Why did Romney lose?

[Townsend]

how long it took FDR to turn the economy around (WWII helped immensely)

He was well into his third term by the time WWII started.

[Townsend]

Wow, that's some really funny stuff right there.  Just about pissed myself.

Eh, maybe you have to be relieved the people pushing for him lost.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I wanted Herman.  Perhaps someday we will get a candidate focused on simplifying things instead of growing them.  Perhaps it is too late for that.  Almost half the country are now "wards of the state."  It would probably take a miracle to change that.

Romney lost because of the Republican party.  The Republican party is out of touch and lacks the instruments to survive.  They are too bound by their religious elements that have infiltrated their ranks and made them unable to visualize the weakness that offers them in a modern world.  Perhaps it is fitting that Wisconsin was one of the states that dealt the final blow.  The roots of the party are believed to have been born there, liberal capitalists who bonded together to fight slavery.     The party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan, and what used to be the party of freedom is no longer recognizable.

Party aside, I think Romney would have made a good president.  I doubt he would spend 5 months of his presidency on the golf course, or kill over 1,100 people with non-military secret drone attacks.  I doubt he would form endless committees and commissions to pacify the people then choose to never meet with them or discount their advice.  I don't think he would need to appoint a "Secretary of Business" or a Pay Czar.  I doubt he would attempt to force executive orders or legislation before presenting it to the public or letting congress read it.

He would have obstacles though.  he would have taken office with a higher total number of unemployed than President Obama, and energy costs almost 150% higher, but I doubt he would spend 4 years blaming his predecessor.

A president like Romney would probably do horribly mean things like require work for welfare, and input for output in unemployment.  He probably wouldn't give nearly as many speeches.  Probably wouldn't push stimulus funds then invest tax payer money in ridiculous programs to reward his donors.  He would not have much time for Jay-Z, Clooney, or Beyonce.  Letterman, Ellen, and Jon Stewart would have a difficult time booking him.  He'd probably be interested in finding out what happened in Benghazi.  He'd meet with our closest allies and present a strong character to our enemies. He wouldn't give anyone a thrill up their leg.  He would probably waste a bunch of time attending those stupid national security meetings.  His boring wive Ann has probably always been proud of her country.  He'd make Big Bird and Chris Wallas pay for their own lunch, and stop funding $100K electric sports cars made in Finland with tax payer money.

Who knows.  Romney could have turned out to be a horrible president and done all of those things.

Herman couldn't cut it either.  Only more so.  Is that 'half the country -wards of the state' the ones on Social Security after spending long careers supporting this country and economy and paying for that annuity?  Or the military ones who are out there defending us?  Or maybe it's the people at Walmart working for sub-par wages and no benefits to let you buy Chinese goods - since Romney was so good as to ship all those jobs to them - at low prices?

The party is out of touch - it was hijacked decades ago.  And Romney was the latest 'sellout' to that whacko nonsense - he chose Ryan, presumably voluntarily.  Like McCain chose whoever that quitter ex-governor of Alaska was.  The real Republican party was the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower.  Reagan hoped to be the "great hijacker", but he really didn't think big enough along those lines, so we have the Ryan types.  And the party of Lincoln let slavery remain intact everywhere outside the rebellious states for another two years, so that enlightened action may not actually have been their highest priority after all.  Can you spell political expediency?  If they were really focused on elimination of slavery as the highest goal, why not make it across the entire country instead of leaving that abomination for two more years?

Hard to say if he would kill 1,100 with drones.  But we do know for a fact that Bush's adventure killed over 600,000 civilians in Iraq.  But you have expressed equal indignation to that haven't you?   But there is no reason to think that innocent men, women and children would die by the tens or hundreds of thousands pursuing a little imperialistic voyeurism in Iran....

Or he could have had the record of all time (here) gas prices like existed in 2008 - coming back to still higher than today's levels just in time for that election.

He would not have had to dig his way out of a hole that was putting 800,000 per month out of work, since there has been a 1 million per month swing in the positive direction since then.  He was claiming 12 million new jobs over 4 years - which sounds great until you look at the reality - then it becomes just modest growth.  Just modestly larger than what we have now.  And as housing continues to grow, like it has for the last 18 months or so, that 12 million will probably look like not much of a promise at all.  Exactly what we have come to expect from the Murdochians.

