The Tea Party Got It Right, Mitt Got It Wrong

In this election the Republican Party ran two wholly inoffensive blue state Republicans on a platform of jobs at a time when the economy was everyone’s chief concern and the incumbent had absolutely failed to fix the economy. And they lost.

The Monday — or Wednesday — morning quarterbacks will have a fine time debating what Mitt Romney should have done differently. The red Republicans will say that he should have been more aggressive and should have hit Obama on Benghazi. The blue Republicans will blame a lack of outreach to Latinos. Some will blame Sandy, others will blame Christie and many will point to voter fraud. And they will all have a point, but the makings of this defeat did not happen in the last two weeks; they happened in the last two years.

Mitt Romney won the primaries because he was electable. But, as it turned out, he really wasn’t electable after all. Not when the chief criteria of electability is having no opinion, no point of view and no reason to run for office except to win. Not when the chief criteria of being a Republican presidential nominee is being able to convince people that you’re hardly a Republican at all.

Romney was a star political athlete who had an excellent training regimen and coaching staff. But to win elections, you have to change people’s minds. It’s not enough to try hard or to fight hard; you have to fight for something besides the chance to round the bases. You have to wake people up to a cause.

The Republican comeback did not begin with innocuous candidates; it began with angry protesters in costumes and Gadsden flags marching outside ObamaCare town halls. The 2010 midterm election triumphs were not the work of a timorous establishment, but of a vigorous grassroots opposition. And once the Tea Party movement started the fire, the Republican establishment acted like the Tea Party had sabotaged their comeback and cut the ties with their own grassroots movement. Separated, the Republican grassroots and the Republican Party both withered on the vine.

The stunning 2010 midterm election victories happened because a conservative opposition loudly and vociferously convinced a majority of Americans that ObamaCare would be harmful to them. And then that fantastic engine of change was packed away and replaced with political consultants who were all focused on seizing the center and offending as few people as possible. But you don’t win political battles by being inoffensive. And you don’t win elections by avoiding conflict.

Is it any wonder that the 2012 election played out the way it did?

The Democrats in the Bush years were about as unlikable a party as could ever be conceived of. They were hostile, hateful and obstructionist. They spewed conspiracy theories at the drop of a hat and behaved in a way that would have convinced any reasonable person not to entrust them with a lawnmower, let alone political power. And not only were they rewarded for that by winning Congress, but they also went on to win the White House.

Why? Because dissatisfied people gravitate to an opposition. They don’t gravitate to a loyal opposition. They aren’t inspired by mild-mannered rhetoric, but by those who appear to channel their anger.

When the Republican Party sold out the Tea Party, it sold out its soul, and the only driving energy that it had. And there was nothing to replace it with. The Republican Party stopped being the opposition and became a position that it was willing to reposition to get closer to the center. Mitt Romney embodied that willingness to say anything to win and it is exactly that willingness to say anything to win that the public distrusts.

The elevation of Mitt Romney was the triumph of inoffensiveness. Romney ran an aggressive campaign, but it was a mechanical exercise, a smooth assault by trained professionals paid to spin talking points in dangerous directions. But, what if the voters really wanted a certain amount of offensiveness?

What if they wanted someone who mirrored their anger at being out of work, at having to look at stacks of unpaid bills and at not knowing where their next paycheck was coming from? What if they wanted someone whose anger and distrust of the government echoed their own?

Romney very successfully made the case that he would be a more credible steward of the economy. It was enough to turn out a sizable portion of the electorate, but not enough of it. He tried to be Reagan confronting Carter, but what was remarkable about Reagan, is that he had moments of anger and passion; electric flashes of feeling that stirred his audience and made them believe that he understood their frustrations. That was the source of Reagan’s moral authority and it was entirely lacking in Romney. And without that anger, there is no compelling reason to vote for an opposition party.

The establishment had its chance with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor was everything that they could possibly want. Moderate, bipartisan and fairly liberal. With his business background, he could make a perfect case for being able to turn the economy around. They had their perfect candidate and their perfect storm and they blew it.

