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…Well, we lost.

(I'm sure that Erick and others will have their own posts...)

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  November 6th, 2012 at 11:58 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

(…so I’ll just reproduce my post from my personal site here.)

Can’t say that I didn’t try my best; I think that the wrong person won; and I think that the end result is going to be worse for the country.  And, oh, yeah, fine: the state polls weren’t smoking crack after all.

I’m not going to make any excuses or accusations; everybody I know involved in this tried their guts out, including the people who are about to get vilified for running a campaign that didn’t quite manage to unseat an unpopular incumbent.  And, honestly, I’m more worried about the folks who read me than I am about myself.  I’ll be fine; this isn’t my first loss, and it won’t be my last one, either.  And tomorrow I’ll wake up and never have to hear another stupid commercial about Yes/No on Question 6/7 ever again.

“There is a lot of ruin in a country.” And despair is a sin.

I repeat: despair is a sin.  The worst of them.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

 

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  • commonsenseobserver

    “The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
    But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
    mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”

  • agooglyminotaur

    Not without reshaping itself in the image of the true Republican party. Not without going back to the roots of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. Is that a bad thing? I’ve been saying for 35 years that’s not a bad thing.

    I think you’re wise— tonight may not be a cause for celebration, but it’s also not a cause for desperation. It’s a cause for reevaluation. The debt’s not getting any smaller. We’ve done nothing to reform medicaid and medicare. The current trend of spending is unsustainable, but so is the uncomfortable alliance formed in the “southern strategy” that could never have endured.

    So 2016? Here we come. And with a $20 trillion deficit, you’d better believe this party will be back on track.

  • wayfarin

    they would need a new generation candidate who can appeal to latinos. rubio 2016?

    nevermind. no campaign speak for a week…

  • edintexas

    I note one characteristic you did not claim for Romney – Conservative.

  • namohalko

    I was wrong about NH but maybe this is God’s will. 2016 begins here and now.

  • lakeshore

    I’ll try to shine a little light on all of this. First, let’s be encouraged by the large, almost tied, popular vote. Now, let’s start a plan to retake the Senate. I think we are going to do very well in 2014. Then 2016. Sometimes it takes the country a long time to realize it’s on the wrong path. Obamacare is just beginning. Let’s see how the women voters like it after a few years. Now, I’m wondering what Israel will do to Iran.

  • CarolT

    The media once again helped Obama win, by hiding his lies on Benghazi. Can we fire the media? They should be forced to go to a course on impartiality. They are supposed to report, not actively campaign for the dems.

  • rosenstern

    I am really proud of the campaign that we ran. We fell short but tomorrow is a new day. I am really looking forward to a serious, deliberate conversation about how we best persuade our countrymen of a better path.

  • commonsenseobserver

    No need to pile on our nominee, thank you, and he’s still our nominee until the results are certified.

  • edintexas

    You think the party needs to return to the days of Rockefeller Republicans? Or just merge with the Democrats?

  • CarolT

    We thought that in 2008 and look where we are now. I expected that enough people in the country had awakened. I can’t believe people in coal country voted of the man that wants to kill their business, and paychecks. I’m going to go get a a glass of win and shut the news and compeer off.

  • cardcarryingmom

    I really do hope that this country will have the decency to not make villains of Mitt Romney or Republicans, but I guess I am dreaming. Mitt Romney is a good, decent man and I personally thank him for inspiring me. These are going to be some very dark years for many and O isn’t likely to give a damn about me and those like-minded. Our country has changed and I am very sad to see that.

  • leftylurker

    Well said. I look forward to seeing an email confirming your $100 contribution to the USO as per our bet.

  • deltawing

    I blame the Tea Party. This election was extremely winnable. By forcing Romney to tack harder to the right during the primaries, they made him less palatable to the majority of Americans. Just a relative handful of votes n Romney’s direction would have won it for us. The GOP snatches defeat from the jaws of victory once again.

  • commonsenseobserver

    I never bet on anything. Perhaps you confused me with someone else.

  • jackm

    I’ll tell you what I think, without expecting anyone to agree with me. Unless the Republican Party takes a turn towards selecting more moderate candidates in the primaries, it will become a smaller and less influential party.

    Obama wanted this to be a choice between two views of America’s future. Romney, I believe, allowed Obama to present his argument.

    And, this election at least, Obama won that argument.

  • leftylurker

    My apology. I did indeed confuse you with someone else….fwiw, I will make a matching donation to USO if you if you want to.