A president like Romney would probably do horribly mean things like require work for welfare, and input for output in unemployment - or at least give his richest buddies ANOTHER $5 trillion in corporate and personal welfare through his tax reduction plan.  But wait - he couldn't require work for welfare - that would alienate his base, even with all the tax cuts.

Probably wouldn't push stimulus funds then invest tax payer money in ridiculous programs to reward his donors - unless of course, Halliburton asked him REALLY nice to give them $60 billion in no-bid contracts.

He'd probably be interested in finding out what happened in Benghazi - by looking at the CIA reports and videos showing how they actually responded in 25 minutes.  And then wait until he had a reasonably reliable idea of what actually happened rather than jumping out 15 minutes after the first news reports and blasting the activities with no real clue about what he was talking about.  Oh, wait....

He'd meet with our closest allies and present a strong character to our enemies - and would NEVER insult our single best ally in the world with cheesy snarky BS about their Olympics event.  No, he wouldn't do that....

He wouldn't give anyone a thrill up their leg - and under NO circumstances would he ever give a back rub to the head of state of one of our other biggest allies.
 
He would probably waste a bunch of time attending those stupid national security meetings.  His boring wive Ann has probably always been proud of her country - and only buys and supports all those companies to send jobs to China, because she and he believe in compassion for needy people and feel that work for welfare wage levels is the best incarnation of that philosophy they can think of.  And it didn't hurt that they can get a couple hundred million dollars in the process.  

He'd make Big Bird and Chris Wallas Wallace pay for their own lunch, and stop funding $100K electric sports cars made in Finland with tax payer money - not when there are trillions to spend on unfunded wars, next stop Iran!!  Not to mention all the nukes that need many billions of funding with tax payer money, for an industry that is supposed to be the poster child of a great energy solution.  One that cannot stand on its own without massive injections of billions of corporate welfare.

Who knows.  Romney could have turned out to be a horrible president and done all of those things.  Probably would have...since that is what he said he would do, or has actually done in the past.

[Townsend]

Those Pesky Urban Voters

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/11/13/those_pesky_urban_voters.html

Paul Ryan's "how I screwed this up" tour begins with the ol' "too many liberal urbanites voted" chestnut.

"I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race," said Ryan to local station WISC-TV in his first post-election interview. "When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, and those ones coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that's when it became clear we weren't going to win."
This has engendered the expected shock-and-sputter over Ryan's dismissiveness. The highlight of the genre, clearly, is a New York Times story that cites "one person on Twitter" and "another" to show that Ryanrage is growing.

I'd argue that Ryan's position is fairly savvy, given what else is out there. A rumor du jour on the right (which I plan to get into as soon as our national Petraeus nightmare winds down) is that the lack of Romney votes in some Philadelphia and Cleveland precincts suggest that there was ELECTION FRAUD. There is, however, plenty of precedent for inner-city precincts voting heavily Democratic. Most of the precincts in question gave a similarly non-existent number of votes to John McCain in 2008. McCain didn't really campaign in those cities, ceding the black vote to Barack Obama.

No, I think Ryan's next statement is more revealing.

"I don't think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare — we clearly didn't lose it on those issues," he said.
Ryan spent weeks promising to "win this debate" over Medicare, so he can't say he lost it. But what he's implying here is that voters, for other reasons, simply didn't consider the wisdom of the big arguments. And that's sort of the argument Republicans make about urban voters -- they vote so reflexively Democratic, they're hardly responsive to policy debates.

Ryan's solution to this problem seems to be backing Tom Price over Cathy McMorris-Rodgers for the fourth-ranking role in the GOP conference, which would make it an all-white male leadership team again.

[Townsend]

Top Republicans say Romney didn't offer specifics

http://news.yahoo.com/top-republicans-romney-didnt-offer-specifics-080833236--election.html

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Top Republicans meeting for the first time since Election Day say the party lost its bid to unseat President Barack Obama because nominee Mitt Romney did not respond to criticism strongly enough or outline a specific agenda with a broad appeal.