The Republican Party is not going to win elections by being inoffensive. It is not going to win elections by going so far to the center that it no longer stands for anything. It is not going to win elections by throwing away all the reasons that people might have to vote for it. It is not going to win elections by constantly trying to accommodate what it thinks independent voters want, instead of cultivating and growing its base, and using them as the nucleus for an opposition that will change the minds of those independent voters.

The Republican Party has tried playing Mr. Nice Guy. It may be time to get back to being an opposition movement. And the way to do that is by relearning the lessons of the Tea Party movement. The Democratic Party began winning when it embraced the left, instead of running away from it. If the Republican Party wants to win, then it has to embrace the right and learn to get angry again.

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  • Dee

    I just saw on T.V. the Republicans MUST become more like the Demos. Gag. I think we just need a one party system run by thugs and punks. Then everyone is happy.

  • Anonymous

    The Dems and Repubs are one and the same-by merging they have canceled each other out-Now we have one Party the Marxist Party —

    In 2011 I attended a supposedly conservative conference in DC -all the biggies were there including all the Fox News regulars, establishment pundits, Republican politiciansetc–we had a session I said 'Facts, argument, logic and think tank thinking are like rubber bullets against these Marxists-we need a real American idealogue to go up against the Leninist idealogue '-start looking for a common man like Lech Walesa and put your billion behind him or her'-one guy who heads up a huge conservative website looked at me like I was an insect–didn't care I had spent every waking hour at tea party meetings, townhalls and congressmen's offices-I was a hinterlander with no credentials-that's why Romney lost -because the huge blindspots of these individuals who pay lip service to real conservatives but laugh at them behind their backs–

    but it was all 'politics as usual' with no less than Karl Rove–wow-it's not such a s shock when you understand elitist, progressive Republicans thought they could win against elitist, progressive Marxists.

  • http://twitter.com/surfcitysocal2 @surfcitysocal2

    "The Republican Party stopped being the opposition and became a position that it was willing to reposition to get closer to the center." Yes, and not only has the Republican party moved to the left, so has the entire country as a whole, which is the only explanation as to why the nation reelected an utter and complete failure, liar and fraud. The entire country is in deep trouble. As @AriDavidUSA said on Twitter last night: "Tonight's election proves our nation is suffering a sickness in its soul."

  • BLJ

    The author makes some excellent points. I would also add that having the MSM running interference for you never hurts. Add the fact that 50% of the population either cannot or will not do their homework on the real Obama and there you have it.

    Ignorance is a dangerous thing. The Democrats take advantage of this and have been doing so since the 1960's. The useful idiots that keep them in power are fools.

    Lastly, being a Catholic, I still cannot fathom how anyone would vote for a man who does not being in the sanctity of life. These people are truly hypocrites.

    • Mary Sue

      The sad part, man, is that many Catholics have broken stance with the Church regarding this issue (ie Catholics for Choice) because they bought into the bogus "Anti Choicers want to control mah bawdy" argument.

  • http://www.facebook.com/bob.honiker Bob Honiker

    There is no fire in Mitt Romney's belly. Obama's reign has not been and will not be a life altering force for him. We needed a real American revolutionary.

  • rturpin

    That explains why Akin, Mourdock, and West sailed to victories, while Romney and Ryan lost.

    • Mary Sue

      I think West is demanding a recount cuz he's trailing by 2600 votes, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

  • Trey

    The obama fone generation is here.. Maybe Ronald Regan was really Romulus Augustus.

  • http://www.facebook.com/mladen.andrijasevic Mladen Andrijasevic

    This day will be remembered as the day when ignorant and naive Americans elected a president who supports the Muslim Brotherhood. Most of those who voted for Obama had no clue who the Muslim Brotherhood are.

    The Muslim Brotherhood. Is this what Americans stand for? http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/the-m

  • http://www.resonoelusono.com/Platform.htm Alexander Gofen

    Both the "Tea Party" (an appendix of GOP) and GOP got it wrong, to put it mildly.

