Let me concede that the good guys took a
thumping in the election. It does no
good to point out that the Republicans won the older vote, married women, white
males, came close, etc. and any points of consolation from the election. A good try does not count in politics. A loss is a loss and there is no consoling
ourselves by the nature of any upside.
We have to understand what went wrong and how we can fashion a strategy
to win that does not depend so narrowly on eking out wins in ALL of a limited
number of swing states. I assert that the biggest problems lay with
inside factors – that is, with mistakes in the campaign itself. First our ground game was not good. The Dems outclassed us in voter contacts, get
out the vote, social media, fund raising, tactics, avoidance of big mistakes, and
other aspects. We have to do better and
beef up our professionalism in party machinery.
I shy away from condemning our candidate which is very convenient in the
wake of a loss. Romney was the best
candidate we had and fought valiantly despite some flaws as a candidate. The choice of Ryan invited trouble le and
this has to be laid at Romany’s feet.
Every one of his advisers advised him against Ryan, largely on tactical
grounds of Florida,
Mediscare by Dems, etc., but Romney decide3d to go ahead anyway. Less Romney’s fault and more that of his
advisers was the inexplicable failure of letting Obama define Romney as a
vulture capitalist in Ohio and other key states very early without answering
and counteract ting it. The result was
that by the time we started spending money it was too late. We could not counteract the impression already
firmly fixed that Baine Capital was a bunch of hoodlums, Romney loved to fire
people, was a heartless plutocrat, etc.
The Axelrod-Pluff-Obama strategy was of
course awful and ugly and certainly is not going to make it easier for the
second term to be successful. But it was
effective. It just was a bad year to be
running a Wall Streer who would not release his tax returns until way too
late. Romney might have had trouble with
the capitalist image so soon after the financial crisis in any event, but he
could not help himself by releasing his tax returns earlier. The first debate was a great success, but is
clear in retrospect that we over interpreted it. Romney, by laying back and being
statesmanlike on the theory that voters would admire his restraint, allowed Obama
to get away with his despicable aggressive tactics, the rudeness, interruptions,
etc. A more confrontational stance would
have, it now appears, been a better tactic since presidential bearing counted
for nothing these days. The Romney
message was too single-mindedly economic and stuck to some points that were
just dumb. There was no need to proclaim
that everybody was going to get a tax cut.
Joe Sixpack understood in his toes that this was not going to happen,
that the danger was of his taxes going up drastically, and wanted more realism
in solutions to the debt and jobs crises.
There is no doubt that some general
factors were working against us: the protracted primary battle being a major one. Romney went too far in the primary battles to
defeat opponents who really could not have stopped him. He adopted extreme positions which made it
difficult for him to pivot easily to a general election strategy. The immigration attack on Perry, the promise
to veto the Dream Act, the too rigid stance on immigration, and other stands
were unnecessary and counter productive.
A more aggressive critique of Obama’s foreign policy in general should
have been part of the strategy.
I could go on to dissect the campaign
but I think you get the drift of my argument.
Now let me turn to the future.
Some general factors are still working against us. The demographics have to be faced. It is a no-brainer that we have to do better
with Hispanics, and we can in fact do better.
Upward mobility, family values, the American Dream are naturally
Republican virtues and values, and can be reclaimed by if we recruit good candidates
and give prominent roles to Sen. Rubio, Governor Martinez of New Mexico, and
others. A good candidate at the top of
the ticket next time would greatly help the cause, as would vigorous advocacy
for appropriate steps on immigration reform in the Congress. We are not going to be able to avoid a long
primary fight next time, nor should we want to.
The party needs an internal battle in which the moderates and more
progressive voices have a chance to make themselves heard. The Democrats will of course declare that we
are tearing outselves apart and will shed crocodile tears. But this is really nothing but a return to
the way the party was when I was a boy when my father and his pal Stassen (and
then Ike and then Rockefeller and Romney senior) were fighting the Taft wing of
the party or when Main Street
was fighting Wall Street. The Republican
Party survived those battles and will survive the internal debates that will
take place over the next few years. We
will emerge he stronger.
As to the cultural issues Republicans do
not have to abandon their more conservative beliefs and values. They simply have to be more tolerant and less
strident which is what they by nature are.
Most of us do not like the noisy claque of foaming at the mouth extreme voices.
When we look ahead we see that we have a very deep bench with a group of
outstanding candidates out there for 2016, any one of whom would be a better candidate
than unfortunately poor Romney was because he had to try too hard to convince
people he was what he was not. We can be
optimistic about our chances even against a Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden. And one more thing: we have to avoid
nominating candidates who blow great chances to win Senate or House seats. It was self-inflicted missteps that cost us
five to six U.S. Senate seats. Let’s be
what a Conservative Party should be – careful, cautious, moderate, intelligent,
devoted to nation, strong on defense, open to change but not radical change,
respectful of the individual but loyal to the community, and open to the
opportunities for new groups to achieve the American Dream. We
will never get a break from the media; the talking heads are locked into their narrative
that the Republicans are white, bloated males contemptuous of the little guy
and the other tiresome and deep-rooted beliefs of which they are scarcely
aware. We simply have to fight that much
harder to get our voices heard and to get any kind of reasonable hearing. The people instinctively understand this bias
and that is why the shock jocks have an audience. We must have the reasonable voices in our
party make the intelligent case against the liberal clichés and the Dems’ failure
to address the country’s problems. The Dems are the limosone liberals, the
special interest panderers, the pusillanimous pollsters, the monied moguls, the
pretend pals of the poor. Onward Republicans!
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