In conversations at the Republican Governors Association confab in Las Vegas, a half dozen party leaders predicted the GOP will lose again if it keeps running the same playbook based on platitudes in place of detailed policies. Instead, they asserted, the party needs to learn the lessons from its loss, respect voters' savvy and put forward an agenda that appeals beyond the while, male voters who are its base.

"We need to acknowledge the fact that we got beat," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in an interview. "We clearly got beat and we need to recognize that."


Little more than a week after Romney came up short in his presidential bid, the party elders were looking at his errors and peering ahead to 2016's race. Some of the contenders eying a White House run of their own were on hand and quietly considering their chances. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie scheduled a private meeting on the sidelines with Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor who is widely seen as one of the GOP's sharpest political operatives.

"We need to have a brutal, brutally honest assessment of everything we did," Barbour said. "We need to take everything apart ... and determine what we did that worked and what we did that didn't work."

Other potential White House contenders such as Jindal, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker were outlining a vision for the party in coming elections.

"We need to figure out what we did right and what we did wrong, how we can improve our tone, our message, our technology, our turnout — all the things that are required to win elections," McDonnell said. "We are disappointed, but we are not discouraged."

With polls in hand and shifting demographic trends in mind, these Republicans are looking at how best to position the party to make inroads with growing numbers of Hispanic, black and young voters who overwhelmingly voted Democratic last week. The Republicans were still smarting over constant criticism of Romney from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden — and what they saw as Romney's often ineffective response.

"They spent all their time making Mitt Romney unacceptable and making him out to be someone who was untrustworthy and unacceptable to enough of the American people — and it worked," Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said in an interview.


In the hallways at the conference, the governors and their top advisers uniformly blamed Romney's loss on an uneven communications strategy. They said Romney allowed himself to be branded a corporate raider who put the interests of the wealthy above those of middle-income voters.

"We didn't have effective means by which to counter the attacks the Obama-Biden campaign took against Mitt Romney and his team," Walker said. "I just don't think you can let that go unanswered."

Time and again, the governors pointed to Obama attacks that settled into voters' minds.

"His whole campaign was a fear-and-smear attack to make Romney unacceptable and to blame George Bush for anything that happened while Obama was president," Barbour said. "This was all personal: that Romney is a vulture capitalist who doesn't care about people like you, ships jobs overseas, is a quintessential plutocrat and is married to a known equestrian."

Barbour added, "An attack unanswered is an attack admitted to."


Had the criticism been shown to be false or unfair, the results might have been better, said Bill Bennett, an education secretary in the Reagan administration and an informal adviser to governors.

"We were in a big fight. We came with a knife; they came with a gun," Bennett said. "If Mitt Romney had responded and had we responded on his behalf — and had his campaign pushed back more forcefully — I think it would have been a different result."

Jindal, however, attributed Romney's loss to a lack of "a specific vision that connected with the American people."

"His campaign was largely about his biography and his experience," Jindal said. "But time and time again, biography and experience is not enough to win an election. You have to have a vision, you have to connect your policies to the aspirations of the American people. I don't think the campaign did that and as a result, this became a contest between personalities and — you know what? — Chicago won that."

Romney cast his loss in a different light, at least in a phone call with top donors Wednesday. He asserted that Obama won re-election because of the "gifts" the president had already provided to blacks, Hispanics and young voters and because of the president's effort to paint Romney as anti-immigrant.

"The president's campaign, if you will, focused on giving targeted groups a big gift," Romney said, citing immigration proposals aimed at Hispanics and free contraception coverage that appealed to young women. "He made a big effort on small things."

Romney said his campaign, in contrast, had been about "big issues for the whole country." He said he faced problems as a candidate because he was "getting beat up" by the Obama campaign and said the debates allowed him to come back.

The Republican nominee didn't acknowledge any major missteps and said his team had run a superb campaign.

So there you go.  They've got it all figured out.

[carltonplace]

I remember him counting his 5 fingers and having a point that corelated to each one.

