Yet the Republicans gained governorships and retained control of the House.

We did prove that enthusiasm matters, the rich are unpopular, villification works better than achievement, and I believe we are in for more of Heinlein's "bad luck."

I'll be spending your money before the next election, so there is that to look forward to.

The numbers I'm seeing indicate McCain/Palin got more votes in 2008 than Romney/Ryan (or Obama/Biden) did in 2012.

Perhaps Romney tried to be too moderate and caused social conservative Republicans to stay home?

The Telegraph? I would take any political or policy advice from Brits with a grain of salt.

I communicate with Brits online a lot. The gulf between what they think they know about the USA, and what they actually DO know is usually quite large.

You will never see a greater example of arrogance or condescention (usually mixed with a large dose of ignorance) than a Brit discussing the USA.

> as the party once known for championing "family values"

Back in the Reagan era

> Obama declared that "selfless soldiers won't be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love".

And unmarried women started saying they could never vote for Romney because he will take away their birth control. Some of them believed the joke that he was going to ban tampons.

I understand that some people don't like us social conservatives (I consider myself libertarian politically and conservative in my family and community) - but I think we should try to actually understand the demographics.

The Hispanic vote is increasingly important - but open borders is not an option (obvious response is to nominate Rubio)

To get the young you have to get them to believe in market economics.

To get the working class white vote (which failed Romney in VA and OH) you need to find a way to create jobs for them.

A national media that highlighted the two dumbest Republicans in the country while ignoring Jackasses from the the Donkey side did not help much either.
"Independents" vote for whomever the television tells them to vote; they watch 22 minutes of programming each evening and know exactly what ABC/CNN/CBS wants them to know.

I think Storm is right. The newsmedia's downright worship of Obama is a huge part of the problem. I don't know how any candidate McCain, Romney or even HR Clinton could have withstood it.

Obama was the media's choice.

This is useful:

Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years.

My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romney’s wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well. The Romney campaign exacerbated this through the challenger’s failure to articulate a clear, positive agenda to address these voters’ fears, and self-inflicted wounds like the “47 percent” gaffe. Given a choice between two unpalatable options, these voters simply stayed home

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/08/the_case_of_the_missing_white_voters_116106-2.html

so basically people who are all far worse off under 'o' are the ones that voted for him in droves? Unemployment is much higher in those groups, and yet...

I think there are a number of reasons 'o' get's another chance, but mostly it seems that people voted emotion over logic. When I talk to people who like him, the talk is weird, almost fawning. Depending on the person is creeps me the hell out. When you run numbers they simply don't want to hear it.

All I can do is hope that it doesn't get worse, and that the hope all these other have is not misplaced too much.

For the GOP, they have got to stop with the invasive social conservatism from the govt. perspective. because that is TOTALLY tripping them up. There are things govt shouldn't be involved in, and they are mostly part of people's personal lives, IMHO.

We are prolly about to find out how resilient our system is, but ultimately 'o' can't blame anyone else now...

"Instead, Romney made a single argument: the recovery is weak, I am a competent businessman, and I can make it stronger."
But math is hard, dude! And besides, birth control!

"selfless soldiers won't be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love".
Since DADT was repealed a couple of years ago, I guess they won't. But it's odd, promising to do something you already did.

"women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care... that's what my husband stands for".
"Federal government" and "our own choices" aren't phrases that go well together, but never mind. And besides, birth control!

*Sigh*

"When I talk to people who like him, the talk is weird, almost fawning. Depending on the person is creeps me the hell out."

I get the same thing. It's almost as if Obama is a religious figure, not a political one.

Obama has the ability(for people of a certain political mindset) to bypass the thinking part of the brain and go directly to the emotions.

"For the GOP, they have got to stop with the invasive social conservatism from the govt. perspective. because that is TOTALLY tripping them up."

What social conservatism? Romney was the most moderate candidate on social issues that the GOP has ever ran. Soc-cons were pointedly excluded from the convention, and a few down-ballot candidates who spoke gracelessly on social issuses were disowned. The American public wants libertine. They want to party like it's 1999, and have someone else pay for it. Growing up is for squares.