    At worst, GOP has committed the SECOND deliberate treason.

    Or at best – they irresponsibly gambled.

    Gambled when no gamble ought to be allowed.

    Gambled with a cardsharper!

    And the worst: Gambled not resorting to the trump card (ineligibility) – the only card capable to defeat the impostor.

    Now they have revealed themselves completely.

  • mlcblog

    I personally hold the pudgy pink triumvirate of Rove, Krauthammer, and Kristol largely responsible for this loss. They induced strong Repubs to bring a knife to a gun fight. Others did not help, either.

    I can scarce believe that the commies and malcontents I used to run with in the 1960's and the communists of old Europe from 100 years ago have actually achieved their goal and taken over the White House.

  • UCSPanther

    There's opportunity here: Obama will have to face the music about Benghazi and other scandals, and he will have to face them as president, and the MSM will not be able to protect him as effectively this time.

    In the mean time, the Republicans had better get to work and find a better candidate for the next election, or America will go the way of Greece.

  • david

    I'm looking from France the re-election of Obama and I'm very sad. It's look like America wants to be like Europa with a giant state to tell you that you have to do !! Please, don't make the same error as us ! We're now in the socialism, we have to accept gay marriage, vote for foreigner people and taxs, taxs, taxs, more taxs every day !! When I won 1000 $, french governement take 45$ !!

  • jsbrodhead

    How is it that a lying jackass IslamoFascoMarixist camelion dung heap can win an election in America?

  • scum

    Wow, Daniel Greenfield, we hardly knew ye. The Tea Party is dead, Romney picked the wrong running mate, and the polls were actually biased IN FAVOR of Romney, not Obama (dream on Rasmussen). A few days ago, NBC, pandering to Right, 'unskewed' their polling figures because they ANTICIPATED a right-wing backlash. This election proved so many right-wing fantasies and pundits wrong that I can't begin to address them here – they're legion. But we'll talk later when other useless articles like this one 'dissecting' what went wrong inevitably appear on the pages of FPM. But suffice it say, Romney was stunned that he lost because he listened too much to right-wing ideologues in his own campaign (and Rove and his cronies…) who 'used their own metrics' to show him that he was pulling ahead.

  • Dennis X

    Open comment to ted nugent, when your country called you during the 60's you were a coward, the President isn't going to put you in jail so be a man for once and kill yourself. " in jail or dead"

    • BLJ

      Same goes for Muhammad Ali then. Crawl back under your rock you jerk.

      • Dennis X

        Ali didn't go for religious reasons. nugent didn't go because like you he's a coward. Ali didn't make the comments nugent did, you like ted should do the right thing!

        • BLJ

          Ali only joined the NOI to dodge the draft. Give me a break. Yeah I am a coward. How about meeting me somewhere and seeing how much of one I am. Come on, let's dance.

          • Dennis X

            Ali joined the Nation way before the war was an isuse. And any place , any time.

        • Mary Sue

          Religious reasons? Don't make me laugh. There's nothing in Islam that forbids military service.

  • clarespark

    In my view, "Capitalism is on the line." It is as simple as that. I wrote a brief, very compressed summary here: http://clarespark.com/2012/11/07/capitalism-is-on…. With the women's vote, the Left would have been defeated. But no, we won't look at our own anticapitalism, often antisemitic in its implications.

  • Ghostwriter

    The thing is that President Obama convinced enough people to vote for him. Mitt Romney may have had the better message,but President Obama had much of the media on his side. Hopefully,there'll be better candidate next time.

    • Mike

      I wouldn't call "Obama sucks" as message.

  • weroinnm

    Vote Fraud – What They Aren’t Telling You! http://wethepeopleusa.ning.com/profiles/blogs/vot
    “Food For Thought”
    Semper Fi!
    Jake

    • BLJ

      There is no doubt voter fraud occured. Try getting Eric Holder to investigate it. Obama's never ending hubris will catch up with him this term.