NObamaCare day one
bad China, bad!
Repeal R-v-W
something
something

[Hoss]

Top Republicans say Romney didn't offer specifics

http://news.yahoo.com/top-republicans-romney-didnt-offer-specifics-080833236--election.html

So there you go.  They've got it all figured out.

Hindsight.  It's a grumble.

[Townsend]

The Real Romney

Another secret recording shows what Romney really thinks about minorities, birth control, and public assistance.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/11/romney_gifts_and_the_47_percent_what_he_really_thinks_about_blacks_hispanics.html

Six months ago at a high-dollar fundraising dinner, Mitt Romney was secretly recorded as he criticized the "47 percent" of Americans "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it." Romney told his donors: "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

When the recording surfaced, Romney insisted he hadn't meant what he said. "Over the last several years, you've seen greater and greater divisiveness in this country," he told Latinos at a Univision forum on Sept. 19. "My campaign is about the 100 percent in America. ... More people have fallen into poverty. More people, we just learned, have had to go onto food stamps. ... This campaign is about helping people who need help, and right now, the people who are poor in this country need help getting out of poverty."

On Oct. 4, fresh from his makeover in the first debate, Romney went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show and assured viewers that the 47 percent video was just a moment of clumsiness:

In a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right. In this case, I said something that's just completely wrong. And I absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown that I care about the 100 percent ... The rich in this country are actually doing better under President Obama. The gap between the rich and the poor has gotten larger. ... I want the poor to get into the middle class.
For the rest of the campaign, that was Romney's story. The candidate in the video, telling his donors that half of all Americans were unsalvageable freeloaders, was an artificial blip. The real Romney was the nice man on TV who yearned to help his countrymen.

But now we have a second recording. It documents another conversation between Romney and his wealthiest contributors. This conversation isn't six months, six weeks, or even six days old. It happened yesterday, on a conference call with Romney's finance committee. The recording bears an uncanny resemblance to the 47 percent video. It strongly suggests that the Romney in the video is the real thing, and the Romney on TV is a fraud.
According to transcriptions, notes, and partial audio of the call, Romney told his contributors that Obama's strategy was to "focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote." These gifts, Romney lamented, "add up to trillions of dollars" and were delivered to "targeted groups," "especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people":

With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift. Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because, as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents' plan, and that was a big gift to young people.

In comments reportedly related to blacks and other minorities, Romney observed:

You can imagine, for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you're now going to get free health care, particularly if you don't have it—getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity—I mean, this is huge. Likewise, with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition, with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.

When you read these quotes and listen to the audio, three patterns sink in. First, everything Romney says on the conference call is the opposite of what he said in the debates. In the debates, Romney pledged to "make it easier for kids to afford college" and bragged that as governor, he had given students "four years tuition free to the college of your choice." On the call, he depicts college loan assistance as a bribe. In the debates, Romney labeled Obamacare a big-government mandate that would force everyone to buy a product, would cost 20 million people their health insurance, and would raise every family's premiums by $2,500 a year. On the call, he describes Obamacare as "free health care" worth $10,000 per family. In the debates, Romney claimed that "under my plan ... young people are able to stay on their family plan." On the call, he brushes off this idea as a "gift" used by Obama to buy votes. In the debates, Romney said "every woman in America should have access to contraceptives." On the call, he caricatures Obama's policy—that insurance plans must cover birth control for the premium payer—as "free contraceptives" for young women.

Second, the Romney on the call matches the Romney in the 47 percent video. In the same resigned tone, he speaks of scores of millions of Americans hooked on free health care and other benefits. But this time, he itemizes the constituencies and reports that they've paid back their benefactor with their votes, just as he predicted.

Third, the call belies everything Romney said in his attempts to clean up the 47 percent video. At the Sept. 19 Univision forum, Romney said the country was too divided, and he proclaimed his commitment to the poor. On the call, he depicts blacks, Latinos, and young women as interest groups bought off by handouts and amnesty. At the Univision forum, Romney framed food stamps as something unemployed people "had to go onto." On the call, he casts public assistance as "extraordinary financial gifts" eagerly seized in exchange for votes. In the Oct. 4 Hannity interview, Romney excused his 47 percent riff as a one-time verbal flub "in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions." On the call, at length, he repeats it.

