As I’m sure most people have figured out by now, turnout in 2012 was massively off from 2008. As it turns out, Obama got fewer votes in 2012 than Bush got in 2004. My prediction of a Romney victory was predicated upon taking the 2008 turnout and re-figuring it for both a loss in Obama voters and a return of Bush voters. The Obama voters were, indeed, lost – I got that right (though, for full disclosure, Obama lost fewer votes than I projected he would). The problem for us Republicans is that the Bush voters McCain lost were also lost by Romney – and then some; it seems that Romney got about a million fewer voters than McCain. Had the 5 million or so missing Bush voters showed up on November 6th, Romney would have won…and we probably would have won a Senate majority, in to the bargain.
The big question is just why did these five million voters not vote? They voted for Bush. They are clearly ok with a socially conservative man of financially rich background – they should have had no particular problem with voting for Romney. But, they didn’t. Why? Several reasons:
Partially it has to do with the fact that while Bush and Romney are of similar background, Bush yet was more of an us-folks man. Bush, the scion of a patrician family, at least learned how to relate to average folks. Romney, a similar scion, looked and acted like the scion of a patrician family – this is not to take away anything from Romney’s magnificent charitable efforts or his other fine qualities. At the end of the day, point blank, Romney wasn’t one of us – he couldn’t excite the sort of devotion the GOP showed to Bush in 2004.
Secondly it has to do with that as bad as things are, there is a lack of crisis perception out there. We high-information voters know just how screwed up everything is. That the patina of economic “growth” we’ve had the past four years is the result of print and borrow financial policies which are not sustainable. Eventually we either print ourselves in to hyper-inflation or borrow ourselves in to bankruptcy. Democrats not only don’t have a plan to deal with these issues, they don’t even see them as a problem. They seriously believe that if we borrow and print and hire a few more teachers and re-pave a few more already paved roads then economic prosperity will eventually result. We know this is a crock – but as there has been some “growth” and some “hiring” and things aren’t officially as bad as they were in 2009, there was no perception among low-information voters (ie, Democrats and those who swing between Democrats and Republicans) that there is a crisis. Additionally, our rapidly eroding military might and collapsing position around the world bores most Americans – if anything, the general response to Benghazi would be, “let’s just get out of there” (which is, of course, my view – but not out of ignorance).
Third, we failed to craft an effective message. After all, there was genuine peace and prosperity in 2000 and yet then-Governor Bush managed to craft an effective message. We needed a passionate vision put forth with complete sincerity. Bush managed that. Reagan managed that. Romney didn’t. Romney’s thing – and no blame to him – is of the effective manager…but a political leader must first and foremost speak to the imagination of the people. He must be able to take the dazzling light of current events and re-cast them in a manner which makes people want to follow him.
Finally, I don’t think we really ran a good campaign. To be sure, it seemed like a good campaign – I was personally door-knocked twice and got plenty of calls and campaign literature. But I don’t care how much anyone wishes to praise the Romney GOTV, it failed. It failed miserably. It failed like the French army failed in 1940. It might as well not have even been there. We should have taken the hundreds of millions spent on it and blown it on a weekend in Vegas. It got less voters to the polls than McCain’s anemic GOTV of 2008. To be sure, Obama’s even more expensive GOTV also failed – it delivered 6.5 million fewer votes for Obama than it did in 2008. A wit pointed out today that we spent north of $2 billion to flip two States. We really need to re-think how we do this in the future.
I’m confident of the future. I know that the ideals of faith, family and country are the ideals which have the strongest appeal. Even if you could prove it to me mathematically that the liberal ideals of abortion and welfare were predominant I’d still hold that, eventually, faith, family and country will prevail. Because liberalism fails. It is failing in Europe and it will fail here, too. If not today, then tomorrow; eventually for certain. But we do need to change things.
We need to jettison the old fashioned GOP – the GOP, I’m sorry to say, of Mitt Romney. Fine and honorable man he is and he would have made a great President, but he’s not what we need. We need someone closer to the people. We need a candidate who lives in the America of the middle class – better, someone who started in the lower class. We need someone who can credibly condemn both the Department of Education and Goldman Sachs. Look no more to the Romneys of the world – look to the Rubios, the Ryans and the Jindals. There is our future. Our rule of thumb – if you’re worth more than $5 million, you can’t be the Republican nominee.
We also need to stop playing the game the way the Democrats and professional political consultants want us to. We can win everywhere. We don’t win everywhere because we have resigned a huge part of the board to the left – for goodness sakes, we didn’t even start trying in Pennsylvania until the last 10 days! Why weren’t we there in force in August? Why don’t we campaign hard in San Diego and Orange counties in California? Ok, so New York City is a tough nut to crack…but the rest of the State went for us…are the middle and lower classes of Brooklyn and Staten Island that much different from the middle and lower classes who vote for us in the rest of the State?
