have any principles by which to formulate your positions other than fear and "patriotism".

[Corning]

Same thing could be said about the dems and Obama.

What is it 14 million people either did not vote or voted for a 3rd party who did vote in 2008?

I don't disagree that republicans are dying off...what you miss is that democrats are dying as well. This election only showed that apparently republicans died off slightly more then Dems did....allowing for pretty much a tie that Obama won by the width of a pubic hair.

[Sudden]

I hope you realize that Gary Johnson being the nominee would fix 3/3 of these supposed losing issues, right? That's a sign that your party ignored the guy that might've swung this.*

(As an aside, I don't think any of those three would've been huge net gains for the GOP as they would alienate enough conservatives, but it is worth noting that based on Romney getting fewer votes than McCain, it might be worth considering that being a Mormon cost Romney as big among the evangelicals as GayJay's "talking like a fag and shit being all retarded" would've)

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

GJ wouldn't have swung the electoral vote for sure. He might have swung the popular vote, but only if the vast majority of his voters would have embraced Romney before Obama.

Your parenthetical also notes the major flaw in what precedes it, so I'll leave you to debate yourself on that subject.

[Sudden]

Your initial comment conceded to the paradigm being presented by reason here in part by saying Ron Paul wouldn't have nullifies two of the issues that were "supposedly" going to swing it.

All I did was point out that Gary Johnson, who frankly was always the Reason Mag cosmotarian choice above RP, would have been different on all three issues.

I only added the parenthetical to note that I agree with you and many other commenters here that none of those would have swung this election in favor of the GOP.

[Libertymike]

You appear to be assuming that everybody here is agreeing with Nick's take.

OTOH, we can agree that stoopid is not a finite resource among american voters.

[Archduke Pantsfan]

Red State came up with 30 reasons why Romney lost.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Let me guess: all 30 are variations on the theme of not pandering to RedState people enough.

I'm a Nate Silver level genius of prediction!

[Proprietist]

One of the commenters got it right: In 1988 Dukakis lost white voters by an 18% margin and got blown out in a 40 state sweep. Obama just lost white voters by 20% and won compellingly. While half of this equation is the Democrats using race baiting and victimization tactics to pull minorities over to their side, the Republicans play right into their snare by reinforcing the angry, racist white guy stereotypes with their rhetorical approach to immigration, welfare, unions and a whole host of social issues.

[Proprietist]

To clarify, it's not that their immigration or welfare stances are inherently racist at all - it's the way they express these stances. I think limited government advocates should be coopting progressive assumptions in politically correct language and using the outcomes of left-wing policies to damn their own principles. That's not about compromising what we believe at all, it's about being smart and avoiding exclusive assumptions and words that leave large swaths of the electorate with the feeling you are not inclusive or you are using hatred and sterotypes as motivation for your policies.

[The Derider]

Do not listen to this man. He is trying to get libertarians elected.

[Cytotoxic]

^THIS^ Conservative parties need to paint a right-wing picture with left-wing colors.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Dude, this has already been tried with respect to school choice, eminent domain abuse, loosening economic regs in cities, etc. The Dems and their media dogwashers just claim it's a cynical Republican plot to divide and conquer and that usually ends the threat. Ditto for trying to run minority and female candidates for office.

It's a very, very, very hard nut to crack, particularly when you have to avoid pissing off more white voters than you gain in minorities to make it worthwile. And sorry, I don't think the super-vague advice of a group that's dancing in the streets over getting 1% of the vote is going to solve the problem that the GOP has.

[Proprietist]

They are simply failing to effectively and consistently point out how much the Democrats have thoroughly fucked over the poor with inflation, dependency, regulation, educational monopolies, eminent domain, minimum wage, etc. The evidence is plentiful that the government is largely the cause for inequality, that the Democratic Party requires a permanently dependent underclass to keep them in power, and all the bullshit about income tax cuts for the wealthy is merely a red herring that fails to address any of the real problems.

[Calidissident]

I think it's the underlying cultural view of Republicans as old white men (and all the things attributed to that group) that leads to all these groups voting Democrat. It's almost a self-reinforcing chicken or egg thing at this point. I don't know if it's actually any policies that Republicans endorse. Ethnic, racial, and religious minorities almost all vote Democrat. That includes blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Asians, Native Americans, etc. There is a wide range of economic and educational achievement among those groups. And yet all are solid Democratic voting groups. Young people and women are the opposite to the other two descriptors.

To be fair, I think Republicans do this too. There are people out there who think Democrats are godless minorities (among other things), and that keeps them voting R

[nicole just can't even!]

For me personally, I attribute it largely to the specific time/place I grew a political consciousness. Until I was about 17, I didn't think I knew anyone but my grandparents who believed in God, and "Republicans" were completely indistinguishable from the Moral Majority, except for the New England Rs I was familiar with growing up. Nationally, the GOP could not have seemed culturally farther apart from me.

It wasn't until I discovered Ds only cared about a very tiny subset of freedoms that things changed. And, as I said on another thread today, eight years of Bush not moving the needle on abortion issues took that fear out of me.

[The Derider]

To be clear:

Democrats didn't have to use race baiting and victimization tactics to pull minorities into their party.

They did that by supporting the 1964 civil rights act, and Republicans ensured it by using the Southern strategy for 20 years.