Don't bother trying to explain yourself, Mitt. The 47 percent of us who gave you a pass the first time won't make that mistake again. We can tell you're being candid. Just not with us.

[nathanm]

Heh. The ones who Obama gave the biggest financial gifts to donated an awful lot of money to his opponent. Strange, that.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I suspect those who voted for Obama may have looked at how long it took FDR to turn the economy around (WWII helped immensely) looked at how much time Obama has had to turn it around and figured it was worth giving him four more years to work on it.  I also believe many simply didn't identify with a wealthy oligarch or mis-trusted him.

The second graph here on unemployment is interesting.  These are in great part estimates, but based on models of economic activity, may well be pretty close.  The important thing here is how during Hoover's last 2 years - as with Bush's last 2 years, the trend was straight up.  Only after someone who at least gave lip service to caring, if not the actual feeling, did anything start to change.  Both of these events - 30's and 2007 - were both pretty much world wide phenomenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

[Townsend]

Now Republicans are starting to distance themselves from Romney.

Maybe they should vet the candidate a little more next time.

"How much video of you is there?"

[Ed W]

I read a piece last night or this morning saying that Romney actually won those coveted independents, but what truly cost him in demographics were women, youth, and minorities.  Besides that, his campaign didn't believe that the Obama campaign could get out the vote in similar numbers to 2008.  That was a fatal error.  They thought the neighborhood offices in Ohio were a wasted effort, yet the personal contacts formed by those offices were essential in getting voters to the polls.  Finally, the Romney people had a much-touted computer app that was supposed to identify potential voters so that campaign workers could contact them on election day.  It was never tested prior to that Tuesday and failed miserably.

So the Romney campaign made a series of bad assumptions, any one of which may have been recoverable, but in aggregate were insurmountable.  The technology problems can be readily fixed, but the Republican's problems with women and minorities require policy changes.  Without those changes, the party will be a regional force at best, unable to regain the presidency.   

[GG]

I read a piece last night or this morning saying that Romney actually won those coveted independents, but what truly cost him in demographics were women, youth, and minorities.  Besides that, his campaign didn't believe that the Obama campaign could get out the vote in similar numbers to 2008.  That was a fatal error.  They thought the neighborhood offices in Ohio were a wasted effort, yet the personal contacts formed by those offices were essential in getting voters to the polls.  Finally, the Romney people had a much-touted computer app that was supposed to identify potential voters so that campaign workers could contact them on election day.  It was never tested prior to that Tuesday and failed miserably.

So the Romney campaign made a series of bad assumptions, any one of which may have been recoverable, but in aggregate were insurmountable.  The technology problems can be readily fixed, but the Republican's problems with women and minorities require policy changes.  Without those changes, the party will be a regional force at best, unable to regain the presidency.   

Bobby Jindal seems to be taking the offense on that issue.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bobby-jindal-takes-on-gop-on-cnn-we-dont-win-elections-by-insulting-voters/

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke out about Mitt Romney's "gifts" remarks recently, calling them "absolutely wrong." Later this afternoon, he paid a visit to CNN's Wolf Blitzer to further discuss his criticism — and offer his insight on the direction the GOP should be taking. The party's approach should be an inclusive one, he said, not about "insulting" people.

"This is completely unhelpful," Jindal said. "This is not where the Republican Party needs to go."

He went on to offer some basic advice: "If you want voters to like you, the first thing you've got to do is to like them first. And it's certainly not helpful to tell voters that you think their votes were bought. That's certainly not a way to show them you respect them, you like them."

"We need to stop talking down to voters," Jindal said. "As a Republican party, we need to fight for 100 percent of the electorate. Not 53 percent, not 52 percent, but 100 percent. We've got to stop trying to divide people into different groups by race, by gender, by class. Instead, we've got to show them that our conservative principles will help them pursue the American dream."

Simply put: "We don't win elections by insulting voters."

[nathanm]

Nope, not a policy problem at all, just undisciplined messaging.

[Hoss]

This reminds me of many in the media....and many on here.