Friday Afternoon Roundup - What Went Wrong

WHAT WENT WRONG I

The GOP neglected its base and frantically tried to show that they
were more responsible Democrats, but with a deep love of free
enterprise. The Democrats focused on turning out every single rotten
member of their 2008 coalition and getting them to the polls.

The
GOP chased the voters it didn’t have. The Democrats chased the voters
they did have and made sure as many of them as possible showed up to
vote.

The GOP softened its message. The Democrats hardened theirs. The GOP tried to be moderate. The Democrats tried to be extremist. 

Guess which plan worked?

In a low turnout election with the media running against you, you don’t aim for the center, you act like a general, fire up your base and command your armies. 

WHAT WENT WRONG II

Elections come down to turnout. Everything else is window dressing. And the voters did not come out in sufficient number.

The election did not really come down to Obama vs. Romney. It came down to Romney vs. Obama.

Or
to put it another way, most Romney voters were really voting against
Obama. And most Obama voters were really voting against Romney.

In a competitive economic environment, the government class and the productive class were both trying to protect their economic lifelines. Whether it was the ability to earn a living or to get stuff from the government.

Obama’s
entire strategy was to assemble constituencies with compelling group
reasons for voting against Romney. And the whole RACISM WAR ON WOMEN
DREAM ACT GAY MARRIAGE approach worked. It was a narrow election, but
there was enough turnout and some voter fraud to carry the day.

Romney
looked like he had the turnout based on early momentum. Before Sandy.
Sandy was the November surprise that tilted the dials and changed
everything.

But Romney’s momentum increased after his first debate performance. He barely broke even on the second debate and completely blew the third debate. The numbers then didn’t seem to show that it hurt him, but it likely did not help shore up his path forward.

Republicans were still acting as if the
momentum were there when it had dissolved away. They were busy
predicting a landslide that was not going to come. They committed
themselves and kept going and then ran out of road.

That is what went wrong.

WHAT WENT WRONG III

Most Republicans went into this assuming that 2012 would be an extension of 2010. Instead it was an extension of 2008. Why?

2010 pivoted on ObamaCare and turned Republicans into an effective counter to Obama through a Republican Congress. And what exactly did we see from that?

I’m not going to start screaming about Boehner now, but the voters gave Congress to the Republicans and they expected to see something for the trouble. They did not.

After the 2010 elections I listed seven things for the Republican Congress to keep in mind and closed with, “2010 was important, but 2012 will be much more important. 2010 is a chance to checkmate Obama’s agenda and prepare the ground for the real war. That means the context for everything we do has to be on how to win the next election. Winning 2010, while losing 2012, won’t look like much of a victory. And if you don’t think it can happen now, look back at the nineties. It can happen. And unless we work hard, it will.”

And it did happen. Few people thought the Republican Congress added value to their lives. There was no coherent agenda. The public was alienated. Many did not bother showing up.

The Anti-Obama vote was not enough. There was no sense that elected Republicans were doing anything useful. And so they weren’t elected.

THE RECAP

Let’s begin by recapping some of the more common responses to the 2012 disaster. (Maybe the Mayan calendar was right after all.)

1. The system is rigged

2. The national demographics have shifted

3. We lost the culture war

4. We’re led by idiots

5. Everyone just wants free stuff

All five of these are true, to a limited extent. But the takeaway that we’re doomed and there’s no point in trying is wrong.

1. Yes the system is rigged. It was always rigged. The Democrats stole the election for JFK and Nixon failed to challenge the Chicago op. Then Nixon gave us Democratic social policy and a disastrous wrap-up of the Vietnam War, while allowing himself to be made the most hated figure in America.

And you think we have it bad?

After Nixon came Ford. And after Ford came Carter. Economic malaise. And the death of America. Can anyone remind me what happened after that?

A guy named Reagan that no one took seriously got credit for the economic recovery and ending the Cold War.

Voter fraud is not new. Media bias is not new. There were times in history when they were arguably worse.

The system is rigged, but it’s not unbeatable.

2. The demographics are shifting, but it’s not just the shift, it’s the lack of white voter turnout. We do need to keep an eye on the immigration ball. In the long run the southern border will kill us. But we could have won even with these demographics if not for low voter turnout.