So let's review:

* Government dependents voted for mo' money.

* Young people voted for cool.

* Hispanics voted for open borders.

* Single women voted for government-as-surrogate-husband.

* Blacks voted black.

* Jews voted for suicide.

None of these positions is in the slightest way reconcilable with GOP core principles. There is nothing that conservatives can do, except sell out.

(By the way, this all puts the lie to the statement that there isn't any difference between the two parties. The American voters very clearly said otherwise.)

Bad luck indeed.

Talking about "cult of personality":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/critics-notebook-obama-photo-is-a-snapshot-of-a-modern-equal-marriage/2012/11/07/8067180e-2921-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_story.html

So Reynolds has the post-mortem. Guess what? Those evil soc-cons -- the people who go away and sulk if they don't get every one of their evil demands fulfulled -- turned out in droves for Romney. It was the so-called moderates -- the people that the Republicans keep being told that they have to try harder, harder, harder to attract -- the very people whom Romney's selection were supposed to reach -- that turned their backs and voted for the distinctly non-moderate Obama.

Let's face it, moderates don't exist. They are merely leftists in disguise, an exercise in posing, holier than the holier-than-thou. There's the old group of people that still believe in American values; they are persecuted and dying off and will no longer be a factor in American politics. Then there's the people who want free stuff, plus the ability to boss others around. That's it.

The Telegraph? I would take any political or policy advice from Brits with a grain of salt.

Anne Appelbaum is American.

Obama makes trendy lefties feel good about themselves, and face it--feelings are what matter now, not results, not actions, not money in the bank at the end of the month.

My aunt, an otherwise intelligent lady, had this to say:

"Romney lies through his teeth, and all his policies are dead wrong. Those are the two things I hate most about him. I am sick to death of that condescending smile he flashes to the cameras and his audiences. He is a total fake. There is no one more authentic, real and sincere than Obama. Obama radiates integrity, and Romney has none at all."

I can't believe the woman who introduced me to Ayn Rand has drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.

"Obama makes trendy lefties feel good about themselves" -- and that's the filthy, disgusting, abhorrent opposite of Romney making dorkwad righties feel bad about themselves?

"What social conservatism?" CousinD

I didn't mean Romney... but here is the problem. Since he is not a very charismatic guy, he has the GOP halo around him. Because those idiots Akin and what's his name made outrageous claims about rape, for MANY people, that means that the whole GOP believes that. Doesn't matter how much distance is put. Coulter had an interesting take on that. How two guys that don't speak for anyone really, poisoned the well. You enemies will seek anything to bring you down.

The downshot of all that is that charismatic guys are more likely to become president, and I hate that part. Incumbents are hard to beat UNLESS you are more charismatic, like Regan and Clinton both beat incumbents, but Mondale and Kerry couldn't.

Very hard to beat an incumbent, EVEN if it's bad.

Very few people have talked anti-mormon bigotry, but I think that played a part too. I know moderates that I hectored over their odd choice in a guy that had PROVEN he couldn't do the job, and eventually the gave it up... 'but he's a mormon' I was incredulous. "WTF does that have to do with ANYTHING!?!"

That's why I think this was all emotion. They wanted to see 'o' succeed, as if he needs help being prez, and they are so cynical, they can't believe the Romney is exactly who he says he is.

"Because those idiots Akin and what's his name made outrageous claims about rape, for MANY people, that means that the whole GOP believes that. "

Maybe, but they also believed that Romney wanted to ban birth control, and absolutely no one of any status at all in the GOP said that -- it was a whole-cloth lie that the media hung on Romney, and now it's widely believed to be true of all Republicans. Romney can protest that he's never said that, never even thought that. But the way it's constructed, it's non-falsifiable, and the only people who might be in a position to correct the record are the people who made it up in the first place.

Even if the GOP had absolutely perfect message control and could prevent anyone from ever speaking out of turn, the media can just make stuff up and it sticks with the public. There's just no way of beating that. The Democrats and the public want a scapegoat class, and they've got one.