[Calidissident]

"They did that by supporting the 1964 civil rights act"

Which Republicans supported in even greater numbers. Also, blacks were voting Democrat since FDR, though not in the same numbers. And are you really saying Hispanics and Asians, most of whose families weren't in the country in 1964, vote Democrat because of the CRA or the "Southern Strategy?"

[OldMexican]

Re: The Derider,

Democrats didn't have to use race baiting and victimization tactics to pull minorities into their party.

Except *cough* they gonna put y'all in chains! *cough* when they did use it.

They did that by supporting the 1964 civil rights act

They actually did it through graft. You're not fooling anybody, Joe.

and Republicans ensured it by using the Southern strategy for 20 years.

The "southern strategy"? Are you some kind of late 19th Century reenactor?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did that by supporting the 1964 civil rights act, and Republicans ensured it by using the Southern strategy for 20 years bribing them with public money.

FIFY, you simple-minded turd.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

the Republicans play right into their snare by reinforcing the angry, racist white guy stereotypes with their rhetorical approach to immigration, welfare, unions and a whole host of social issues.

Please share the specific examples of this that you must have in mind.

[Proprietist]

Sure, the way many conservatives talk about illegal immigrants as if they are some swarthy Aztec cocaine fiends intent on raping and beheading women and children before stealing your job. The way many conservatives talk about gays as if they are merely lustful perverts with a deformity and a sick agenda they want to feed your 5 year old. They way many conservatives talk about blacks being a bunch of criminal hoodlums who don't give a fuck about jobs and just want to sit back and spend their government welfare on crack. Or calling Obama a "Muslim Kenyan Communist" which is equal parts irrelevance and hyperbole.

I'm not saying all or even most do this, just that the vocal minority who do drag the rest of the party down with them and become the examples the Democrats hold up to the minorities to prove their point. And the rest of the Republicans either don't damn or attempt to justify they hyperbole of the dumbfucks that make them look bad. There are a ton of stupid people out there, but being stupid AND bigoted is a recipe for disaster in a country with changing political demographics.

[PM]

The Democrats do an equal or greater amount of racial and identity slurring. Go read some of the shit the tolerant left has to say about Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell. Clinton's comment about Obama "getting us coffee" in 2008 is typical of the attitudes they hold. The see minorities as useful idiots. And I guess in a sense they are, since they go slurp that shit up. But let's not pretend that demonizing people is somehow exclusive to one party.

[Proprietist]

I don't disagree with you in the least. In fact, in many ways, the Democrats' policies are far more racist, turning minorities into pawns for their political machinations and making them subsistent upon the perpetuation of government to "overcome" the systemic inequalities of the market and history. Which of course, the government caused and continues to make worse. Minorities who realize this and seek a different approach to true equality are threats to their constituency and must be marginalized.

But since these people are such a minority of minorities and the majority of minorities have bought their lies and overlooked historic and economic realities in their embrace of government, marginalization is simple - especially when you can get the NAACP to lead the charge.

My point is that the "right" has failed to turn the tables on the left's regressive policies, either out of deficiency of mind, dirth of passion or awful political branding. Libertarians have a much better chance to do this than conservatives, once they get past their Objectivist hangups about systemic oppression, etc.

[Len Bias]

"3. Stay Out of the Bedroom, For Good."

That's why the GOP may have lost the libertarian vote. However, far too many conservative/Republicans place social issues above economic ones, which is why so many voted to nominate Santorum, even though he had NO chance of winning.

I wish SoCons would go away, but they are too numerous and too vocal to be ignored, and will plague the GOP for decades to come.

[The Derider]

The GOP made a devil's bargain allying with them in the first place. Now they have to pay the piper.

Between the religious right and the nativist right, the GOP has painted itself into an electoral corner.

[Corning]

Doesn't really matter. Economy is going to implode.

No party is likely to survive the next recession the way they are now.

You have been good today joe...or at least the two posts i have read by you.

Are you being magnanimous or something?

[Thomas O.]

If only we could convince the socons that they can keep their integrity and they can stand up for their values without having to make laws banning whatever their church says is wrong. You can be socially conservative without being a nanny-statist.

[XM]

Romney lost because 1 in 8 (or so I heard) jobs in Ohio is connected to the auto industry. In a crucial swing state Romney had to win, the bailout was POPULAR. Defense contractors and government workers in Colorado and Virginia who benefited from defense and stimulus spending undoubtedly helped push Obama over the top. And among those are Latinos, who aren't La Raza types obsessed with immigration issues.

At the top of my head, none of the states that legalized SS marriage and drugs would have voted for Romney no matter what his position was. Latinos are NOT libertarians who will flock to the GOP if they compromise on immigration. Libertarians may insist that "the GOP isn't really for limited government" but that doesn't matter, because of the changing electorate.

The hard lesson for conservatives is the changing demographics. For libertarians, it's the fact that limited government isn't quite popular as hoped. The more politically active tea partiers, Ron Paul crowd, and anti tax activists are being outvoted by expanding groups that's going in the wrong direction.

For the all the bellyaching about "GOP establishment", nothing could have stopped a new emerging ethnic coalition from voting for Ron Paul or GJ in the primary. NOTHING. The new electorate chose big government.