3. We always lost the culture war. When were Republicans ever cool? I know, back during Lincoln’s day and when Mark Twain was overflowing with joy at the glorification of General Grant. And of course Teddy Roosevelt. The last cool Republican.

Some blog was complaining that we know we’ve lost the culture war when Anthony Bourdain is ranting on a cooking show about Republicans.

A. Who really gives a rodent’s posterior about Anthony Bourdain and

B. Celebrities and media personalities have been bashing Republicans for 80 years.

If a cooking guru ranting about Republicans means anything, it means that we’re still relevant as rage fodder for loser liberals.

We are not going to be one with the youth vote. Your average college student who just finished pretending to read Proust is not going to go Republican. He’ll do that twenty years later. And that’s not so bad unless the death panels begin lowering the demographics of the elderly.

4. Umm yeah. Obviously. That’s not really new. But most political operatives are idiots. Ours aren’t just dumb, they’re also timid and slow to embrace new methods. They’re also incompetent. But any field that runs on connections rather than merit, and past reputation even when it’s 30 years out of date, will suffer this.

The one thing that the Dem operation did right was bring in fresh blood.

5. Umm yes they always did. People have always wanted free stuff.

Lobbyist is not a recently invented profession. Neither was the parade of people holding out their hands to DC.

You know whose election proved that people want free stuff? FDR. And he won by a much margin than Barry Hussein.

Let me run another name by you. Huey Long. Or let’s go back to 18th Century Rhode Island and the Country Party which in a time of economic crisis ran on a platform of debt relief by printing money. Their slogan was “To Relieve the Distressed”. And they won big.

Here is how the actions of the ruling Country Party in paying off debt with worthless paper money was described. “the most extraordinary that ever disgraced the annals of democratical tyranny… the depravity of human nature” that could “sanctify such palpable fraud and dishonesty, by a solemn act of legislation.”

Sound familiar? Let’s get even creepier.

At its June 1786 session, the legislature passed a penalty act. Anyone refusing to accept the currency at face value was subject to a £100 fine for the first offense, half going to the state and half to “the Person who shall inform.” Conviction of a second offense carried the same fine and disenfranchisement.

The act provided that all paper-money cases were to be tried in special courts without juries and without the right to appeal.

On 13 September 1786, delegates from Providence County towns met in convention at Smithfield to consider the merchants’ continued opposition. The delegates attacked the subversive tendencies “of the mercantile Interest” and proposed that the legislature consider several plans, one of which called for a state-trade system that would have effectively eliminated the merchant class. As envisioned by a writer in the Providence Gazette, the state would own all stores, ships, wharves, shipyards, and the like. A state commission would send ships on fishing and mercantile ventures while severely limiting the importation of luxuries.

The legislature would “take the lead in this business, and will border it carried on in such manner, and under such regulations, as they in their wisdom shall think most convenient for the welfare, advantage, and well-being of the State.”

Country party leaders introduced a bill that would require everyone in Rhode Island to take an oath supporting paper money. 

The Providence Gazette of 6 January 1787 reported that a bill introduced in the December session would abolish all debts and distribute all property equally among heads of families and repeat the process every thirteen years.

And after all this… the Country Party won in a landslide. There’s your totalitarian Socialism in America… in 1786.

We were not once upon a time an absolutely moral country where people always worked hard and did not just vote themselves free stuff and elect a bunch of Socialist charlatans mad with power to do it for them.

We did it in 1786. We did it in 2012.

America has bad and good ‘mood’ swings. We do not always answer to our better angels. And there is no reason to start giving up and abandoning ship because the country will now be forever in the grip of a mythical 47 percent of looters.

This is not new. It’s not the end. We have been here before. We are not doomed and giving up on the rest of the country is premature and defeatist.

The Majority of the administration is composed of a licentious number of men, destitute of education, and many of them, void of principle.

From anarchy and confusion they derive their temporary consequence, and this they endeavour to prolong by debauching the minds of the common people

Again, sound familiar? We’ve been here before. And we got through it.

…but just one more item from Rhode Island’s radical history.

By paying the public debt in depreciated currency, the Country party had redistributed the state’s wealth.

During its first session in October, the legislature admitted that paper money had depreciated “from various and unforeseen Causes” and that continuing paper money as “a Tender will be productive of the highest Injustice.”

Now try doing that to China.