  • tcgeol

    So we should just turn liberal? Kind of an odd thing to say on a conservative website, because none of those presidents were particularly conservative. Sorry, but if I wanted to vote for T.R., I’d be voting Dem.

  • exitsfunnel

    The GOP has essentially had the Senate handed to them on a silver platter two cycles in a row and still they’ve managed to lose it. Tonight the GOP candidates in MO, IN and ND are going to lose. Very frustrating and I have very little hope that 2014 is going to be any better.

  • http://www.TerriersOfTheRight.blogspot.com Flagstaff

    If the results are indeed final, I need to know:

    Where do I go to get some of that Obama money?

  • http://www.TerriersOfTheRight.blogspot.com Flagstaff

    I could argue it was just the opposite. The facts were there. Just not where anybody who wanted could see them.

    Romney was right: The job of the MSM was to make sure nobody saw his platform.

    Further, I suspect we were all abandoned by the most conservative among us. Why else would we do worse than 2010 when the issues were essentially the same?

    But let’s also see how the popular vote turns out. If Romney wins the popular vote, it should tell us something about the way the campaign was structured.

  • agooglyminotaur

    If you don’t think that Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt were Republicans, then you don’t know the Republican party. Are you really making the argument that no one espoused your political viewpoint until the latter part of the 20th century, and you still claim some kind of ideological heritage to this country? What absolute nonsense.

    What will become abundantly clear in the few years to come are the type of Republicans who embody the party ideals, and the type who have led the party astray. I was alone, crying out for fiscal responsibility, for THREE DECADES. And you think I was magically assuaged when the “Tea Party” suddenly remembered their fiscal conservative roots, when it was prudent to win an election?

    Imposter. Pretender. Enroll with a different party if you don’t know what the GRAND old party is made of.

  • tcgeol

    I know that they were Republicans and I have respect for Eisenhower, but that doesn’t make them (particularly Roosevelt) anything special that we should emulate them. Roosevelt was big government, sorry if you don’t like that fact.

  • jackm

    I cannot address your larger point, so I will only respond the smaller ones.

    You ask why the Republicans did worse than in 2010. Two possibilities: 1) The public was riled up in 2010, but their anger has subsided some or 2) 2010 was, obviously, a non-presidential election. A different profile of voter comes out in non-presidential year.

    With regard to the popular vote, right now Obama is ahead. For a good part of the evening, Romney was ahead in the popular vote but not right now.

  • jfpurdue01

    It’s simple, really. We need a true limed government standard-bearer. That’s someone the country can get behind. Did you see Clint Eastwood on Ellen? The guy was explaining limited government (libertarian-style) philosophy to her and she actually agreed with him. Most Americans do. GWB was not a limited government president. Mitt Romney was not a limited government candidate. If we want to win the hearts and minds, we will embrace the real concepts that get government out of people’s lives instead of electing candidates that want to use government to do “conservative” things.

  • WmCraig

    Republican party has already merged with the democrats. Look closely at all the deals and spending Boehner championed and all the brouhaha was nothing more than smoke to make it look like there was a fight.

    What we watched was the political equivalent of a game between the Harlem Globe Trotter and the Washington Generals. Staring John Boehner as the point guard for the Generals,

    Somebody queue Sweet Georgia Brown please,

  • WmCraig

    Point. The grey lady (The NYTimes) came up for sale recently. When conservatives get serious about winning they will stop whining and buy the rotten media. Put their own people in and run their own propaganda. Then, you get fair representation. The media didn’t just lean left, it was bought up and pushed that way.

  • WmCraig

    I am sure he is. It isn’t his fault and he certainly would have made a better president than Obama. But would he have been that much different. Would it have been worth a party change recession? I hoped so and put everything into it.

    The problem is the nomination process based on open elections. The place to give people a choice is in the general election. The primaries should be closed, and the outcome should represent the best of our bench. For the record, I am not so sure that the Republican bench is that deep. Lets see, who was the runner up in this campaign, because that is who the party will select to run in 2016.

  • WmCraig

    What is a true Republican party? Is it the party of Lincoln? That was the most radical period in the history of America. Was it the party of Reagan? Great leader brought about great times, for the record he was famous as an actor. Can you deliver that today? What famous actor is interested in being a politician at that level, for us?

  • jackm

    If the primaries are closed, then who selects the primary voters?

  • commonsenseobserver

    What???

