Coda to yesterday's political long-form

[drwex]

OK apparently I can't let this pass. The pundits still show up on my radio (I don't watch TV) and make me grind my teeth with their huge helpings of WRONG.

Fact: The Republicans have lost the national popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. (I'm still opposed to changing to a national popular vote system for the reasons given last time.)

Fact: The Republicans got their asses kicked in state-wide contests (Senate races) up and down the line. The pro-rape guys went down in flames even in states that were heavily Romney-positive. The moderate guys either had to run as independents (Maine) or got their asses handed to them (MA). When your candidates' best strategy is to distance themselves from their supposed party that ought to be a giant warning sign.

If these two facts do not convince you, oh misbegotten sons of fleabags, to stop flapping your stupid gums about "close" elections and "divided electorate" then you are seriously continuing to miss the point. The Republicans and their cronies at places like ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce have done a good job of controlling state legislatures and that lets them redistrict to protect their seats and put more teabag nutballs into the House.

But when all is said and done the party of "not Obama" has ceased to be a useful functioning group that is in touch with anything. America is evolving and the "old white guy" plan is a dwindling relic of the past. Romney deliberately gave up on the Big Tent strategy this time around, and it hurt. Even though he veered like a drunk in a sportscar toward the center once the debates started it was never a full-campaign strategy. Romney won electoral opinion on having a better plan, and he got people to trust him (despite the Etch-a-Sketch Big Lie politics) but in the end people felt (by something like an 8:1 ratio) that Obama was more in touch with their daily needs than Thurston Howell the Carpetbagger. And that's how they voted. If the Republicans can't see that's not a "divided" electorate that's an evolving electorate they're doomed to continue losing large-scale contests.

Comments

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I'm distressed by how CLOSE the popular vote was. Nearly half of my fellow Americans voted for an empty suit with good hair. Romney has demonstrated that he has no personal principles and no integrity. He's demonstrated that he cares not at all for anyone who earns less than a million dollars a year. He's demonstrated that he has no compassion, no empathy, and no conscience.

The Republican party has demonstrated that it cares only for the rich and is willing to sacrifice the poor, the middle class, the unemployed, and the sick. They've demonstrated that they are willing to let the entire nation go down in flames, rather than compromise. For anyone who isn't extremely rich, voting for a Republican is voting against their economic interests.

Yet the Republican party succeeded in getting nearly half of American voters to vote against their own interests and for a man who isn't worth spit. To me, that makes the Republicans chillingly effective.

I'm thrilled that they weren't quite effective enough to win the election, but geeze, it was WAY closer than it should have been!


My own parents are lifelong Republicans, and they don't quite seem to have noticed that Republicans stopped being Eisenhower a LONG time ago. When W. was nominated, and my father indicated that he was planning to vote for him, I said, "Daddy, how can you vote for a guy who's as dumb as a sack of nails?" And he shrugged and said, "I'm a conservative guy, and he's the conservative candidate."

[drwex]

I realize (and you know as well) that it's easy to fall into the "all right-thinking people should think like this" trap. Romney's a soulless, principal-free carpetbagger, but he's not stupid. Obama assumed that Romney was stupid and got himself trounced in the first debate. Romney also has (had) some very smart and extremely well-funded people behind him.

In the end, people rarely vote for a candidate based on his or her apparent smarts. After watching Bush I'm tempted to say that smarts are completely irrelevant (to winning American votes) but I think it's a matter of how those smarts are deployed. I like to refer back to Jimmy Carter, who was a gifted student all throughout school and one of the first to qualify in the Navy's nuclear engineering program. He was (and is) a lot smarter than people gave him credit for and it didn't do him a damned bit of good.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I didn't say ROMNEY was stupid. I SAID that I made that "dumb as a sack of nails" comment to my father when he was planning to vote for W., as in George W. Bush.