AND VARIOUS THINGS OF THAT NATURE

8 in 10 GOP voters do not want the party to back down and sell them down the river. But 8 in 10 GOP consultants want to get highly paid “Sell Our Base Down the River” positions.

Now the brilliant people who promised us a landslide and gave us a disaster have another brilliant plan. They are going to back some form of amnesty for illegal aliens which will give us 11 million new Latino voters, which in their best numbers ever, vote 40/60 Republican/Democrat. And it’s a plan. Like Little Big Horn was a plan.

If we can get that 40/60 Latino vote, we’ll win about four elections and then lose every single election from then until doomsday or until the United States is renamed Upper Mexico. But these are the people who can’t count over a trillion and couldn’t run a working GOTV program. Why would you expect them to handle basic math?

…from Republican Establishment Rushes to Surrender to Obama… oh just a little more

“The result will be (as in 1986) a new wave of illegal immigrants, largely unskilled, who will bid down the wages of the Americans and legal immigrants at the bottom of the labor market. These workers are the people most hurt by the big economic changes of the last few decades.”

And those workers will hate Republicans. As they already hate us for NAFTA. As they already hate us for championing free trade, instead of protecting their natural constituencies, the way the Democrats protect theirs. And they’ll be about as enthusiastic about voting for us as they were this time.

And the Latino vote we’ll be chasing will cheerfully head to the polls to vote Obama a third term. But we’ll have sold out the white working class who would actually vote for us, again, to try and win over Latino men and suburban moms.

But standing up for the American worker and businessman is outmoded. Let’s throw another convention dedicated to pandering to voters the GOP doesn’t have.

And then victory will surely be ours.

THE JARRETT FILES

In extremely “fascinating” timing, Petraeus resigned today, a few days after the election, over an extramartial affair.
Now I’m sure that the affair happened, but I rather doubt that at this
juncture, where extramarital affairs are normal even in the White House
and the Marines are expected to embrace gay marriage, that this was
really about the affair.

If Petraeus had stood by Obama
over Benghazigate all the way, and taken the fall, then the affair
would not have mattered. This is Valerie Jarrett delivering a first dose
of payback and neutering the threat of a Petraeus presidential run
against Obama in 2016.

…from Valerie Jarrett’s Payback Begins

AND IN OTHER GOOD NEWS

6,000 jobs already lost after Obama election. Stock market in 2 day freefall. Global warming set to destroy DC.
 
And more on Puerto Rico

a majority of Puerto Ricans did not vote for statehood, but that doesn’t matter, because the media and Obama will begun trumpeting a successful statehood vote based on a non-binding vote in which 40 percent voted for statehood as a potential alternative, without it being clear how many of that 40 percent were also part of the 54 percent that wanted a change in status… as a mandate.

Obama said that he wanted a clear majority to vote in favor of statehood. This is a bait and switch vote that produced nothing resembling that. And the contrast with the supermajority for Hawaii’s statehood referendum in 1959 where over 90 percent voted for statehood could not be more glaring.

 And the Latino vote

In the short term, getting 44 percent of the Latino vote can win
elections. In the long term you’re shifting the demographics so that
winning elections becomes impossible. And that’s at 44 percent. Imagine
it at 31 percent. Then imagine running against the first Democratic
Mexican candidate for president.

Demographic unsustainability is as bad as the financial kind. And
what is being proposed might win two presidential elections before
making it completely impossible to elect a Republican president ever
again.

On the Conservative media.

when you have an entity called “Conservative Media” or “Liberal Media” then the bias is baked in. It would be nice if we had a genuinely independent media, but no such thing exists.

Conservative media predicted a Romney victory. Liberal media predicted an Obama victory. Both sides were doing their jobs, which wasn’t journalism, but activism. 

And Bloomberg explains his reasoning behind the Obama endorsement

Explaining that endorsement, Bloomberg said that he endorsed Obama “not because I’m thrilled with him, but to me, choice, gay rights, the environment are the real issues, more important than economics. I spoke to him last night, and I told him, ‘Don’t make any mistake, my criticism of your economic policies still stands.’”

Finally a few words from George Washington, my president and yours

At Valley Forge, a quarter of the army died and efforts were underway to remove Washington from his command. After the Germantown defeat, Washington sent this message to his men.