    Well, they themselves, but at least they’d have a sense of commitment.

  • paulc

    OK fellow conservatives,

    Well obviously I’m very upset about the results of this election.

    Feels good to vent a little bit. I guess I’m not too surprised,

    though Obama did even better than I thought. As of this writing it

    looks like he won both VA and FL. The only states to flip from 2008

    were Indiana and North Carolina, and just barely North Carolina. At

    least my state of West Virginia did the right thing. I think I’m

    going to deem Virginia as “Maryland North” from now on – it’s just

    another worthless blue state.

    Big winners (besides Barack): Nate Silver. I think he got it exactly

    right, all 50 states. Given how close everything seemed, this is

    quite an achievement. Honestly from now on I’m going to take him

    much more seriously. The guy definitely seems to know his stuff after

    all. Another big winner is Intrade – they had it pegged from the

    get-go also. Finally another big winner was the pollsters – they also

    had it right. The final numbers, I think, were D+6, which is a lot

    closer to what they thought in these swing states than what guys on

    our side thought. The RealClearPolitics state averages were actually

    a little too friendly towards Romney, giving him Florida when he laid

    an egg there as well. But overall, RealClear was pretty good.

    Losers – well first of all I have to say almost all of us

    conservatives have egg on our face. With the exceptions of mostly me

    and my father and maybe a few others like “Young MJ” at BTI – all of

    us – Rush, Levin, Hannity, Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Krauthammer,

    Kristol – we all predicted victory. Some like Dick Morris predicted a

    big victory. Virtually everything Morris has predicted as of late has

    been incredibly wrong and preposterous. All of the guys here on RedState.com predicted big victories as well, and some wanted to ban me from the site for predicting that we were in trouble. They thought I was a Democrat plant. Their specious arguments were the same as everyone else. They were simply more nonsense about the 2010 election, the Bradley effect, and oversampling Democrats. The fact is, we’ve been deluding ourselves. We usually pride ourselves on

    being realistic, but we were not realistic this time. We had our

    heads buried in the sand. We keep clinging to an electorate that is

    long gone. This election didn’t smell like 1980, or even 2000 as I

    thought – rather more like 2008. As they said on Fox, the electorate

    this time was only 73% white, which is much less than it was when

    Reagan and past Republicans won their victories. The country is

    simply not with us. For whatever reason we’ve lost them. As I

    feared, the large crowds at the polls were very bad news. The tea

    party is dead and impotent – dead as the Whig party. The country

    wants free beer, and that’s what Obama offered. Romney and Ryan

    offered a substantive campaign that was about tackling big issues and

    they got their heads handed to them. We Americans simply want to kick

    the can down the road.

    So, ultimately the biggest loser is the American people. We aren’t

    going to solve the entitlement or debt issues until they bite us in

    the ass. We all want to jump in the wagon and no one wants to pull.

    Increased taxes on the job creators are a virtual certainty now. Our

    current economic conditions will become the new normal. But we did

    this to ourselves. Ultimately we get the government we deserve. In

    2008 there was an excuse. Then there was Bush fatigue and an economic

    crisis and Obama seemed like a fresh face offering hope and change.

    This time though we know what he was about and yet we still gave him

    332 electoral votes. He will certainly also get a few more Supreme

    Court picks, which means the constitution will cease to have meaning.

    But this is what the people seem to want – this is what they voted

    for. Maybe many conservatives just couldn’t bare to admit this – the

    America as founded is gone and dead.

    There are going to be a lot of reprisals now. What did we do wrong?

    What can we change? Were we too conservative or not conservative

    enough? Well I think some of the exit polls have indicated that

    Sandy did play a big role after all, which mimics the big drop in the

    polls Romney saw during the last week. There is simply nothing we

    could’ve done about this – a lot of it seems like bad luck. However

    it never should’ve had to come down to the last two percent. I don’t

    know what we can do to win elections in the future. Surely Romney

    made some mistakes – the 47% remark obviously didn’t help. But

    overall he ran a pretty good campaign. So I’m not sure what we can

    do better next time. Perhaps with these demographic changes, which

    may only accelerate, we are truly doomed to oblivion.

    Alright, done venting. Thanks for enduring this with me.

    Any thoughts?