  • Thomas Schmidt

    What a silly point of view. Move further to the right? The party has marginalized itself by demanding that its candidates pledge allegiance to positions on social issues that are guaranteed to lose national elections. Any centrism is penalized (hello Indiana). Women, latinos, blacks have no interest. Without a relentless focus on economic issues and a drive to send more of these polarizing issues to the states, the party (and country) is doomed as the demographics of the country continue to change.

  • http://www.facebook.com/marvin.fox.526 Marvin Fox

    I believe you have your point between Romney and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, your correct point also tells us what is wrong with the electorate. Ignoring the two screwed up political parties and looking at the American people as a national citizenry, the citizenry can't tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. They assume the loudest most warm and fuzzy candidate is the best. That which can work and that which has shown it does not are ignorant equals in many minds, and only powered by perceived feel good concerns. There are many who understand the truth, the Tea Party being in that number, but not enough to do the right thing for our Republic. That ignorance is what must be cured in order to override the bad effects of having our Republic torn by political dissension in the best of the alternating political party administrations.
    Marvin Fox

  • Thomas Wells

    As Churchill once said about a bland pudding : "It has no theme".

  • pierce

    The biggest thing Romney did wrong was he could have hammered the President on Benghazi and did not. By trying to be a nice guy, he let Obama off the hook on foreign policy. He had the ammunition, and did not use it. If he was afraid the American people would not understand, he never found out. The US is supposed to be the LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, THAT IS NOW A JOKE.
    We have to go back to showing the world who we are, not appeasing the world. And do you think this President will do that, NO WAY.

  • Sdsali

    To the best of my knowledge, the Romney campaign really didn't run a Hispanic campaign at all. Nor did he make much of a reach toward blacks other than the obligatory NAACP appearance. He was late coming to the womens issue and did not speak out distinctly until late.

  • jeffo

    Face facts. America is becoming a third world country. Obama is not the first black president; he is the first third world president.

    When I was born, in 1958, America was around 90 percent white. Today it is about 65 percent white. By 2050, it will be around 30 percent white. It is a mathematical certainty whites will be a despised minority in around 40 years.

    What kind of presidents will the US have then? They will be more like Obama than Reagan, I assure you. Moreover, it is quite conceivable the US will have a self identifying arab muslim president in the not too distant future. The US will have at least 20 million muslims, maybe 150 million hispanics, and millions upon millions of blacks and asians. And around half the white population will be PC idiots. Will this third world coalition think twice about electing a self identifying, outright terrorist supporting arab muslim radical president? I doubt it.

    Let's face it, the future is bleak for the US.

    • Pietato

      The US clearly needs more racists like you.

  • annie

    Mitt Romney CHEATED along with the RNC…you saw and heard it all over the USA!
    State Conventions and the National RNC Convention all forced Romney down our throats…if the RNC would follow their own rules, we would have had a candidate that WAS electable…the youth, the Independents and military votes would have made this a slam dunk.
    RO PAUL was our man and the RNC is too arrogant and elitist to admit THEY ARE THE PROBLEM!!!!

  • https://www.facebook.com/mike.villano.71 Mike Villano

    I couldn't have said it better than Mr. Greenfield.
    He is spot on as usual.
    Mr. Romney was the RNC choice.
    The RNC should commit suicide and the Tea Party must mobilize not only against the Dems and their defense of the legislative and regulatory state, they must also go after the McCains, Boehners and Cantors within the party and roots out all of the RINOS.
    Powell's Collin would be a good start. Kick this parasite traitor out of the party first straight away.
    He endorse Obama twice and I would hunt down each and every Repube who agreed to 3 debates with left wing moderators.
    They must go too at a minimum.
    Death to RINOS.

  • http://americanpatriotcouncil.com/ Mike in VA

    Just curious – would anyone care to remind us of the “political genius” that Chief Justice John Roberts exercised when he provided the decisive vote upholding ObamaCare and its individual mandate?

    Did his outrageous ruling sway the 2012 presidential election towards the Republican candidate who pledged to repeal the consequences of Roberts’ decision to abdicate his responsibility to uphold the Constitution and the rule of written law in this country?