The point I’m making is that if we really believe that our views are correct then we should be unafraid to present them everywhere and to everyone. If we have a candidate who is of the people and understand them; if we have a message of faith, family and country; and if we then go and fight it out everywhere then we must eventually win it all. Because our beliefs are the correct beliefs. Because their beliefs are wrong and lead to disaster – and if it disaster time in liberal-world and we’re fighting everywhere then everywhere will go for us. It doesn’t matter if we “waste” some effort in a forlorn hope – we’ll have planted the seeds of future victory. We got 57 million votes yesterday. We got 58 million four years ago. We got 62 million 8 years ago. We can get more than we got yesterday – that is an indisputable fact. What I’m saying is that we can get more than we’ve ever got – more than even Obama managed in 2008. If we try. No, not all in a day – but over a period of years and with persistence and faith in our ideals, we can do it.
It is time for a clean break with the past and a new populist/libertarian revolutionary movement. We can do it. We can win it all. All we need to is try.
Blogs For Victory 
the problem is we cant speak the truth as conservatives….even on this site with out being moderated. 😦
ESPECIALLY against the radical homosexual agenda….WHY is that?
does B4V have a closet?
Neocon,
It isn’t what you talk about it but how you talk about it which causes problems from time to time. A gentle answer turneth away wrath, my brother.
We have a battle ongoing for the soul of our beloved United States of America and we need all allies – and, just to make a point, some of our allies are, indeed, gay. Go over to Gay Patriot and see.
We need a coalition of everyone who subscribes to the ideals embodied best in our Declaration of Independence – to be sure, I’m a Catholic. I cannot and will not ever support something like gay marriage…but I will ally myself with someone who does if he also will fight with me to protect religious liberty. We will fight alongside where we can and part where we must – but if both of us working together can defeat a Barack Obama, then we’re both better off.
Mark
“A gentle answer turneth away wrath, my brother”.
you are correct however sometimes the truth is like a glass of cold water to wake one up.
compromise is what got us in the peril we are now in.
If I make a statement that does not violate the blog rules and it is entirely MY opinion and not a direct insult to someone why is it moderated?
I’ll tell you there is ONE moderator who does not particularly care for me. So be it, but then lets not pretend to be a discussion site if the mere mention of the radical homosexual agenda gets your entire post deleted then there can be no real discussion between the ideologies of the left and the right.
Go over to Gay Patriot and see.
you CAN be both gay, and a patriot,
But light and darkness can not co-exist. Gods bible…yes the Catholic one calls sodomy an abomination, and a sin that will preclude you from entering heaven. UNLESS you are repentant, we are commanded not to be unevenly yolked with sinners……not with sinful boasters and proponents of their sin just for political expedience.
Love ya brother but cant agree with you for votes.
Neocon,
To me, the gay rights group are a mere symptom of a larger problem – that of our declining morality, overall. In the final analysis, I’ve a bigger fish to fry – and mostly among my fellow heterosexuals. Not much use for us to defend marriage when we still allow no-fault divorce.
Mark
seems God thought different……do da name Sodom and Gomorrah ring a familiar sound?
swiftysasan
as usual you get it wrong, stick with the KKKoran
ahh the ole bigotry and hate meme ROTFLMAO…………stick with the donks they and you OWN the terms.
Im not worried about getting votes,
Im for getting America, purity, God, and the constitution back, preach that and the votes will follow.
When we lie in the mud with pigs we come up dirty and smell like them.
Trying to make a big tent opens the tent to all the filth and dirt from outside.
Build a tent like America was built on, the ROCK and the tent will be overfilled.
Ah, but my friend – are you Catholic? If you aren’t then I have a hundred things in your beliefs I can pick apart and demonstrate that you are not, in my view, entirely on the side of the angels. But, withall, you are mostly on my side…
Mark
Ah, but my friend – are you Catholic?
Baptized, confirmed, married……..
Well good – and check out Church Militant TV. But, lets face it, we can find lots of things wrong with our Protestant brothers and sisters…and yet we work with them.
Mark
But, lets face it, we can find lots of things wrong with our Protestant brothers and sisters…and yet we work with them.
we do work with them however the Bible does not condemn being protestant a sin and command us to have nothing to do with them…..
why do people identify themselves by their sexual preferences if not an agenda?
If they were merely republicans who would know? and who would care.?
Once someone reveals them selves to a cop to be a wanted felon the cop has no recourse but to arrest them.
The same with a Christian and an unrepentant sinner.
Should we align our selves with swingers who want to end all
marriage because they vote GOP? and welcome them into our homes with open arms?
Neocon,
It is a pluralist republic – no, I wouldn’t welcome a swinger with open arms, but I do have gay friends and they come to my house. If my Lord could dine with tax collectors and sinners, then so can I.
Mark
I too have gay acquaintances and customers,
however I can not align my self politically with them because we are diametrically opposed both morally and spiritually with their core beliefs.
Having three sons and two Grandsons I am acutely aware of their pathologies and how can I be for them on one point and totally against them on another. The teachings in our public schools is horrifying…how can I be at a political rally arm in arm one night with someone and at a PTA meeting fighting with them hammer n tong the next opposing something they are proposing.
Sorry Brother it does not compute.