  • warrior300

    Romney didn’t have the balls to challenge Obama in the third debate over
    Libya, or the spread of Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists groups
    other than mentioning it in passing, or even challenge Obama’s assertion
    that he had great relations with Israel,or make a major issue over
    “Fast and Furious”. Now there will be no repeal of Obama Care. The
    unions will be stronger than ever with forced card check, Israel will be
    sacrificed for the democratic party’s slavish devotion to Palestine and
    the Arabs. Romney and the GOP didn’t have the balls to take on
    Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy. Just play it safe and hope to
    cruise to success. Don’t call Obama and his party out for what they
    are–hard core Marxists, who have trampled all over the constitution.
    Now these low-lives can crawl out from under their rocks and safely
    return to their Muslim sympathies, their use of the Orwellian euphemism
    called “climate change” as one of their many ruses to further undermine
    our national sovereignty to subordination to a one world government, and
    to deliberately undermine our efforts an energy independence.

    The
    idiots in the Tea Party who get nut jobs like Akins and Murdock
    nominated. The country club Republicans running re-threads like Tommy
    Thompson and George Allen again. The result, the GOP lose senate seats
    when they should have won the majority, which guarantees Obama’s
    semi-dictatorial powers will be ever more emboldened, without fear that a
    Democratic senate would ever convict him even if the House impeached
    him.

    We are faced with four more years of divisiveness and
    gridlock. A Republican party that will never win another presidential
    election, if we even have another election cycle. A split party with
    the emergence of a third party of these hard core ideological Tea
    Partiers on one hand, and the country club republicans on the other.
    What a choice! The young people are so decadent in this country that
    the social conservatives can hang it up. One evangelical report after another reports on how they are losing their own young and they are not returning
    after they marry and have children. The democrats will get away with
    everything now, and can go through the charade of elections if they so
    choose, because they know they will win as the dominant party.
    Otherwise, wait for another adverse event that will allow Obama to claim
    dictatorial powers that the current Congress gave him.

    I had no
    hope for the U.S.A. if Obama was re-elected. I had no illusions about
    Romney and the GOP when it comes to a continuation of crony capitalism
    with nothing more than a shift as to whom the cronies would be who would
    benefit, taking care of the corporate high rollers at everyone else
    expense, and a continuation of casino gambling high risk investments
    with even less restraints. I knew how ominous a second term of Obama
    would be, at least with Romney there was a very slim hope that he might
    do a few things right that might require everyone to come together and
    share in the pain of saving this nation. A slim hope was better than no
    hope at all.

    As for Cheeta 772. Yea, life may go on. If you
    want to live at a survival level, you’re welcome to it. Urban Romans
    were forced to give up their welfare of which about half were on, and
    live out their lives as serfs on some lord’s estate grubbing out an
    existence while the future generations lived in wretched poverty and
    ignorance. Civilization is not always a progressive movement toward
    greater freedom and enlightenment. As for God given us an awesome
    responsibility in whom we elect. I would say the election turned out
    exactly as God wanted it to, as He paves the way for the rise of the
    Anti-Christ. The forces of darkness are enveloping us as it is written
    in the scriptures. All the biblical prophesies are falling into place
    at such an accelerated rate that we can prepare spiritually in these
    last days, because the rest of it no longer matters. This election is
    just one more step leading to the fulfillment of these prophesies.

    I
    am sure this post, in this so-called land of the free, will be removed
    just like my post that discussed what I thought Romney needed to do to
    win the third debate. In other words, “You are free as long as you
    agree with me.” The mindset which is represented on all these political
    blogs whether left or right.

  • crimsonchampion

    It’s not about selecting moderate candidates; it’s about not selecting the GOP version of John Kerry to go against a weak incumbent. Once Romney won the nomination, this election had all the makings of 2004 written all over it. How does Obama win with unemployment this bad and our debt this bad? It’s because the GOP decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They might have been flawed candidates, but both Gingrich and Santorum predicted that this would happen if primary voters supported Romney. And so it came to pass.

  • Bill S

    Knock off the comment spamming.

  • crimsonchampion

    “Why else would we do worse than 2010 when the issues were essentially the same?”

    Because 2010 was a midterm election so you had to account for lower participation among Democrat constituencies such as young voters. But that shouldn’t have mattered much. Obama was still vulnerable this year and somehow managed to win.

  • crimsonchampion

    Says who? Speculate away if you have something to share!

  • deltawing

    It isn’t a matter a values. It’s a matter of tone. The GOP primaries forced Romney to talk about controversial issues in a way that guaranteed he would lose votes in a general election. Clowns like Mourdock and Akin certainly didn’t help. That’s what happens when you give the keys to a bunch of amateurs.