[Sudden]

So where do we go now? New Zealand?

[The Derider]

Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small!

[Sudden]

Well, thankfully the Left is hell-bent on bringing about rapture within my lifetime. I look forward to a happy retirement to this "rapture" you speak of, where I will be free to barter in ammo and moonshine since the currency will collapse, where I will be able to camp alone in the wild with a shotgun at my side to protect myself from the meandering rape caravans, and I will be free to pursue scientific inquiry through having to find odd methods of purifying creek water.

[The Derider]

Bring an olde-time diving suit. It gives 25% damage resistance.

[Sudden]

I'd rather roll the (20-sided) dice.

[Cytotoxic]

Hopefully this will be funner than a grossly overrated clunky FPS.

[Cytotoxic]

I find this 'latinos hate limited government' meme odd. Mexico has had a couple chances to elect redical leftists and they have failed. Granted, it was very narrow a couple years ago.

Colombia, Panama, and Peru and Chile are all really market-friendly.

[Corning]

Yeah it is a mixed bag.

Or at least mixed enough that it would not be hard to gain Hispanic votes rather then lose more and more of them every election.

[Cytotoxic]

I hate the Canadian Federal Conservatives, but I'm SOOOO glad they made nice with immigrants, even if it was pandertastic.

[PapayaSF]

The general culture of Latin America is steeped in (at best) watered-down authoritarianism and socialism. There are a lot of libertarian assumptions built into the culture of the USA (still, despite generations of effort by academia and the media to destroy them) that are just not common down there.

[Cytotoxic]

And yet they are getting freer. At least it seems so to me.

[PapayaSF]

And yet the ones who come here tend to vote for the more economically statist party.

[Corning]

I think revolution is based on a libertarian impetus.

Themes of revolution run pretty deep in Latin America...only problem is the established left seem to be pretty good at manipulating it to their ends.

[PM]

"Radical leftist" has a slightly different meaning in a country called "The United Socialist States of Mexico" than it does here. Mexico is certainly not a libertarian country. Not even right-of-center.

[Corning]

Latinos are NOT libertarians who will flock to the GOP if they compromise on immigration.

Bush got 44% of the Hispanic vote. Romney got what? 28? 27%

You really do not need them to flock...you just need to do better then worse then McCain.

[Contrarian P]

The main problems with Mitt Romney as a candidate were that he was completely non-compelling and ran a lousy campaign. He had zero charisma. He couldn't attack President Obama on his signature accomplishment, the health care law, because he had put Romneycare in as governor. He lost the most enthusiastic wing of his party, the Ron Paul supporters, by shafting their delegates at the convention. He continually said dumb things. His positions on domestic or foreign policy weren't different enough from his opponent's that the average voter could distinguish between the two. And the last one is where adopting a more libertarian approach would have helped.

Adopting a more reasonable stance on immigration would point out that despite the rhetoric, the Obama administration deports immigrants and breaks up families. A more reasonable stance on the war on drugs (such leaving legal vs. illegal to the states), could show the Obama administration hurts the poor, breaks up families, and so forth by prosecuting non-violent drug sale and possession. I don't think they'd offend their base to a great degree by campaigning on leaving drug prosecution to the states. They might actually get some traction with the same approach to women's issues.

[Contrarian P]

The truth is in order to continue to be relevant, the Republicans need to spend several election cycles redefining their image, which might mean losing some of their current base (although realistically, where would those people go?). I agree that the changing demographics of the country are increasingly making the GOP a minority party (not in the ethnic sense). Limited government could be popular (and is, if you believe poll after poll) but let's face it, it hasn't gotten much of a fair hearing from either party so far.

[Cytotoxic]

nothing could have stopped a new emerging ethnic coalition from voting

The GOP could choose not to piss these people off needlessly.

[American]

"It's no way to speak to an increasingly mutli-ethnic and gloriously mongrelized America."
YayYayYay!!!!

Actually, Hispanics are supporters of Obama Socialism. Acording to one poll they are more likely to support Romney Immigration policies than they are to support Romney Econmic policies.[1][2]

1. http://www.vdare.com/articles/.....ris-kobach
2. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MS.....sample.pdf

Libertarianism will never happen with open borders. As much as libertarians glorify hard work, it'll always be easier for people to vote themselves more of someone else's money than do "hard work."

[Cytotoxic]

Lies.

[Alex the wolf]

When Irish catholics came to america in the middle of the 19 century, the local wasps thought that was a threat to america. Same with the Italians and Jews that arrived at the turn of the century

[American]

Are you saying they were wrong? Socialism didn't elect itself.

[Calidissident]

Anglo-Americans had nothing to do with it? It was all the damn Irish, Italians, and Jews?

[American]

No,that's not what I said. All the damn Irish, Italians, and Jews played a big role in the new deal, without which it wouldn't have happend.

[Calidissident]

You could also throw white Southern Democrats (who are mostly British and Scots-Irish) in there as well. Heck, even a large number of Republicans supported significant parts of the New Deal. Not to mention, the earlier Progressive movement that laid the groundwork for it. But that wouldn't fit the narrative would it?

[Cytotoxic]

Whitey voted for FDR.

[PM]

That doesn't really contradict the idea that Italians, Irish, and Jews voted for him since they all fall under that whitey umbrella.