Neocon,
I see what you’re saying – but if I can work out an alliance where the laws don’t pester a gay man for being gay or me for being Catholic, then I’m at a plus…and doubly so because being an unpestered Catholic I’m free to pray for the conversion of my gay friend.
If you are not worried about getting votes, then you had better get used to a rapidly declining America.
While I am quite firm in my own values, which probably are very similar to yours, I don’t see any upside in tying them into a political philosophy. I consider ideology—in our case, the commitment to govern according to the Constitution—as the foundation and framework of our house, and only when that is solid and sturdy can we factor in personal, religious or social values.
It might be tempting to want to own the party, to restrict it only to people like you, but that would mean having a party that can’t get anything done. You might decide that in YOUR party, there can be no homosexuals, but the next guy might feel the same way about Catholics or people with tattoos. There are many very fine homosexual people who might find your attitude to be “filth”.
I am not aware of any litmus tests for belonging to or in the new United States, so I don’t know what ROCK it was built upon. I always thought it was built upon the principles outlined in the Constitution, and that it left moral judgments up to God.
I say, have a political party that is only that—nothing more, nothing less. Have a party that is only about the best way to govern the nation. With only that message, it will be so strong it will be able to bring the nation back to its Constitutional roots, because most of the people in this country do believe in the Constitution, but have been lured by “issues” into voting without consideration for the political system hidden behind those issues.
Get the nation back on course, get it functioning the way it is supposed to function, and then sort our within the framework of the nation the various issues, which of course would—in a Constitutional nation—-be settled by individual states, and can be argued there.
Well, I do not believe that sexual attraction to members of the same sex has anything at all to do with ideas on the Constitution, how the nation should be governed, national security, etc.
Nearly every gay person I have known has been different only in the one respect—-the lack of attraction to members of the opposite sex.
The hardcore rabidly radical Leftist gay people who used to post here are not vicious conservative-hating Lefties because they are gay. They would be that way even if they were straight. Their sexual orientation does not make them so nasty or distasteful.
With only that message, it will be so strong it will be able to bring the nation back to its Constitutional roots, because most of the people in this country do believe in the Constitution, but have been lured by “issues” into voting without consideration for the political system hidden behind those issues.
Amazona, that’s why the Progressive movement began subverting the Constitution a century ago. They couldn’t run on their “agenda”, so, through tax exempt foundations, schools and the courts, they began a long, slow, incremental campaign of getting the federal government involved in things that the Constitution prohibited, on “issues” that would catch peoples’ attention — shiny objects, I believe you’ve called them. While the people are distracted by the “shiny objects”, the Progressives just keep whittling away at the very fabric of our country. Today you have an ever-growing welfare class where a single mother with 2 kids, making minimum wage has more disposable income than a married couple with 2 kids making $60,000 a year. That’s not a safety net — that’s a hammock. If you haven’t watched the long documentary that Neo has posted several times in the last few threads, you should. It lays it out very succinctly.
Please do not take my positions as being against individual homosexuals, you entirely miss the point. (my bad)
I do now and always have stood fast against the homosexual AGENDA, There is NO, NONE, ZIP, ZERO, ZILCH reason for ANYONE to publicly identify their bedroom practice PERIOD!! except for an agenda.
GAY Republicans? = Flashing red lights of an agenda.….. just be a damn Republican and STFU already.
would you embrace a communist republican group? a nazi republican group? an anarchist republican group?
my point is we should not be recruiting GROUPS whom we do not agree with because in the days of the constitution sodomy was illegal in every town and state……INDIVIDUALS? absolutely!
I do NOT want to see homosexuals arrested for their bedroom preference. DADT works just fine for me.
lets keep it that way.
well of course our resident troll comes in with the usual hatred and bigotry and his projection of such upon others.
Tell me sasan, how many sons , grand sons or daughters, granddaughters do you have?
I will be waiting for your answer….
swiftysason
again you jump to a conclusion…..the WRONG conclusion.
because I have three sons and three (one deceased) Grandsons I am acutely aware of the homosexual agenda pushing on every level in our schools, scouts, clubs and Churches, etc.
I for one am dead against this agenda, that is why I can not align my self with organizations who push this.
There is a Hugh battle being raised in the courts, schools (govt) marriage (govt) scouts etc to legalize and normalize this agenda.
You cant separate those who are fighting us in the courts, in the schools , in congress, and say Im only interested in constitutional government.
Most here that oppose me on this issue have no dog in the hunt….I do.
do da name jerry sandusky ring a ling a bell?
I guess I just define snobbery as judgment of people based on how much money they have, and it runs both ways, and is offensive no matter which way it goes.
Like racism, which is defining people by their skin color, it is wrong even when the judgment is favorable.
Character is character, and I simply cannot get behind a belief that for some reason a person who was not born into wealth is a better person than one who was.
And in the USA of today it is a sad truth that a person from wealth, who has not been subjected to our public school system, is going to be the one with the best education and the least indoctrination into radical ideology.
Amazona,
Agreed – a rich man can be a fine person and Romney is certainly that. But in our democratic republic where most people aren’t rich like that it can be difficult for them to connect with non-rich people.