How to win the election:

(1) In a time when so many struggle to eat, smugly make a $10,000 bet with your debate opponent on live TV.

(2) In a time when so many struggle to have a job, crow about your business success -- when your business was tackling weak companies and stripping them of jobs and assets.

(3) Tell a room full of wealthy patrons that half the country are bums.

(4) Get caught lying about Jeep moving jobs to China and get publicly ass-reamed by captains of industry for doing it.

(5) Run on a hard-right platform in the primary and then think that no one will remember your positions when you flip-flop to the center after the convention.

(6) Ignore the fact that minorities and women and young people think you're wealthy in a country of have-nots, anti-choice, out of touch, arrogant, and lying to them (see steps 1-5, above).

How could this plan fail? I'm at a loss to explain it.

And the baby-from-a-rape is god's will-type candidates ...

I'm astonished that a candidate for national political office didn't have a canned, anodyne answer for that question but ...

... one of the exceptional things about the US is the elimination of inherited guilt.

Which means the progeny of a rape is no less worthy of life than all the others.

(Amazing the number of collectivists who missed the obvious moral point under the God talk.)

The real problem here is that, despite easily available, cheap, and very effective birth control, about a third of all conceptions end in killings of convenience.

Kind of ugly when put that way, but still true.

Very hard to beat an incumbent, EVEN if it's bad
It was there for the taking. He ran a very, very, very weak campaign:
How to win the election:
(1) In a time when so many struggle to eat, smugly make a $10,000 bet...

Imagine if a party's nominating convention featured a prominent speaker who was widely known to be multiple repeat sexual harraser. Now imagine that instead the convention featured a speaker who has advocated for sexual abstinence before marriage.

Which would be more disturbing for Amy and the others who complain about the SoCons?

Well, if the demographics are the problem then the solution is simple, and should hamstring the Dems on a couple of fronts. Simply put more abortion clinics in Blue States and minority-majority districts.

Margaret Sanger wanted the blacks to auto-extinctify, so why not let the Left have what they want? Lots of dead, would-be "liberal" babies! It's win-win! More abortions, which liberals love, and fewer liberals!

True, it's a long term game, and we'll have to break the Left's stranglehold on education, but that can be done with private schools catering to non-liberals. We might even be able to get taxpayer subsidies for them...

"60 per cent of voters aged between 18 and 29 voted for Obama"

Dumbest humans on the planet. Staggeringly short-sighted.

Young people are going to be absolutely CRUSHED with taxes, student loans, paying for Social Security/Medicare, getting laid off by businesses that cannot pay Obamacare taxes, etc.

But, vagina. So they vote for Obama.

"There is nothing that conservatives can do, except sell out."

They already have.

My favorite political cartoon was of a republican owned home with a sign on the lawn that said "Romney, I guess...."
This guy was caught on video lying. At least Obama is smart enough to do it off camera and to charm you while he is doing it.

Jesus Christ as soon as Republicans realize how the demographics are changing they will drop kick their current supporters.

And I hate that people on here say black voters vote for Obama because he is black. Did you forget how many black Repubs there are that black people don't vote for? Do you vote for someone simply because he's white? Do gays ever vote for log cabin Repubs?

P.S. Stop it with the black thing, it's like super annoying.

How to win a re-election:

1) When the country is out of money, fly your family around the world on air force-one for a summer long vacation

2) When so many struggle to find a job, spend your entire first two years passing Obamacare, which nobody wanted

3) Tell the people that they didn't earn their success, the gov't did that.

4) Get caught lying about your reaction to massacres at our embassies, and then refuse to answer for it ... and get full support from the media

5) Campaign on hope-and-change and then preside over the least transparent and most grid-locked administration in history

6) Ignore the fact that you have no clue what to do with the economy and foreign affairs, and then convince the sheeple that the "war on women" is the only thing that matters.

How could this plan succeed? I'm at a loss to explain it.