[Willis]

Did we have the welfare structure back then that we have now?
Did the government go out of it's way to give you free shit back then to make sure you kept voting politicians in?

[Calidissident]

"Libertarianism will never happen with open borders."

And it will with closed borders? Who cares whether Hispanics, Asians, or whoever vote Democrat rather than Republican. Libertarians are getting fucked either way. Are white people substantially more libertarian than non-whites?

[American]

"Are white people substantially more libertarian than non-whites?"
Yes, as my sources show. Ask yourself what percentage of LP members are nonwhite?

[Calidissident]

"Yes, as my sources show."

How do your sources show that? Because Latinos and blacks didn't support Romney? Romney isn't a libertarian, nor are his economic policies libertarian. The three biggest parts of the budget are SS, Medicare, and the military. All three benefit groups that are overwhelmingly Republican. Old people are also disproportionately white, both due to recent demographic changes and the fact that they have longer life expectancies than blacks and Hispanics. And that's not even accounting for non-economic issues where whites are equally or more authoritarian

"Ask yourself what percentage of LP members are nonwhite?"

I don't know. I'm not an LP member, though I did vote for Gary Johnson. But if you're basing your argument that whites are "substantially" more libertarian on the fact that a party that has only once gotten over 1% of the popular vote (I think Johnson's total is rounded up, I don't think he quite reached one percent) might be disproportionately white, then I think I've won the argument. I also know that among minorities who did vote in the Republican primaries, Ron Paul did relatively well

[American]

Do you really believe that Hispanics say they don't support Romney's policies because they aren't libertarian enogh? If you think that, then I have definently won the arguement. And for your second point, I pointed to a party that got 48% of the vote, but that wasn't good enogh for you.

[Calidissident]

"Do you really believe that Hispanics say they don't support Romney's policies because they aren't libertarian enogh?"

Not what I said. Just that whether Latinos (or any other group) vote for Obama or Romney says nothing about how close they are to libertarianism. Although I do think there are certain issues where people of all races would be more supportive of Republicans if they shifted toward libertarianism. There are also issues where they'd support Republicans less if they became more libertarian.

"And for your second point, I pointed to a party that got 48% of the vote, but that wasn't good enogh for you."

Um, what? You specifically mentioned the LP. And even if you were talking about the Republicans, so what? They're not libertarians

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Your implication is going the wrong way. To prove your claim you need to look at the percentage of whites that are LP, not the other way around.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

I believe the point is that *most* people who come from statist/corrupt countries tend to bring a suboptimal view of the role of govt with them. Yes, there are some human rights activists blah blah blah who come here because they want to live in a better system, but when you have massive immigration those are going to be a tiny minority.

There's a reason why the countries settled by the English had a much easier transition to democracy than other countries did...because the settlers were used to the concept of civil rights and the rule of law from English tradition.

And bold, italic, underline, etc the fact that I am not claiming this is a racial thing at all. It's a cultural thing.

[Sudden]

I agree with Tulpa on this. There is a certain cultural aspect at play here. Beyond that, it may very well be a racial aspect because the Left has successfully painted the GOP as being hostile to non-whites to such an extent that barely any non-whites vote for the GOP, which the Left uses as further evidence of an anti minority GOP. A sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Thanks, but it should be noted the racial aspect you mention is not inherently racial either. It too is an artifact of culturation, in this case the inculturation of a belief that nonwhites must stick together.

And then there is the DIYD-DIYD situation of the media damning the right for not having minority and female candidates for office, and then when they do have such a candidate decrying it as a cynical ploy to get minorities and women to vote against their interests.

[Cytotoxic]

I see Tulpa is taking all this about as well as expected ie being a biggity butthurt bitch.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

[Killazontherun]

You just quoted Elenore Roosevelt. Damn it! I was going to do that down thread!

[Sudden]

The greatest minds analyze the confluence of ideas, events, and people.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

And still greater minds don't discuss anything, but sit at home eating butter cookies and bating to midget porn.

[Sudden]

I generally find the butter cookie and midget porn 'bating to be my most productive period of analyzing the confluence of ideas, events, and people.

[Enyap]

I fear we're headed in the direction of Mexico under the PRI or South Africa under the ANC, were one party has built a big enough coalition to achieve near permanent one party rule.

[The Derider]

Democratic margins were bigger in 2008.

[Corning]

Yeah this election was a pretty big "fuck you" to both parties.

Lots of people stayed home.

My guess is that a large portion of the 9 million votes Obama lost this year were anti-war votes in 2008.

Those people could be picked up by either party....if only they took up the anti-war banner.

[Rhino]

I don't think Republicans even need to do that. Just put someone forward that excites the Republican base more than McCain did. Romney could've won if he did that, but he played it safe and wasn't the type to have strong principles. Why vote for a fake Democrat when you can have the real thing? Put a more liberty leaning guy or Tea Party backed candidate at the top of the ticket and they probably would've won in a landslide rather than going with moderate move to the center.

[Enyap]

Obama didn't have a horrible record in 08.

[Sudden]

Joe, I'll readily admit that you're fair on some topics. Although I do think you are obviously always in a bit of a "gotcha" mode being among a crowd slightly less than prone to you worldview, you are at times a pretty honest broker about the politics of it all.