Ama
And in the USA of today it is a sad truth that a person from wealth, who has not been subjected to our public school system, is going to be the one with the best education and the least indoctrination into radical ideology.
Or some old F@#T like me who was out of school before the late 60’s and 70’s when the crazies and commies came in……. LOL
A ground game that educates the general population on the ideology and remedies of the candidate would be a great start. I half-caught a segment on CBS evening propaganda broadcast but what caught my ear is that by the final day–the Obamabots had created “relationships” with potential voters and it was their 4th or 5th time knocking on every door. It isn’t just the method but getting people to understand the difference between big, or bigger government (Statist) and a Constitutional one. Just my $0.02 cents before regulation takes that as well.
As I read in a cartoon earlier today: “Those wo don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”
GMB, way off topic here but as I have aged my German has gotten a lot worse. What I am doing is creating another email address suffix like I have my standard account plus several others like xxxx.stocks (for prospectus and other information), xxxxx.personal, and xxxx.professional among others. I need one for one-time usage aka. garbage or trash (throw away stuff) but I am having a hard time getting the suffix correct–which would be more fitting (or recommend your own): Papierkorb, Müll?
db
ask GMB
DB – I got door knocked a bunch, and called…the Romney GOTV was out there, in force…but it was a complete fizzle in final results.
Well, here in NC (once a swing state) I got a couple of generic poll calls, only one for Romney GOTV and no knocks on the door. Wonder if it could be my front yard? 😉 Nevertheless, Obama outranked Romney some 140 sites v. 43 in one state. Ohio I believe.
BTW, heard Ohio & Florida are in automatic recounts. Wonder how that will affect the final outcome?
DB,
If they both go to Romney, he still loses – 285 to 253.
db
two of my sons were amazed when voting…a couple of busloads of derelict looking blacks were escorted in. My son commented you could tell they had no clue what to do, and had never voted before…… the FIX was in big time.
I do note that the Gary Johnson Libertarian vote seems to have cost Romney Ohio…and probably cost him Florida and Colorado, as well. Good job, third party voters!
db
I read an interesting article about this very topic today. I don’t know where I read it or I’d tell you, it was such a good article. Lord knows how much I’ve read since the election results, but I don’t know where this article was.
It talked about how, in the 2008 election, Mr. Obama’s team had trouble with all the information they had collected and spent 18 months writing a whole big database program. This election, they used that database to cherry-pick exactly what doors to knock on. They had a whole breakdown of every voter and could tell whose doors to knock on and whose door was a waste of their time, based on age, past voting record, income, location, etc.
I believe we need to get smarter in combating our foes. They may have figured this database thing out first but our side needs to make an even better database, like this Google that works so well.
I wish I could find that article so you all could read it. It is like a road map of what the Conservative Movement should do before the next election year.
.
The most common word for used by my people is “Abfälle” literally means waste or trash.
Abfälle in, Abfälle raus. Nicht wahr? 🙂
Papierkorp is rather specific, Müll? Honestly, I can not remember the last time I have heard this word used. Must be a cultural thing.
You have to remember though. I speak a dialect that has been separated from the mother tongue for for 300 years now. Usages and meanings can mutate a lot in that amount of time.
There is not absolutely correct or wrong answer here.
Elecktronisches Müll or EM for short. Elektronissches Abfälle or EA for short. I think would be more appropriate for this kind of usage.
I think any German speaker would understand no matter what you choose.
Es ist, in alle, gut!
“We high-information voters”
If you’re such a “high-information voter,” how did you end up so egregiously wrong yesterday?
Rush
it is hard to beat Santa Clause (especially when he is using OPM) and giving stuff to dumbed down drones whose education skills ore the 5th grade level.
ttssyf
what was wrong yesterday was the re-election of the most inept,POS, commie muslim ever….AmeriKa how far you have fallen.
You should give Shelly Dankert a call, neocon, she sounds like your kind of gal…
Okanuck
stupidity is normally moderated……I could give you language 10X worse than than from several lefty “reverends” so put that in your pot pipe and smoke it fool.
do your own home work zerOkanucK
there are thousands out there……
Ha! Typical neocon response when you can’t provide evidence to back up nonsensical statements. Come on, I bet if you put those few grey cells you have left to work you could remember at least one lefty “reverends” site or video which contained language 10X worse than the eloquent Ms. Dankert.
zipOkanuck
it is very provable, again if you are to stupid to do your own research TS for you.
That is answered in my post – I thought more people would vote. I expected Romney to take 63 million votes and Obama to get 58 million. Its really just as simple as that.
Which drills down to the point: Much of what you think of as information is, plain and simple, wrong.
“Unskewed Polls” is just one simple example of many: UP decides they don’t like what the polls say, so they fiddle with the numbers in order to give a more pleasing result, claim that this result is the real truth, have that result get adopted as “truth” within the conservative bubble, and at no point along the way does any conservative stop sand say, “You know, this is ridiculous.” No, it becomes unquestioned “truth,” right up to the moment when it all falls apart right in front of you.
This is why it’s important for you to get out of the bubble. Until you do, you’ll forever be left flabbergasted when actual reality fails to conform to your narrative.