This guy was caught on video lying. At least Obama is smart enough to do it off camera and to charm you while he is doing it. -- Purple pen at November 8, 2012 7:51 PM

I am assuming you are talking about the Romney talk about the 47% speech? If you look at the link essentially all he really was checked on was 46.4% not 47%.

But of course he was totally out of the ballpark.

Really -- I don't care anymore. Fuck everyone else. I'm buying weapons, bullets, shelf stable foods and silver.

The fiscal cliff is coming and no one can bail us out.

No Jim P. he was literally caught on video lying numerous times, on multiple issues. Come on Romney was a liberal governor with a Repub moniker. Health care?

The true question is which turd is better. Romney or Obama?

2) When so many struggle to find a job, spend your entire first two years passing Obamacare, which nobody wanted

Nobody wanted it? Tons of people want government funded healthcare. Just like they want their billion dollar train here in California we can't afford.

People in this country want things we cant afford.

I heard on Rush that some 3 million conservatives/Republicans stayed home this year. Maybe if the wimpy loser GOP had talked up social issues, they would have come out to vote.

Mitt was not an appealing candidate. The GOP asshats in the news didn't help him.

I think many people voted for Obama simply because Obama was "the devil you know."

Personally, I didn't vote for either and didn't want either for president.

The stock market roller coastering and banking and housing crashing led a lot of people to financial instability. Obama's tenure has led to a rather low but at least not crashing anymore type of steadiness.

I know I am a lot less financially resilient now than 8 years ago. More stable now than when Obama took office. Low interest on our investments prompted us to pay off our mortgage instead. It is a mixed bag.

I am worse off than I was 8 years ago, even 4 years ago. But I have to say, I vote my gut. When I just look at Obama, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Romney, not so much. I can't even stand to hear Obaba speak anymore, I actually get physically ill and have to leave the room. I didn't vote for him the first time and didn't this time around either. I just pray that he relinquishes his seat in 4 years and doesn't try to pull an FDR. Then we'd be really screwed (and I'm not sayin' we're not now!).

Maybe I'm an idiot who hasnt been paying attention, but thought Obama care only forced insurance companies to cover everyone who asked for a policy, not give out free heathcare to everyone whether or not they had insurance.

Did I misread that?

"And I hate that people on here say black voters vote for Obama because he is black. "

The math does not lie. Black people vote black, period. 96% of black women voted for Obama. That's unprecedented in any American election, ever.

"Did you forget how many black Repubs there are that black people don't vote for?"

Black Republicans are not authentically black. They are acting-white Uncle Toms, and therefore have been stripped of black status. Just ask anyone who's not a conservative. They'll tell you.

"Do you vote for someone simply because he's white? "

No, but black people do vote for someone just because he's black. Jesse Jackson Jr., who "campaigned" from rehab, won his race easily with over 98% of the black vote in his district. The numbers do not lie: Black people vote black. Period.

"Maybe I'm an idiot who hasnt been paying attention, but thought Obama care only forced insurance companies to cover everyone who asked for a policy, not give out free heathcare to everyone whether or not they had insurance."

Two points: (1) It's more or less the same thing. Under Obamacare, you don't need to get insurance until you are sick. Then insurance pays for it. As soon as you are well again, you drop the insurance. The next time you get sick, you get insurance again, etc. You never pay any premiums except during those periods when you are actually sick. And rates for many groups of people are price-controlled, so that a lot of people can get insurance for less than what it would be on the open market.

(2) Many benefits are mandated to be free to certain groups. For example, women get birth control and several female-specific services for free.

"Black Republicans are not authentically black."

So basically you're saying black people vote for other black people that best represents their views? If they solely voted on skin color they would not care about the party. So they are not JUST voting black.

(ps Look at the black community and Bill Clinton. They supported him 100% over any other black politician)

Pps. Obama is super "white acting" and yet they managed to vote for him vs all those other "white acting" Black repubs. I dunno maybe because he best represents the views of the black community.

Not a surprise. Some Americans voted for Corinne Brown - and of course Marion Berry.

It's not like having a vote conveys any brains.