    Anyone?

    • Mary Sue

      Maybe he thought forcing the definition of "tax" on it was a "gotcha".

  • Hugh Murray

    Today's headline – Dewey defeated again. In 1944 Dewey lost to FDR in an aggressive contest. In 1946 off-year elections, the GOP won Congress for the first time in 16 years. Everyone thought Dewey would win in 1948 against the fragmented Democratic Party. Dewey chose not to talk issues, but platitudes. Truman made his positions known. I think Dewey won fewer votes in 1948 than in 1944. The GOP was stunned in 1948. But in 1952 the GOP won the White House.

  • lovelalola

    There's a middle way, folks. Defend conservative principles, sure, that helps, but so does moderating if it means catching up to the mainstream. The GOP has righted their ship on fiscal issues; they need transformation on the social side now. I'm not saying you have to favor abortion or gay marriage, but the GOP does have to couch their rhetoric in a way that cannot be classified as whatever-phobic and old-fashioned.

    I'm a 41 year old married white women who thought I was a life-long liberal, but voted for Romney because Obama was that unacceptable, and because he seemed to have the skills we need right now for the problems we have. But fear-mongering by Democrats–especially when unanswered by Team Romney–worked. If the GOP would finish the reforms they've started by applying them to the social side, I'd register with them today.

    Take welfare, for example. It's sexist and racist at its core. It keeps minorities and women down, and leads to disintegrated families, which is harmful to children and the nation as a whole. But all I hear from conservatives these days is that it;'s "socialist." It might be, but the Dems have convinced people that's paranoid thinking. So take it on for the problems it causes, and for the fact that it. hasn't.worked. It doesn't perform as intended and actually more deeply embeds institutional sexism and racism. So make policy proposals that make people feel like they can still get help if they need it, but which promotes a work ethic. Start with making it means-tested with rigorous reporting standards, instead of allowing the qualification to relate to gender and parental status of unmarried females. Allow people to work while receiving benefits on a sliding scale based on what they make. You save money and encourage working while slowly elevating the work ethic in the country. Make those kinds of arguments and proposals instead of relying on rhetorical shorthand that your insiders understand, but which fails to resonate with the broad middle, and maybe you'll get somewhere.

    • Mary Sue

      The irony is the Democrats treat welfare as the Only Thing Keeping Certain Minorities Alive or something.

  • Gustavo P Gianello

    Mary Sue · 15 hours ago
    I blame the mainstream media and the demonization of the non-driveby media which is blindly swallowed by the masses as if Revealed From On High for the sheer level of stupid in USA. And Canada, too. Oh, and NDPish teachers that spout whackjob theories that they have no business indoctrinating kids with.
    ____________________________________________________________________

    In response–
    Americans are such suckers. You STILL dont understand what's going on. Just ask yourselves, who has same-sex marriage, NO abortion laws, and does not believe that private property is a God-given right? Whose military is constantly used by the UN to rebuild the 3rd world and believes that a carbon tax is inevitable? Why Canada of course. We've had Obamacare for decades. That's why Canadians who are dying go to Thailand, and Canadians who are perverts like it to. So you see, youse citizens of the United Socialist States of America are just becoming the 11th province. Just call yourselves "Canada Lite".

    And oh by the way…NO coming to our unarmed borders and crossing while claiming refugee status. I figure you asked for it, so wallow in it.

    Bye America

    • Mary Sue

      Well it's not quite the same as Obamacare. It has more in common with North Korea's system of health care than that. We can thank Tommy Douglas for that during a LIberal Minority Govt. The no property rights was the fault of PETRO (Pierre Elliot Trudeau Rips Off Canada), he conveniently failed to include it in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (because duh, he was a communist). As for the abortion laws or the lack thereof, that was a Rule of 5 decision (Rule of 5 Supreme Court Justices). R v. Morgentaler in 1988 was our Roe v. Wade. Thank the idiot justices including that moron Bertha Wilson, who was appointed by Trudeau in 1975.