Mark,
While there are several areas that you and I agree, there are a few that have and will sink your party.
Amnesty for illegals
I believe that the vast majority of those people who came here illegally did so for a better life that they are willing to work for rather than to rip us off. Providing a path to citizenship would be the humane thing to do. Sadly, many members of your party believe that all of these people are criminals regardless of how they have acted since they have been here and should be deported. Romney’s remarks about wanting illegals to self deport is one of the reasons he lost 72% of the Hispanic vote.
Abortion
I have never met someone who believes in abortion on demand, let that seems to be a continuous talking point from the right. What is more problematic is the position taken by a couple of Republicans running for the Senate, talking about “legitimate rape” or that “life is that gift from God that I think even if life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The implication is that if a women is raped, it’s either her fault, or too bad so sad have the baby anyway. Both men lost after their statements because the positions they are advocating for are too extreme. Most people find the idea that there is such a thing as “legitimate rape” morally rehensible. Forcing an eleven year old incest victim to have a baby because “God intended it to happen” is even worse.
Marriage equality
The tide has turned on this issue and if you have been around young people like I have over the last few years you would know that they don’t see homosexuality the way you do. They are far more accepting.
The main reason that your numbers are going down is because because your numbers really are going down. Those that align themselves with your party the most are dying at a faster rate than you are able to recruit new members for your party. Unless you are willing to compromise on some of your positions, your party is only going to get smaller and smaller.
zeroctaspuke
a few that have and will sink your party.
nope, large citys living on the plantation and OPM voting for more freebies and one’s skin color has sunk America.
but soon enough the house of cards will come down.
we will see who the REAL “winners” and losers are then.
Im thinking of your glorious side to be the super dome after Katrina…enjoy!
The REAL story
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://philhardwickblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/2008_election_map-counties.jpg&imgrefurl=http://philhardwickblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/2008-presidential-election-results-county-by-county-map/&h=700&w=973&sz=156&tbnid=zJ1zEzNfeuP3MM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=122&zoom=1&usg=__w21ksTkxvGNmYZpz-XT_mUPjSfY=&docid=Sib7UqJ0yr3YvM&sa=X&ei=JfibULiILo2c9QS8qoGwDA&ved=0CD0Q9QEwAg&dur=798
0-bama rama……
Vegas Employer: Obama Won, So I Fired 22 Employees…
BOEING Announces Big Layoffs In Cutback to Below 2010 Levels…
VA store closes for day to ‘mourn the loss of America’…
‘The Case of the Missing White Voters’…
BOEHNER: ‘THIS IS YOUR MOMENT’…
HARRY REID MOVES TO LIMIT OPPOSITION IN SENATE…
Claims mandate to raise taxes…
On debt limit: ‘We’ll raise it’…
Author of Anti-Muslim Film Sentenced to Year in Prison…
Top Obama officials to testify at House Benghazi hearing…
Documents available to senators only when they are out of town…
And when that happens, they are no longer “the base”. They are a fringe group. The irony in all of this, is that the problem isn’t the media, or sunspots or polar bears. It’s the radicalism and the extreme ideas of the right who wanted to force a conformity to a romanticized idea of an America that never existed. Not unless Black and white TV shows from the 50’s count as “reality”. Romney wasn’t just beat, he was shamed. As was the rest of the party. The problem is the disease of the right and until that is addressed, all of the reflexive blaming of everyone else…except the sickness, only makes the right look more foolish. All of the millions of dollars spent by the Koch Bros and Sheldon Adelson were for naught. How’d you like to be Karl “I have THE math” Rove?? The country has changed and just like in evolution, adapt or die.
And if you wait long enough, even those who refuse to openly admit their political philosophy will blurt it out in one way or another—-
—-such as admitting that they view allegiance to our Constitution as “….the disease of the Right…”
Casper,
Nonsense – the reason we got fewer votes is because we convinced fewer voters. Believe it or not, a gigantic number of young people voted for Romney on Tuesday – Obama got more, of course, but we got quite a lot. We don’t alienate young people – we fail to educate them properly on what is at stake. You can go on being in the party of pander – I believe in a democratic party which speaks to peoples reason. We can double our youth vote, if we make clear precisely why a youth with any sense at all should vote GOP as if his life depended upon it. Youth may be more pro-gay marriage than elders are, but they are also far more pro-life than old hippies – and getting more pro-life all the time and while keeping traditional marriage is important it isn’t even remotely as important as the Culture of Life triumphing…we do that then we’ve so changed this nation that gay marriage will wither away on its own.
And that leads me in to your second point – we didn’t bring abortion up. Your side did – playing gotcha games with it in order to scare people. You didn’t reason with them – you frightened. Your side lied through its collective teeth about it. It worked for you, this time – congratulations, if that is the sort of nauseating party you want to be part of. Lesson learned – each GOPer will now have a carefully prepared answer – hopefully along the lines of ,”I fail to see how it is merciful to kill a child because her father is a rapist”.