[Sudden]

It's actually refreshing. I don't mind you or Tony even.

[American]

It reminds me of a South African saying, whites would rather be murdered in their beds than make them.

[Rhino]

Obama got 10Million fewer votes than he got in 2008. The only reason he didn't get his ass handed to him was because Romney was also lackluster. 3.5Million less than McCain got. All Republicans had to do was show up. it points to the people's general lack of enthusiasm for either party coupled with the belief that voting for a 3rd party is a waste of time.

[Atnor]

These arent what I'd consider "main" reasons Romney lost, but as far as they're reasons, I see the last couple as a bit different from the first. The last two are social conservatism, and I agree "social" issues keep the GOP from being a super-majority party, and will keep them marginalized going forward.

I've seen more libertarian views resonate with people, but then have social issues turn them off, if not make them hostile, with abortion, gay marriage, their religious values, etc....and all with good reason. It also makes them look like hypocrites when they then complain about the Democrat's affinity for all things government intrusion.

The first item though.... thats more respect for the rule of law. I dont see how rewarding and encouraging those who show disregard for the current rules is good, and pandering over it with amnesty...no thanks. But then, i dont think its necessary. The GOP should get better at making a distinction between welcoming legal immigrants, fixing the immigration process where broken, versus rewarding and condoning illegal immigration. Any "comprehensive" immigration reform shouldnt reward those who are here illegally. Welcoming legal immigrants doesnt require rewarding illegal immigrants. I dont have a problem with "self deportation" type policies that make it difficult to stay in this country under the radar...mostly by increasing enforcement and penalties on the companies that hire them under the table.

[protefeed]

You left out "bailing out the UAW". Those auto bailouts cost the GOP dearly in the Rust Belt.

[BigT]

Romney could have turned that in his favor by noting that GM went bankrupt, but the bankruptcy was crooked, citing the lawsuit from the Indiana Teachers Union Pension fund vs Chrysler, showing how Obama was favoring his cronies at the UAW over the little guys.

A simple, truthful story that would have de-fanged the auto bailout issue.

Why R's are too stupid to understand how to attack this issue is beyond me.

[Killazontherun]

In hind sight Nick you say Republicans lost because:

1. Welcome immigrants, don't shun them.

2. Pledge Unconditional Surrender in the Drug War.

3. Stay Out of the Bedroom, For Good.

I recall you saying in several admonishing post over the previous few months that the Republicans should stop veering their focus away from the economy. Those are cultural issues listed there. So, you were wrong?

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

The Jacket is never wrong, man!

[Cytotoxic]

Um no he's just repeating what he said earlier. Stop being KULTUR WAR asshats.

[Killazontherun]

Just shut the fuck up if you are going to lie. Running on the economy was Nick's theme. He should explain what has changed.

[Cytotoxic]

He hasn't.

[Killazontherun]

Here is Nick telling Republicans not to veer away from the economy:

Daily Caller Race Vid? Huh? What Part of 8 Percent Unemployment Don't Republicans Understand?

http://reason.com/blog/2012/10.....-part-of-8

My reaction to this piece - and especially to the editorial bombast attending its release - is simply: What part of persistent 8 percent unemployment don't you understand?

I mean, seriously. Come on already.

He expressed similar thoughts about Obama's America: 2016 as I recall. It contradicts what he says here that they need to focus on cultural issues. If he has changed his mind, or elaborated, I want to know the thought process.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

I suspect Nick wants them to take and focus on the cultural positions that Nick would take and focus on if he were a party.

[Sudden]

My understanding is that Nick was telling them to focus on the economy because the cultural issue positions the GOP generally endorses don't play well with the electorate.

Now that they've lost, he's trying to tell them why their positions on culture war issues cost them the election; thereby vindicating his original thesis, not invalidating it.

The problem is that sometime about a week or two before the election, David Alexrod saw Nick's article and said "Aha! I have it. We'll keep talking about vaginas."

[Rhino]

Obama got 10M fewer votes this year than in 2008. Romney got 3.5M fewer than McCain. The reason Romney lost is because he couldn't get conservatives to show up even as much as McCain/Palin could. If he did, he'd have won by as big a margin as Obama did.

[Killazontherun]

And I'm not a Kultur Warrior you son of shit. I'm holding an ally to standards when there exist a discrepancy. It's called integrity, you should learn it.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Cyto appears to be following The Rule of Law:
1. If the facts are against you, argue the law.
2. If the law is against you, argue the facts.
3. If the facts and the law are against you, yell like hell.

[Ron Wagner]

Welcoming immigrants is fine, but you know that the problem is illegal immigrants. Not legal immigrants. Not enforcing the immigration law is anarchy, and is destroying American society. Reagan made the mistake amnesty. We have had about five amnesties. They are totally counterproductive. Green cards are OK if needed.

[Cytotoxic]

I see the nativists are concerned.

[widget]

Cytoxic,

The libertarian position, correct if I'm wrong, is that we should have open borders and not have a welfare state. Reason rarely connects the two. Calling Ron Wagner a concern troll doesn't cut it. Say what you mean, if you can, and say it clearly.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Open borders is not the only possible libertarian position on immigration. The principle of noninitiation of force only applies within the territory controlled by the govt. As immigration does not occur within that territory, force can be initiated on that issue.