      I've always believed that if Canada were to be absorbed by the US (as some cranks insist), USA would have Democrat Presidents as far as the eye can see (and turtles all the way down). The only possible "red state" would be Alberta.

  • Michael D Archangel

    Anger always leads to hate. Just because you are a kinder and gentler version of the KKK doesn't mean you are no less right wing than your neo-Nazi counterparts. Sieg Heil!!!

    • Mary Sue

      Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the Dark Side. – Yoda

      Some Leftists would do well to remember this…because they are constantly projecting it onto people on the right! >:(

  • watsa46

    A majority of center and far right decided to wait till 2016 to get a "real" Republican. With their today attitude of lack of moderation they will loose in16 & 20. Any form of extremism is doomed to fail. Get that in your brain now Republicans.

  • http://www.facebook.com/david.k.howard David Kimber Howard

    My country is dead. They will get what they voted for – and richly deserve it. As for me now, Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

  • http://CrossChek.wordpress.com D.D. Edwards

    I am quite disheartened after this election. The country, I believe is lost. That said what you say is exactly right. Our only chance, as conservatives, is to go after Obama the way we should have from the get go–he is an illegal candidate. Yet not one Congressman or Senator will take it on, including Mr. Jim DeMint. Shameful, the evidence is there, Arapaio's Cold Case Posse has pretty much proved, besides Obama himself admitted to be born in Kenya. No guts–No glory–No America..

  • bilejones

    The Republican Party deserves to get beaten like a rented mule every four years until it excretes the Trotksyite neocon filth.

    It needs to get back to being the Taft Republican party.

    If that takes two decades, so be it.

  • RonaldWieck

    I was proud to vote for Mitt Romney, a decent man and a patriot. With the same electorate that Ronald Reagan faced in 1980, Romney would have won handily. Let's stop fantasizing about what "real" conservatives would have done. The position on abortion that opposes it even in cases of rape and incest is toxic. It is an extreme position that drives away women in droves and appeals to a paltry 15% of the voters. Yet, it is enshrined in the GOP platform. A conservative running for president with that albatross hung around his neck would meet the fate of Todd Akin, who was slaughtered by a corrupt Dem in a state where Mitt demolished Obama..

  • stevef

    Interested in the future of the GOP….wiki "Whigs"….after all, when Mitt is accused for months of murdering a miners wife, and all Mitt says is the DEMS…"mistated the facts…" you know there is something sick in the heart of the GOP.

  • stevef

    But let's congratulate the Marxists for decades of planning, strategizing and slowly, ever so slowly advancing so few would recognize the evll in their hearts.

  • irateiconoclast

    A disgraceful day for our Nation

  • Will

    Two disparate political blocks came together to vote for Obama because they witnessed what bribery with the national purse or abetting the willful avoidance of the law can do for some segments of a society. No matter who ran for the Republican party he / she would have been defeated. Should you dilute the messages of the Republican party enough there is no point in voting for you and if you don't compromise your core beliefs there is no voting block strong enough to elect you.
    Democracies appear to have a limited life span and then they die from sufficient abuse of the virtues / weaknesses inherent in the system. Our system, like an overwhelmed Petri dish, is now going to die. It was a great experiment while it lasted.

    • Mary Sue

      Well, remember, somebody said of the Constitutional Republic system: "It is only suitable for a moral people. It is wholly unsuited for any other."

  • 1933

    Romney dropped the ball. He's up on the Big Liar, then says he's a good guy. How stupid can you get? Obama's notorious, a racist creep of the worst ordure.

  • joetentpeg

    Need a new "Lee Atwater" as RNC who will fight as if a bloodsport, cuz dems always will.

    Anyone remember the Willie Horton ads? It'd be nice to have dems howling "no fair" again.

    Also the last time a "moderate" Repub (Bush the 1st) won.

  • Grendel65

    Obama was able to get a huge turn out by the down-and -outers to whom he gave cell phones. These people are by definition are hard to motivate, locate and coordinate in order to get them to a polling station on just one day. But with early voting spreading the task over several days and using gov. supplied cell phones to locate, is it any wonder that the Dems were able to wring out a mass of votes from a group that heretofore literally didn't count.