Going on from that, this is why the future belongs to us – you’re not getting married, you’re using birth control and you’re aborting yourselves. You are doomed, doomed, DOOMED to destruction. We’ve got it all – our side will win completely. Not by aping the most disgusting aspects of the Democrat party, but by proclaiming truth fearlessly.
“We don’t alienate young people – we fail to educate them properly on what is at stake.”
It’s exactly what you call “educating them properly” that alienates them. They simply aren’t interested in the stories–many of them false–that you’re peddling.
“Your side lied through its collective teeth about it.”
When Akin, Mourdock, etc. were making their disturbing, campaign-killing comments, that was Democrats lying?
the,
Nice try – its your side which is making them debt-slaves to government for a next to worthless college “education”. That they’ve been suckered is beyond doubt – we’ll un-sucker them.
The lie your side spread was that Akin and Murdouck – who did speak in a boneheaded manner – were ok with rape. Lies, lies and more lies – that is really all you had. It worked. Congratulations. Wallow in your filth and be happy – we’ll stick to truth and eventually win it all.
If you actually believe that pep talk you just gave yourself, then I hope you’re prepared to spend a long time in the political wilderness. The more you try to “educate” young people, the more you drive them away. If you need to comfort yourself by saying that young people have been “suckered,” then that dynamic won’t be changing anytime soon.
Akin and Mourdock spoke for themselves. Are repulsed by what they said, or by the consequences of what they said?
Mark, the……. is another of the RRL trolls who infest this blog who simply cannot let go of the hate.
I have been saying for years now that they are not motivated by conviction of the best way to govern the nation, but just by their own pathologies, which are now on open display with no effort to disguise them as political commentary.
Now they have won the election and gotten what they wanted. If their goal was political victory, they would be happy, but they are just as sour, just as surly, just as dominated by rage and hatred, as they always have been.
They are not going to be able to let go of the hatred, of the total dark negativity that defines them, because they would be lost without it.
They know Akin was talking about legitimate CLAIMS of rape, but he accidentally handed them a simple misstatment and true to form they grabbed it and ran with it, knowingly and purposely pretending that he meant something else entirely. It’s what they do.
Rather than employ the tolerance they pay lip service to, they exhibited the most gross and egregious intolerance of a Mourdock opinion they thought they could use to generate hate and fear. It’s what they do.
And now they are so stuck in their patterns of hate and attack and spite and malice they don’t even want to move away from them. They love them. They get gratification from them. It’s what they do, and what they are.
And their addiction to the attacks and insults even after they have won has stripped away even the flimsy pretense of political discussion under which they used to operate, and shown them up for the hate-driven, fight-seeking, misfits they are.
Amazona,
I know – generally pointless talking to them. But, I want to vent a bit, too. For the most part, our best course of action is to ignore them.
Mark,
“We can double our youth vote, if we make clear precisely why a youth with any sense at all should vote GOP as if his life depended upon it.”
Good luck with that. They aren’t going to listen to you, and why should they? You can’t relate to them.
“And that leads me in to your second point – we didn’t bring abortion up. Your side did – playing gotcha games with it in order to scare people. You didn’t reason with them – you frightened. Your side lied through its collective teeth about it.”
Does that mean you wouldn’t force an 11 year-old rape to carry an embryo to term? That’s not a gotcha. That’s a question.
“Going on from that, this is why the future belongs to us – you’re not getting married, you’re using birth control and you’re aborting yourselves”
Considering that most of the groups supporting Obama have a higher birth rate than those that supported Romney, I think you have it backwards.
“Good luck with that. They aren’t going to listen to you, and why should they? You can’t relate to them.”
Oh, come on——do you really think that the only way to “relate to” young people is to wear funny hats and do lip dubbing?
It is very important to let young people know that teachers they may trust have been lying to them—–for example, that if you believe in the Constitution as it is written you do NOT believe we should return to slavery, or deprive women of the right to vote,
And you are trying to change the subject about abortion. Mark was completely right when he said it was the Left who dragged this campaign down from debate on how best to govern the nation and solve its problems to things like abortion and birth control. It was the Left that treated women as mindless little things with nary a thought in their tiny brains that went above their belt buckles. The sad thing is that the vote analysis indicates that this cynical and demeaning view of young women was actually correct—–another victory for teachers like you, who have not even tried to teach the skill of analytical thinking but have focused on indoctrination of radical Leftist dogma, such as your oft-stated view of our Constitution.
It is the Left which has so successfully shifted the very idea of political debate away from the arena of ideology, where they know they cannot win, into the chaos of “issues” where it is so easy to play upon emotions, spread lies, generate fear, and muddy the waters so that the lemmings never even realize that they are actually voting for a political system, being so brainwashed into thinking they are voting for a pet issue or against an invented Other.
Of course, the Right has foolishly gone along with this and been drawn into the “values” meme of national politics, thereby giving the Left exactly what it wanted all along, a means to divide people according to small and individual concerns which, Constitutionally speaking, are not the purview of the federal government anyway.
Not one single thing in the Dem campaign was related to any of the 17 enumerated duties of the federal government, but the noise their ginned-up “issues” generated drowned out every effort to focus the election on what it is, really, all about—–and that is which political system will be running the government.