[Ed Zeppelin]

Great. Now when I ride my motorcycle in Colorado, I have to worry about drivers who may be stoned.

Thanks, libertarians!

[Killazontherun]

If you don't have the reflexes to avoid stoned people on the road, doesn't that make you an evolutionary set back? You see, we always advocate for the greater good of the human rave by not interfering with the natural evolutionary order in determining who gets to survive. Laws against stoned driving protect the weak.

[Killazontherun]

I'm keeping that 'v'. We could replace the 'c' every time we talk about race, and obscure our true agenda from the stupid masses. It's not a pogrom, its a rave!

[Willis]

"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could"

nothing a good P.J. O'Rourke quote can't solve!

[widget]

My worst fear, when riding a motorcycle, is having an ladder fall of a pickup truck in front me.

[Sudden]

So clearly you're a nativist, anti-Mexican bigot!

[PM]

Thank god nobody in Colorado used pot before this law was passed. Whatever shall we do?!?! Next thing you know you'll have people driving their cars after drinking too! Madness!

[Agile Cyborg]

Anything that can offer Republicans wisdom to actually win important elections will be tossed against the brick walls of their fucking hard heads.

Leave your best cheesy macaroni in the sun... after 4 days the results in the bowl illustrate the appearance of your average Republican brain- impenetrable, atrophied, and astoundingly alien.

'The Republicans lost 'cuz the Democrats were mean and le media prefers stinky Democratic cocks in their gullets.' No way to develop meaningful strategies when these fucking losers refuse to reflect on serious internal decay which is resulting in a growing loss of connection to critical portions of the populace.

A side note: illegal immigrants that are here to work and live honestly and ethically should be granted amnesty. Period. Fuck the rule of law. I'm tired of tired traditional bullshit trumping reality. It's little wonder you can't get Latinos to vote for you when a large majority of your party violently rages against them for breaking laws to feed their families. I'll break into your country in a second if that is my only means to feed my starving family.

[Willis]

I agree with on immigration, but the latino's that you are talking about were more in favor of republican policies on immigration than republican policies on the economy.
Free markets need a better marketing firm then the republican party, basically.

[Epicdelusion]

+1

[Killazontherun]

I have no advice to give the GOP. For the reason, I'm not GOP, didn't vote GOP, and to do so would be concern trolling.

Besides, recriminations are for losers. You listen to what your lovely little soul tells you, you are not going to get anywhere in politics. Democrats don't indulge in that shit when they have a bad year. They had their asses handed to them in 2010, did they get all touchy feely and point fingers at one another? Fuck no, they blamed it on the American public being a bunch of morons who didn't realize how good they have it under Obama. They turned things around and won on that message, because they have the iron cold hearts of winners, and that means ignoring your faults and that voice of doubt in the back of your head like a champ. When a really good baseball player is up to bat, he doesn't care if three balls and two strikes have already been called, he looks the pitcher in the eye and thinks, 'you are fucking dead.'

[Cytotoxic]

Not true. We in Canada were dominated by the Liberal Party. They started losing. They never reflected on why they lost. They were like the GOP: they thought they were the country. They have lost official opposition status.

[Killazontherun]

What does that have to with us? You're Canadian, you already lost.

[Cytotoxic]

WE HAVE LOWER CORPORATE INCOME TAX.

[Corning]

And a lower debt-to-gdp ratio and a stable currency.

Would not surprise me if loonies were again worth more then American dollars.

[PapayaSF]

Yeah, but I have to pay a separate tax on tires when I rent a car in Canada. What is that about?

Seriously, you have a point, but you're also free riders on our defense budget these days.

[Ted S.]

I thought they lost official opposition status to the New Dictators because the voters of Quebec are schizophrenic and will vote for the evil they've never tried before. (Didn't the NDP do well in Quebec in the last general election?)

[Corning]

I'll break into your country in a second if that is my only means to feed my starving family.

Probably a little dramatic. I don't see Mexicans starving to death.

But yeah I would break into your county if it meant opportunity to better my situation. Hell the parents of both my grandmothers did just that.

[widget]

I'll break into your country in a second if that is my only means to feed my starving family.

You watched The Sound of Music one too many times.

[Ted S.]

It would have made for a better movie if the Nazis caught the von Trapps.

[OldMexican]

However, back on the immigration issue: this is not only something the GOP should adopt, it is something the GOP will adopt.

This sounds about right, and the GOP better grab the chance while it still has it within its grasp, because the Demo-rats couldn't care less about immigration. They have been playing the Hispanics for fools for years.

[Epicdelusion]

Same thing Rome was guilty of doing. Promise immigrants the dream they've always "wanted" so they could elicit widespread support from them. The left for the most part has the minority, immigrant, and female voting base. I can't see why any woman would put up with the GOP's bullshit.

[Epicdelusion]

Personally I'm glad Romney lost. I voted Johnson knowing Obama was going to win. The GOP is losing touch with reality. Let them die off. These fundamentalist, war mongering wackos on the right have had a long enough stretch of power. Now if we really want to stop the leviathan leftist government, we need to seriously get rid of the GOP in favor of an updated, fresh platform that is mostly libertarian. Otherwise our entire country will be just a huge version of liberal college campuses that destroy free speech, crush individual responsibility, and eradicate free expression.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

And the elephant in the dining room here is the ever-declining birthrate among US citizens. In a democracy that's just asking for instability.

