The Corner - National Review Online: "If you had told me the day before the election that Mitt Romney would win independents by five, convincingly win among all voters making more than $50,000 per year, and that evangelicals would vote for Mitt by wider margins than they did for even George W. Bush, I would have assumed he’d be on the path to victory. He wasn’t. As the messaging and tactical second-guessing begins (and it began even before Fox made its Ohio call Tuesday night), we have to be clear-eyed about our challenge: To tens of millions of American voters, a conservative message of self-reliance and individual economic freedom is, quite frankly, terrifying."
'via Blog this'
That's what I'm afraid off.
10 comments:
Sometimes I wonder if we make too much of policy positions and the like. It's possible that largest factor in the election was simply the likability/relatability of the candidates. The Obama campaign successfully painted Romney as an out of touch elitist, and Romney's occasional gaffs reinforced the caricature.
What do you see as the best way forward for the republican party? Softening positions in an attempt to be more inclusive (there has to be some voters on the margin) or being more hard line in an attempt to appear more principled?
I'm thinking of doing a reaction post to the election at some point. So I'm still formulating my thoughts on the matter.
I'm not certain what the right path forward is. I feel like this is the first election where we don't have a great way to the explain the loss other than our ideas just aren't that popular.
You could blame Romney, but mostly republicans agree he was a pretty solid candidate. Maybe he was just demonized before he got started. but he put in great debate performances that seemed to cut through that. He was leading in almost every poll a week before the storm.
We could change positions on some issues, but I'm not sure what those issues would be, and what voter block we are going to go after the Hispanic vote? I don't think the GOP taking an open boarders/amnesty approach to immigration is going to buy their vote. I think they vote their racial identity.
I think Republicans can take a more libertarian direction on some things without offending their base too much, but I'm not sure those tacks really get us more votes. I think Republicans get most of the libertarian vote without that compromise.
The economy and the fiscal situations seems to prove Obama's policies are failing us. This just seems to be the election that proves that people like big government, like regulation, like sticking it to the rich, and don't see an relationship between those policies and our economic situation.
But really, I don't see much use in standing athwart history to yell "move towards statism a little slower please!" So I guess we just need to get more converts. But the prospects don't look good.
What do you think?
I really have no idea what should be done.
But I think we can certainly improve our delivery. The 47% remark was painful. Probably the most damaging gaff of the campaign. And I think a lot of people actually agree that entitlements need to be reformed in the long run (even though entitlement reform was generally considered political poison), but the delivery couldn’t have been much worse. Then we have republicans saying ridiculous things about rape and whatnot and people start to think those are generally held republican views.
Granted there are plenty of examples of democrats saying stupid things, but it seems that republicans tend to come off as harsh and insensitive all too often. The republican debates were often a competition to see who could sound the roughest and toughest.
Also, I know you prefer gridlock over heading in the wrong direction, but I think that people in general find gridlock very off-putting. It makes them feel like we don’t need to bother with politicians at all if they aren’t going to do anything, so maybe an argument for cooperation (even if you feel like you’re giving more than you’re getting) is that it might win you more votes.
I also think we can address our immigration concerns without vilifying Latinos. Not that we should start promising amnesty to try to get votes, but just doing a better job of sounding understanding. Being a democrat might be starting to become part of their cultural identity, but if I’m not mistaken, Latinos tend to be pretty socially conservative, so I don’t think that identity is set in stone just yet.
I guess the other option is just waiting for the democrats anti-business policies to drive the economy completely off a cliff and then say I told you so, but I don’t think that is likely to happen. Our economy is robust enough that it will likely grow sufficiently to overcome the obstacles. Conservatives will keep arguing that it could be doing much better, but it will remain difficult to convince the general population.
The thing about the 47% gaffe is that it's true. It's the classic Kinsley gaffe where a politician unintentionally say what he thinks.
It was not well put. and it was not true in the sense necessarily that those who receive government benefits always vote Democrat. But it's true in the sense that it looks like there really is 47%--or higher--that think government's responsibility is to cater to their every need. To provide entitlements. That's why I think we're screwed.
I don't think that people actually do think we need to reform entitlements. Like maybe they say that in the abstract, but they don't actually mean it. This is the election that seems to prove it. On the one hand we had Obama, who failed to pass a budget in 3 year, who, even though he promised to cut the deficit in half, has doubled it. Who created a new entitlement in Obamacare. Who has extended unemployment and made it much easier to get on disability. Then on the other hand, we have Romney and Ryan. There is not a better spokesperson for entitlement reform than Paul Ryan, who has a feasible plan for doing it. He is likeable, smart, good looking, and articulate. He understand the budget better than anyone. And his running mate was a renound turnaround artist. And what did we get? A decisive loss.
With regards to gridlock, what I see is a country almost already in European malaise, and that just vote for more of it. If you add, state, local and federal government spending together in the U.S. you actually discover that our spending as a percent of GDP is already pretty close to that of most European nations. Higher than some, but lower than others. Government currently spends more than 40% of the GDP in the U.S. every year. That's staggering.
We've got to draw the line somewhere right?
And if people really want less government, then its the other side that needs to compromise, as we move the other direction--the direction of smaller government.
I'm not a big fan of "getting stuff done" when what is done is harmful and counterproductive.
Re: 47%
If he would've said there are people "that think government's responsibility is to cater to their every need" I don't know that it would've been very newsworthy. But what he did was equate the 47% of the population that doesn't pay federal income tax with those who feel entitled. I'm in that group, as well as many of the elderly, and I think many of them didn't appreciate being characterized as moochers (personally I wasn't offended, though I was frustrated that he would say something so stupid).
"I don't think that people actually do think we need to reform entitlements." You may be right. If so what can be done other than wait for the entitlement programs to become insoluble? That could be dragged out for decades though if you just keep raising taxes.
"I'm not a big fan of "getting stuff done" when what is done is harmful and counterproductive."
At some point (if the majority of the population prefers expanding entitlements) doesn't the question become to either 1) compromise to have some influence over the direction of the country, even if the net movement is not in the direction you like or 2) be left out of the process all together?
re 47%. While not everyone not paying taxes votes for more handouts, I do think that large percentage of the population not paying taxes does deaden our responsiveness to the spending. It's always easier to let spending increase when you know you're not picking up the tab. But you're right. This was inelegantly put.
"You may be right. If so what can be done other than wait for the entitlement programs to become insoluble?"
Before the election, I thought the electorate was concerned about this issue. Now I think that might be all that can be done.
"That could be dragged out for decades though if you just keep raising taxes."
Well, we're going to have to raise taxes a lot to make that work. And not just on the rich.
Here's the thing about compromise. If you compromises then, to some extent, you are tying yourself to the result. You're saying, this isn't what we want in total, but this is an acceptable result. Then you deserve some of the blame when the compromise policy produces poor results.
My hope is (3) we can produce gridlock.
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