  • deafy

    a lot of it is due to media protecting Obama, and Obama's hiding things … if truth was known, things will be different
    another big factor is that we fight on all sorts of things while we should have focused only on one issue, that he is an illegal usurper enemy agent …
    because we allowed him to be there and avoided focusing on that, we allowed things to be what it is now and a lot more difficult to solve and prevent damage

    • visitor

      Yeah, calling the president an "illegal usurper enemy agent" will win you a lot of support. Unfortunately for you, that support will be limited to members of the tin foil hat brigade, birthers, and other marginalized and alienated wack jobs. But do go paint yourself into a corner. We Democrats are thrilled to see that your response to losing is to seek to reduce your level of support even further. Lemmings: the cliff awaits. Go for it.

  • ross1948

    Your conclusions seem to match ours! http://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/am

    But those pinkos are foaming with glee..

  • visitor

    As a liberal Democrat, I have no objection to the Republican Party committing suicide and going the way of the Whigs (or Know Nothings more like it). Face it, every Obama hater in America turned out to vote because no matter how wishy-washy Romney himself was, voting for him was the only way to turn out the hated Obama. The demographic groups that Republicans are turning off — minorities (especially Latinos), women, urbanites, college-educated, youth, labor — are the key to winning elections. Neither the rightwing base nor the leftwing base alone is sufficient to win a national election; you have to mobilize your base while appealing to people outside the base. If you want to double down on ideological purity, go ahead. It will make my job as a Democrat easier. I'd love for fiscally conservative but socially moderate Republicans to feel unwanted in your party and to find a home in a center-left Democratic party, letting you all have the "angry white guy aged 65+" vote in the Confederacy and rural counties. That way you'll be a regional party but not a national one. Good luck with that.

  • Ignatz

    Paul Ryan is not a moderate; Mitt Romney didn’t RUN as a moderate, and the tea party candidates all got trounced.

    But stay in the bubble.

    “The rape guy lost.”

    “Which one?”

  • SuicidePrevention

    D Greenfiled wrote "The Democrats in the Bush years were about as unlikable a party as could ever be conceived of. They were hostile, hateful and obstructionist." They voted for Bush's Iraq invasion and
    then instead of trying to raise taxes to pay for it, like every previous war, they voted for Bush's tax cuts. Some obstructionists.

  • VLParker

    I'm afraid the problem is much deeper than RINO Romney. The libs have been systematically indoctrinating the American public with their propaganda for 100 years while conservatives have been asleep. They had a plan to take over public education, universities, pop culture and the media and they have succeeded.

    When the incumbent president can win re-election after a first term of running guns to Mexican drug lords, having a revolving door at the White House for the Muslim Brotherhood, presiding over four years of a miserable economy and high unemployment, refusing to protect an ambassador whose life is in jeopardy and foisting on the American people a so-called health care bill that limits our freedom, there is a much bigger problem than RINO vs. Tea Party. Obama's minions in the media also succeeded, with the help of Christie, in turning a pathetically incompetent federal government response to Sandy into a plus for Obama. So 1400 days of incompetence gets trumped by a 1 minute TV clip. That shows we are dealing with an incredibly stupid electorate. And the only way to turn it around is to take back the institutions that the libs have taken over. We are making progress in the media arena thanks to blogs like this one and FOX News, but there is little progress in the other areas. I know David Horowitz has done a tremendous job fighting the indoctrination at universities but it is a long uphill battle which will take decades to accomplish. I hope conservatives don't give up.

  • Jimbini

    One word: Palin. I guarantee you that she would have run a better campaign and would not be afraid to call out Obama for what he is. She would truly get out the Tea Party vote. And for those who say that she cost McCain the election, how do you explain that McCain/Palin got more votes in 2008 than Romney/Rayn in 2012 even though Obama had a piss-poor record and was not the new exciting hope-and -change candidate?