[Calidissident]

And your solution is ...?

[Godoblogger]

I hope that he didn't win because American citizens can sense lying and hiding. There is a Romney we don't know - check out THE TRUTH at mittromneyblog.wordpress.com

[PapayaSF]

11.8.12
I hope that he didn't win

Wow, not really keeping up with the news, huh? But plugging your stupid blog anyway.

[Sudden]

And they wonder why we scoff at their voters...

[Epicdelusion]

Hey, take the butt plugging to the gay marriage articles.

[Dan]

Point #1 is nonsense. Nobody shunned immigrants, they simply are in favor of people doing it legally and enforcing the immigration laws that already exist.

People keep talking about this issue as if the united states is the only country that has immigration laws, and insinuating that they are somehow prejudicial or racially insensitive.

The united states already has some of the least enforced and most lax immigration laws in the world, and it isn't doing the country any good. Sure you could buy some votes and win an election in the short term, but policy decisions should be made on logic and what's good for the country, not what's going to possibly swing the next election.

[WorkhaoBekleidung]

Wetterfeste Outdoor-Klamotten belasten offenbar die Umwelt mit giftigen Substanzen, zeigt eine Greenpeace-Studie. Was Sie ?ber die High-End-Kleidung wissen sollten

[WorkhaoBekleidung]

Der Elternbeirat des "Hauses f?r Kinder" in der Bodenseestra?e veranstaltet am Samstag, 17.

November, einen Winterbasar von 10 bis 13 Uhr. Ab 9 Uhr ist Einlass ausschlie?lich f?r Schwangere und M?tter mit Babys unter einem Jahr. Angeboten werden Spielsachen und B?cher, abendkleider kurz von Gr??e 52 bis 140 sowie Winterschuhe bis Gr??e 36 als auch Umstandsmode, Kinderwagen und Autositze. F?rs leibliche Wohl wird gesorgt und Erzieher des Teams bieten Kinderbetreuung w?hrend des Einkaufs. Listen liegen in der Kindertagesst?tte aus. Die Annahme der Waren erfolgt am Freitag, 16. November, von 14 bis 18 Uhr unter anderem mit Expressschalter.

[WorkhaoBekleidung]

People keep talking about this issue as if the united states is the only country that has immigration laws, and insinuating that they are somehow prejudicial or racially insensitive.

[WorkhaoBekleidung]

Beliebte Outdoor-Mode enth?lt offenbar diverse Chemikalien, die Umwelt und Gesundheit gef?hrden k?nnen, so eine Untersuchung der Umweltorganisation Greenpeace.

[nikea]

This energy "rebound effect" has important implications for efforts to restrain climate change through conservation. Various studies have suggested that improvements in efficiency could reduce energy consumption enough to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 25 percent during the http://www.drdrebeatsbydreau.com/ next four decades. But this is a highly controversial area of scholarship.

[Rhino]

efficiency doesn't mean you use less energy. It means you use the same or more energy to do more things.

[Abu Nudnik]

Lost big? Looked like a squeaker to me.

[Rhino]

Reason #4. Republicans didn't show up. Obama lost 15% of the support he had in 2008. 10M votes. Romney got 3.5M votes fewer than McCain got in 2008 and McCain was a lackluster candidate. All Republicans had to do was show up in the numbers they did in 2008 as this would have been another 2010 midterms. I think Romney's failure to generate enthusiasm translated into failure to bring Republicans that would have voted many other races to victory. Silver lining is the exodus of support for Obama. Dark cloud is the failure of the Republicans to promote a candidate that get's the right excited about voting.

[Tulpa (LAOL-PA)]

Right-exciting candidates wouldn't have gotten independents to the extent Romney did.

You guys keep assuming there's some way to make this election an easy win for the Rs, but are falling way short on specifics.

[alan_s]

You keep telling yourself this, Nick. The electorate voted for bigger government. Period.

[Thomas O.]

The GOP leadership needs to grow its balls back, plain and simple. They need to shore up their "individual liberty" stance and denounce any positions contradicting that stance. And they need to stand up to the right-wing punditry.

Remember when Michael Steele was GOP chairman, and he criticized Rush, and had to apologize to him after the Dittohead backlash that ensued? (And that was in response to Rahm Emanuel's claim that Rush was controlling the RNC, because "whenever a Republican criticizes him, they have to run back and apologize to him, and say they were misunderstood." Way to validate his claim, guys.) I thought Steele was on a roll. His wish for "Hip-Hop Republicans", hokey as it sounded, was well-intentioned. He also stressed the need to be more socially inclusive. And he got replaced by Reince Priebus in 2011 as a result.

And let's not forget: Michael Steele at the helm, GOP won big in 2010. Reince Priebus at the helm, not so much in 2012.

[anon]

Thomas, the GOP doesn't support any type of individual liberty. They're just democrat-lite.

[anon]

Romney lost because he defended his position on abortion, plain and simple. All he had to do was say "This isn't about abortion; I refuse to sign any piece of legislation that has anything to do with abortion. This is about the economy, and I'm going to leave the abortion issue for a future president to deal with. Now, here's how we're going to fix the economy..."