“The Commander in Chief returns his thanks to the Generals and other officers and men concerned in yesterday’s attack on the enemy’s left wing for the spirit and bravery they manifested in driving the enemy from field to field,” and despite the American defeat, he wrote, “they nevertheless see that the enemy are not proof against a vigorous attack and may be put to flight when boldly pushed —

“This they will remember and assure themselves that on the next occasion, by a proper exertion of the powers which God has given them, and inspired by the cause of freedom in which they are engaged, they will be victorious.”

AND A FEW THINGS WORTH NOTING

even when conservatives won elections, the people who lost those elections taught our children the next day. 

Now, after years of patient effort, the teachers’ unions have turned America’s schools into a wholly owned subsidiary of the political left.  Conservatives have complained when reports surfaced about students being taught to sing hymns of praise to Obama, or when conservative students were harassed in class, or when examples of blatant liberal bias in textbooks came to light, but somehow we allowed ourselves to write off public schools as a lost cause.

from Timothy C. Daughtry at the American Thinker

And it’s a crucial point. There can be no American future without an alternative demographic and that means control of education. Give us the child and we will have the man. That is the motto of the left.

Ann Barnhardt breaks down the economic implosion at Western Rifle Shooters. Her own blog is unlinkable, but this works.

Muir’s Day by Day cartoons comments on the female vote and the Democratic base, but I would point out again that it’s actually the Julia vote, the single female vote. And this is why social liberalism and economic conservatism do not work together. No family means a collective family for collective security.

END OF THE ROAD

The jobs are not coming back. To know that you need to get off the inter-states; off the scenic blue highways that lead to your summer beach retreats. You need to get into the towns that have been passed by; the towns whose main industry has become food stamps and “assistance.” These towns are growing in number daily and will continue to grow.

There is no work in these towns. The factories that supported them are long dead or dying. They, like the people they supported, are carbon based life forms and the strange insects that govern us seem to be united in making sure they never return. The checks and the food stamps come, but that’s not enough to paint the houses or put in the gardens or do much more than eat too many pizzas and drink too much watery beer. The young would leave but more and more there’s no place to go. They spend their time instead deciding on what sort of new tattoo will go well with the previous twenty.

The building of new houses and malls and condos and other large construction projects are not coming back. And even if they did where would we find the workers trained to build them? Old carpenters have moved on to making a living at something other than construction. There’s not enough work to bring young ones onto the job and help them to master the skills needed. When a nation stops building it stops having the jobs that can train the next generation of builders. Mexicans, working cheap and off the books, are still in some demand, but there’s a limit to repainting and the kind of minor brickwork that makes for a pleasant garden.

The money isn’t coming back except at something worth less with every passing day. It begins to seem like mere slips of paper or a meaningless string of numbers that always seems to decrease. 

… a little part of a larger important essay at American Digest

This is a country where millions feel like they have no future. If they were Mexicans, the Democratic Party would community organize the hell out of them. So it falls to us.

THE SKIN OF SOMEONE’S TEETH

…. In Florida, with nearly 8.3 million ballots cast, the margin of victory was a mere 52,000 votes. Because this U.S. presidential election was a two person race, a takeaway by one candidate from another represents a two vote swing. Accordingly, if somewhere in the order of 26,000 Floridians, out of 8.3 million, decided that they were changing their vote from Romney to Obama based on his supposed “heckuva job” in relation to the storm response, those voters alone decided Florida’s 29 electoral votes. Given the AP exit poll and its 42% figure for those who claimed the storm influenced their decision to vote for Obama, it’s safe to say that Superstorm Sandy threw far more than 26,000 voters into Obama’s column and out of Romney’s.

The same argument can be made in Ohio. 5.3 million votes cast, margin of victory: 103,000. If the storm flipped about 52,000 votes or more from Romney to Obama, then no storm meant Ohio would have been a Romney win on election day.

In Virginia, 3.7 million votes cast, margin of victory: 107,000. If the storm influenced 54,000 voters or more to abandon Romney for Obama, the storm was decisive in converting a Romney win in Virginia to an Obama win.

In Colorado, nearly 2.4 million votes cast, margin of victory: 113,000. If 57,000 voters or more moved from the Romney camp to the Obama camp based on the storm, then Obama doesn’t win the state if the storm never happens.

….and now tally in the voter fraud and begin guessing how narrow it all was and how little focused effort could have changed it.

It’s midnight in America, but we can still the lights back on again.