As a teacher, you can’t explain this to your students, even if your allegiance to the Left would let you, because you don’t get it, yourself.
Again Ama, you are profoundly incorrect. The “disease” I mentioned is an analogy. An adherence to the Constitution is the least of the rights problems and is not the issue. What I am saying is, instead of confronting the problem the right is suffering from; rigidity, intolerance, demonization of “the other”, tribalism, no compromise, etc they are reflexively blaming everyone and everything else because the very idea of considering that maybe the right needs to reevaluate and become more flexible for the greater good is absolute poison because that would mean that your certainty is flawed. And weak. And as we know now, totally rejected. You are allot of things, but conservative is not one of them. You are a zealot and a radical.
8 Nov 2012 11:51 AM
Will The Right’s Fever Break? Ctd
When you have divided the world into two categories – freedom or tyranny – and there is no ground whatever between them, you are not only among the least intelligent commentators out there; you also have to be completely fanatical even in the face of popular repudiation.
I watched Fox last night. Every pore on Sean Hannity’s face quivered. He seemed close to tears at times. He blamed EdmundBurke1771Obama for a horribly negative campaign. He basically told the majority of Americans who voted for a president Hannity actually seems to believe is the worst in modern times that they will now deserve their enslaved state.
The performance artist, Ann Coulter, just Etch-A-Sketched immediately to 2014. She cannot process the past, and yet she preposterously calls herself a conservative. Her gig is attacking – in the crudest, snarkiest, most cynical fashion – anything she can decide to call “liberal”. To ask her to reflect retroactively on a massive realigning loss for her kind of slash-and-burn conservatism was to ask her to do something she has no capacity to do.
O’Reilly was fascinating and immediately explained the result as a function of there being too many black and Latino and young voters who voted for “free stuff.” At no point last night did anyone on Fox even mention the four democratic victories for marriage equality across the country. When they referred to the Colorado marijuana legalization, they cut to a teenager bragging that he was going to get stoned tonight. William F Buckley was in favor of legalization. These performers had no argument as such; they just had contempt.
Yes, I watched for Schadenfreude purposes. These charlatans and money-grubbers have turned the broad tradition of Anglo-American conservatism into Southern Fried Fanaticism – and I wanted to see them crackle in their batter. They have replaced empirical doubt with unerring faith in an ideology that had its moment over thirty years ago and is barely relevant to the world we now live in. That faith has been cynically fused with fundamentalist religion to make it virtually impossible for the GOP to accept that women are the majority of voters in this country, that gay couples are equal to straight ones, that 11 million illegal immigrants simply cannot be expected to “self-deport” en masse by a regime of terrifying policing, that war is a last and not a first resort, that the debt we have is primarily a function of two things: George W. Bush’s presidency and the economic collapse his term ended with.
This kind of total fanaticism about an ideology that bears no resemblance to Burkean conservatism is often called religious. But the truly religious person is not focused on the Electoral College math, but on living her own life the right way in accordance with the God she worships. She is not obsessed with policing society to keep the “other” at bay – the homosexual, the African-American, the Latino immigrant, the single mother, the young straight dude who is truly baffled by the anachronisms of homophobia and the belief that alcohol is less harmful than marijuana.She knows that living a good life is hard enough without controlling the lives and fates and dignity of others.
But the person who fuses Manichean political warfare with theological certitude cannot, will not, abandon that stance for pragmatic purposes – because there is no greater evil than pragmatism for the fanatic. A political party can adapt and change; a fundamentalist religious party loses its entire authority if it admits error, because its message is based on religious texts that are held to be inerrant. The biggest obstacle in front of today’s GOP threfore remains theo-political fundamentalism, and how it can be overcome.
Listen to its tone, hear its anger, and absorb its utter irrelevance to anything but fantasy and delusion and mania:
We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our child to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution.
We are the alternative. We will resist. We’re not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We’re not good losers, you better believe we’re sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we’re called ‘purists.’ Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism. We’re purists now. And we have to hear this crap from conservatives, or pseudo-conservatives, Republicans.
You know what, Mr Levin? The “crap” coming your way has only just begun.
You know what, Mr Levin? The “crap” coming your way has only just begun.
we know that and WE are MORE than ready….capice?
And what are you going to do? Start an armed revolution? Get over it. Romney was shamed, the Tea Party got it’s well deserved comeuppance and the world has changed. The extremist right has lost it’s twilight battle with reality and instead of reacting with mature resignation, you imply violence. Typical. And predictable. And if the Republicans continue to engage in this temper tantrum, they will be reduced to an insignificant regional group of regressive’s demanding that buggy whips make a come back.
Uh, mitche, aside from your dependence on the Rogue Apostrophe, I suggest that you try to find a reference less derivative. Yes, you laughed till you peed down your leg at your hero’s surly snarl about bayonets, and are trying to develop the theme by dragging in buggy whips, but it really all comes down to the fact that you are here not to argue or discuss politics—–which is, after all, the structure of how best to govern the country—but just to try to pick a fight.
it seems to be who you are and what you do.