[alan_s]

If the economy was the issue that drove voters, over 50 million people would not have voted for Obama, at least not if they have any understanding of basic Econ 101. Not that Romney is any better, but Obama is on a whole nother level of stupid. We're all overanalyzing this. The electorate proved themselves to be nothing but derp, and you just can't fix that. The only thing that's going to end the age of big government now is total system collapse. It's either that or libertarians somehow getting together and declaring independence from the government.

[Masturbatin' Pete]

Back in the day, Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to millions

How many times since the 1986 amnesty have the Republicans won California's electoral votes? Once, in 1988. Amnesty's working out real well there, isn't it? Meanwhile New Mexico is now reliably blue and Arizona is trending purple.

George W. Bush pulled high percentages of the latino vote as governor of Texas and president of the United States

Bush got 40% of the Latino vote as President. Losing the Latino vote by less would help in the short term, but as they grow as a voting bloc, failing to capture a majority of the Latino vote becomes a liability, not an asset. It's like saying "well, I lose money on every sale, but I'll make it up in volume."

[Masturbatin' Pete]

There's plenty of room for serious disagreement on these issues, but it's clear that Americans don't want these things controlled by the government.

Well, it's clear that Americans don't want prohibitions on abortion in the case of rape. But it doesn't follow that Americans don't want some prohibitions on some abortion. There's plenty of room for Kang's position ("Abortions for some, little American flags for others"). There's no reason for the GOP to give up on abortion entirely.

[alan_s]

"but it's clear that Americans don't want these things controlled by the government."

I don't know when the Reason staff, or the commentariat for that matter, is going to open up their eyes and realize that the country is not becoming increasingly libertarian. How you can look at the election results and not see the overwhelming rah-rah for big government is beyond me (I say this regardless of who won). It stands out like a sore thumb. It's all between red states and blue states now, and the battle is not over big vs. small government. It's all about who will be the oppressed class and who will be the oppressor. The American experiment failed miserably, and we are now but a bunch of mere looters fighting for government resources.

[Masturbatin' Pete]

The Democrats have a plan to send us straight to Hell in three years; the Republicans counter with a five-year plant to send us halfway to Hell, but things are looking up because Gary Johnson got 1% of the vote. Awesome, we're almost there! All we have to do is grant citizenship to twenty million illegal aliens and we'll be in Libertarian Paradise.

[plusafdotcom]

Spot on, Nick!

[[e-mail]]

I don't need to watch the video. He lost because the GOP screwed the grassroots activists for RP as well as a significant part of the fiscally conservative Tea Party activists. Voters turnout was what, 12 million lower? Why cheap nfl jerseys do you think those people stayed home? How many times since the 1986 amnesty have the Republicans won California's electoral votes? Once, in 1988. Amnesty's working out real well there, isn't it? Meanwhile New Mexico is now reliably blue and Arizona is trending purple.

George W. Bush pulled high percentages of the latino vote as governor of Texas and president of the United States

Bush got 40% of the Latino vote as President. Losing the Latino vote by less would help in the short term, but as they grow as a voting bloc, failing to capture cheap nhl jerseys a majority of the Latino vote becomes a liability, not an asset. It's like saying "well, I lose money on every sale, but I'll make it up in volume."

[[e-mail]]

Ann Coulter is a religious bigot who serves more to damage the move back to smaller government and more expansive private property rights than she of any help. Her and her ilk should be dropped, and I propose doing so by creating a conservative party based on first principles of small government, national security and peace through strength and laizzes faire capitalism with minimal checks and balances on participants, just as we would impose checks and balances on foreign currency manipulators and others.
Well, it's clear that Americans don't want prohibitions on abortion in the case of rape. But it doesn't follow that Americans don't want some prohibitions on some abortion. There's plenty of room for Kang's position ("Abortions for some, little American cheap nfl jerseys flags for others"). There's no reason for the GOP to give up on abortion entirely.

[HenryC]

I don't care what two consenting adults do in the bedroom, but that is not the same as supporting gay marriage. I see no benefits to society as a whole with that. Marriage is supported because of the next generation, gay marriage does not provide that. I see no reason a gay couple should have a different tax and inheritance status than any single person. I do not think the resistance to gay marriage particularly hurt the Republicans, because, like me, most people just don't care. I totally agree with points one and two though.

[HenryC]

I don't care what two consenting adults do in the bedroom, but that is not the same as supporting gay marriage. I see no benefits to society as a whole with that. Marriage is supported because of the next generation, gay marriage does not provide that. I see no reason a gay couple should have a different tax and inheritance status than any single person. I do not think the resistance to gay marriage particularly hurt the Republicans, because, like me, most people just don't care. I totally agree with points one and two though.

[nikea]

The GOP will have an internal battle for direction ? and possibly a civil war: Screenplay formula requires that late in every http://www.nikefootballcleatstrade.com/ story, protagonists hit their lowest points, and then spend a few minutes in what's known as a "long dark night of the soul," where the protagonist ponders what he's learned and comes to grip with who he really is. After its second successive presidential loss, the Republican party is likely to perform a similar public http://www.cheapfootballcleatsairs.com/ soul searching, perhaps with a long-simmering public battle.