From a radio interview:
Q — Why did your campaign lose?
A — I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration, how have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration?
If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party had been representing. People desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. … It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.
It is a certainty that the run up of debt, the various Congressional GOP scandals and the long war with its errors (real and imagined) played a huge role in our defeat last week. McCain’s mishandling of Palin’s roll out post-convention also played a role, as did McCain’s decision to eschew attacks on Obama over his racist, anti-American pastor of 20 years standing. The final nail in the coffin was – in retrospect – McCain’s decision to get deeply involved in the bail out. All that accomplished was to remind people what they didn’t like about the GOP Congressional delegation, that McCain is part of the terribly unpopular Congress and that he’s in the same party as George Bush. Pretty much, take any of the varied factors which contributed to the defeat and turn it around, and McCain stood a good chance of winning.
On top of all of this, however, is the current institutional weakness of the GOP. The Democrats have a motivating desire – they want power; all of it, all the time, in order to enrich themselves and their cronies and remake the United States in their sophomoric image of what America should be like. They don’t care how they acquire power and will use everything short of rape and murder to obtain it. Ok, fine; they probably also wouldn’t use cannibalism. I think. Maybe…. Meanwhile, the GOP doesn’t know what it wants. Conflicts between social and fiscal conservatives, various fights over how libertarian we should be and then whether or not we should work with or fight tooth and nail against the Democratic party push and pull the party in various directions and make it nearly impossible to have a coherent message for the elections.
The first task of the GOP is to sit down quietly for a bit and think:
1. What do we want?
2. How do we want to do it?
Until we’ve got good answers to both questions, we’ll continue to flounder about and fail to create that generational majority we’ll need to really reform America and excise the left wing poison in our system. Answering those questions might not be necessary for electoral victory – Obama’s almost-certain-to-fail policies may well usher us, deserving or not, back into power – but they are necessary to make our efforts worthwhile and lasting. Governor Palin is at least understanding why we lost, and it will be up to her – and others – to figure out over the next four years what we need to win.
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