It’s funny, but I am finding conservatives, whose candidate lost the election, more cheerful and upbeat than you Lefties who not only won but who find the need to frame the victory in the most insulting terms possible. What IS it with you people?
I’d say that of almost 120 million voters a loss of 1.5 million is hardly an impeachment on the GOP.
It simply means more of the 47% deadbeats than the 53% payers showed up motivated by OPM.
swiftly, see response to mitche, below. The “you” is a plural you, addressed to all of the sour and surly Lefties who simply cannot step away from the hostility that defines you.
mitche, you won. We lost. Why are you still so enraged? Why are you still obsessed with constantly attacking your cartoonish fantasy of “the Right”? Why are anger and hostility so important to you that you just can’t let go?
We don’t go to Lefty sites to harangue and snarl and attack, but you guys spend a lot of time here doing those very things. It was creepy enough when there was a competition, but now there isn’t one, so why can’t you let it go? You claim that Romney was crushed, humiliated, shamed—what more do you want? We admitted that Silver was right, but that is not enough—you seem to have some insatiable need for something more.
You are convinced that the Left has won such a decisive and crushing victory that the Right is destroyed—-so why don’t you go celebrate your amazing victory and throw yourself into the satisfaction of being part of this Brave New World you fought so hard to establish?
You have defined the Right in a way that gives you great satisfaction, unrelated to reality as your definition is. You are convinced that this invention has been vanquished, beaten, trampled by the superiority of your own political system—-which I suggest you understand as poorly as you do ours, but that is another subject.
You won. We lost. Yet you are still addicted to the hate, the scorn, the cheap thrill of the attack.
And all you are really doing is proving my point, once and for all, irrevocably and without question—that for you, and people like you, none of your posting has anything to do with politics, and instead it is just an opportunity to justify a sick need for vicious personal attacks by pretending it is in the name of political speech. Because you won, we lost, and you are still attacking. You just can’t let it go. The hate is just too much a part of you, and you would be lost without it. It’s your identity. It’s not about how best to govern the country: It’s only about wallowing in a pathology defined by your hatred and your need to attack others.
I’m sorry. It’s just that I am so sick of listening to people accuse the President of not being an American citizen, of being a Muslim (and so what if he was) of having an economic model taken from Karl Marx and the absolute certitude that the right possesses without any doubt what so ever and when challenged with empirical evidence that refutes their contentions, the evidence is denied. Take WMD’s for example. Or global climate change. Or a different viewpoint on this blog. That’s why being educated is derided by so many on the right. That’s why for yrs I have been saying that the right isn’t conservative in the traditional, classical sense but rather they are authoritarians. Infuse those attitudes with religion and it has made for a highly noxious brew.
It’s time for the right to join the reality-based world.
Ohio really did go to the president Tuesday night as did Florida today. And Republicans have lost the popular vote in 5 out of the past six elections.
And he really did win.
And he really was born in Hawaii.
And he really is -legitimately- President of the United States.
Again.
And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make-up a fake unemployment rate last month.
And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence
That cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
And the polls were not skewed to over-sample Democrats.
And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election
To make conservatives feel bad.
He was doing math.
And climate change is real.
And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
And evolution is a thing.
And Benghazi was an attack on us.
It was not a scandal by us.
And no one is taking away anyone’s guns.
And taxes haven’t gone up.
And the deficit is dropping, actually.
And Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.
And the moon landing was real.
And FEMA isn’t building concentration camps.
And UN election observers aren’t taking over Texas.
And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry
And the financial services industry
Are not the same thing as communism.
If you cannot agree on basic facts, like the world is round and then get angry about it, you have a problem. Not only did the president win re-election, but no one democrat lost their seat in the senate. But by the measurement of some, over half of the country is lazy and stupid. I am neither and I resent the implication. And; well, not to be mean but sometimes vindication does feel good. But take heart, the country is not doomed. It’s just changed that’s all. That’s the nature of the universe. It is not static, it’s dynamic and now, finally, i hope congress puts our business ahead of thwarting the President at every move. An irony is, Obama really is conservative. He’s just not crazy.
Hard telling what is funnier—your sad desperate need to validate your personality disorder by going back to the moon landing, or your belief that Barack Obama is a political conservative, which of course means dedicated to governance according to the Constitution.
What your silly screed says is that you are addicted to hate and when you got called on it you scrambled to try to come up with a justification for it.
You won. We lost. Your obsession with ranting and raving here is displayed for all to see. You can’t get over it, because it is what you are.
wow….
I see mitchie has been chuggin’ the obAMATEUR kool-aid…..
…
“And the deficit is dropping, actually.”
For someone who has created the highest deficits this country has ever seen, there is really no place else for it to go but down (only slightly)! For you to say this about a pResident who has run up more debt than 42 presidents before him is truly amazing and troubling at the same time.
It is scary to think that someone believes most of this crap from the left. I especially like this one “And taxes haven’t gone up.”
Speaking of delusional!!!
now wipe the kool-aid from your chin, you are embarrassing yourself.
Pathetic.