If you look at the voting map and at an individual state by county: The cities voted for Obama, the rural counties voted for Romney.

PA: It was Philly, Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton, Reading, Pittsburgh, and Erie that voted Obama.

www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/PA

Ohio: It was Cincy, Dayton, Toledo, Columbus and Cleveland that went to Obama.

www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/OH

For that matter -- look at California when you visit the map. The cities breed stupidity and the nanny-staters. The rest of us realize that government is not the answer.

Really -- I don't care anymore. Fuck everyone else. I'm buying weapons, bullets, shelf stable foods and silver.

The fiscal cliff is coming and no one can bail us out

I doubt it will will ever come to that Jim P. It's not like us in the rest of the world can ever actually call in the debt (who would we go to?). You're right though that sooner or later something is going to have to give.

I'm more in the Mark Steyn camp myself, that what you'll see is a long, slow decline in power, prestige, economic weight, and so on. Social Security will still get paid, but devalued enough that you won't be able to live on it.

His take on the election was that the *only* thing that mattered was "are we going to even start trying to fix this?" Romney may not have had a good plan, but it was *a* plan, and this is (my opinion now) a 20-30 year project at least. It's not something that's going to get fixed in one term. Obama intends to do precisely nothing about it.

I simply cannot believe that in a world of $16 trillion government debt and annual trillion dollar deficits that who pays for birth control was even an issue, let alone a national one.

I simply cannot believe that in a world of $16 trillion government debt and annual trillion dollar deficits that who pays for birth control was even an issue, let alone a national one. -- Ltw at November 9, 2012 9:19 PM

You have to look at the fact that 46.5% of the American population is getting some form of check or assistance from the government.

Many see it as their due -- the Obama Phone or Obama Money videos -- regardless of how little they have done, other than vote.

They don't realize, and can't understand, why people are objecting to the deficit and debt.

As for following the Mark Steyn idea of collapse -- I glanced, but can't find his description of what it will look like.

"Pps. Obama is super "white acting" and yet they managed to vote for him vs all those other "white acting" Black repubs."

If you slapped the name "Republican" on Obama without changing anything else, he'd get less than 10% of the black vote. Because that would make him not authentically black. There'd be all kinds of press harping on his white mother and his constant engagement in the white man's sport (golf).

"I dunno maybe because he best represents the views of the black community."

You miss the point. It's not about skin color. It's about culture. Almost to a person, blacks voted for the culture of checks, rims, baby-daddies and crack. Have you looked at what's happened to black unemployment under Obama? You can't make a rational argument that he represents the economic interests of blacks better than Romney does.

It's a fundamentally narcissistic culture. It allows blacks to feel smugly superior, while blaming any problems that they encounter on external forces. And because they see themselves this way, they feel entitled to live as libertines and have inferior people take care of them. You know what happens in a libertine culture, one in which there are no social standards? Narcissists win. There is nothing to oppose them. And so everyone becomes narcissist. It's comfortable and easy. It destroys basic human moral values, but when you're a narcissist and you see yourself as superior, you don't care about that. Other people are merely things for you to use as you see fit. And we can see that in how blacks voted. They voted for the candidate who implicitly promised them that they won't have to do anything different.

"If you slapped the name "Republican" on Obama without changing anything else, he'd get less than 10% of the black vote. "

Same applies to Romney and conservatives.

"Because that would make him not authentically black. "

I love how you can make that assumption on who blacks consider authentically black. I used to get it from well meaning white people too "Well Purps you are so successful because you are not really Hispanic. You are more white acting"

Yes thank you! And you know what I never got that compliment from minorities.

"You miss the point. It's not about skin color. It's about culture. Almost to a person, blacks voted for the culture of checks, rims, baby-daddies and crack. "

Ahem.....wow......

"Have you looked at what's happened to black unemployment under Obama? You can't make a rational argument that he represents the economic interests of blacks better than Romney does"

Neither candidate does.....

Ofcourse they are practically the same, the only real benifit to having a republican in the White House is the media wont ingore things like killing americans in violation of every aspect to the constitution and bill of rights