  • dpmaine

    It is certainly looking like 2010 was the outlier.. 2006.. Democrat Wave Year. 2008 – Democrat Wave Year.. 2010 OUTLIER.. 2012 Democrat Wave Year.

    It might not turn out to be a wave year – the House is solid, but it does look like some really strong GOP voices are going down – Joe Walsh – gone. Allen West – gone? Michele Bachmann – holding on by a hair.

    And the Senate… we were defending half the seats that Democrats are, and it looks like they will pickup seats? Seriously? This was a year for the GOP to squeak a majority, on the way to a big win in the next mid-term.

    Instead we get Senator Baldwin and Senator Warren.

  • dpmaine

    Just be very carefully assuming that Latinos see Cubans as Latinos. If we are going to go all in on identity politics, it gets messy very quick.

  • dpmaine

    Nothing to do with Romney, but it’s really hard not to be a little sad about the how the Senate is going.

    The Tea Party backed/powered candidates have a bad 2 cycle Senate track record. I mean, Dick Lugar was a tool bag, but are better off with Senator Baldwin?

    Candidate recruitment is vital to winning.

  • tetrisd85

    Nate Silver was right. I need another shot of Jameson.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Are you suggesting that Ronald Reagan led the party astray? Don’t be silly.

    And Teddy Roosevelt was no true Republican. Coolidge was.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Don’t be ridiculous. How anyone can compare John Kerry to Mitt Romney is beyond me.

    For one thing, Kerry is an ultraliberal. Mitt isn’t ultra-anything.

  • 10ab

    West and Bachmann turned into carnival barkers…making outrageous statements for effect instead of focusing on the issues that are relevant to the majority of voters, we have learned some hard lessons tonight.

  • tetrisd85

    Nope. We lost because we weren’t conservative enough. It was a huge mistake to not more actively support Akin — America is a Christian pro-life nation and a bunch of them sat on the sidelines this time around. Romney was too weak to state the obvious — that we need to bomb Iran yesterday for the Israeli national security. Romney never should have said that he liked regulations or any of that other garbage he said in the debates that turned us true conservatives off.

  • tetrisd85

    Because he lied and cheated. Simple as that. Biggest. Fraud. Ever.

  • tetrisd85

    NO. Latinos need to be deported. We need fences not amnesty. No way, not ever.

  • tetrisd85

    TROLL.

  • tetrisd85

    We need to impeach Obama for Benghazi. That’s the only way to make the other Americans see the light.

  • crusty

    Is there going to be a 2016? I am not licking my wounds as the question may suggest. I am simply terrified of what this radical is going to do to what was once a great country. Is that overwrought? I don’t think so, look at what he has done. Look at what he intends to do. Lisa Jackson made a promise two days ago and if she follows through….. 2016 may not offer a country you will recognize. The good news is the fools who voted for this man are in his cross hairs as well. A $9 per month Walmart birth control prescription is hardly worth the price they just paid. They won’t know what hit them at least we expect it is coming. This may have been my last battle, I doubt I will personally survive another four years of this (fill in the blank I do not like the descriptive terms that come to mind.) My children and grand children will pay the price as I fade away. I’m feeling terrible for failing them. I gave it my best shot but the enemy was too strong.

  • Kyle-MI

    The pros did not do very well either. Take a look at Mack in FL or Thompson in WI. You can’t cherry pick to make your point.

  • wrenhal

    OK, I have a couple of comments to you people. Newspapers. It won’t do to just buy up dying newspapers. These are DYING for a reason. Not just because they are liberal, but because the internet is passing them by. Besides, you have to change the fundamental way that journalism is taught in departments around the country. I have a niece in one right now and she sees nothing wrong with the way the news is reported. It’s nothing to her for them to “shape” or “create” the news rather than report it. Now about you people talking about social conservatives. I can tell you from personal experience I have been fighting tooth and nail with Christians on sites like Vision Forum who “dissented” from the presidential election due to Romney being a Mormon or not being pro life enough. There are millions of them out there. Moving to the center is NOT the way to get more voters. Millions sat out this election who are right of center and basically handed Obama the election. They call themselves “evangelical” and “reformed”. They wait for some mythical perfect candidate that I fear will never appear. They feel they only answer to God for their non vote and don’t care about Obama winning, they’ll just sit on their hands and keep praying.

  • wrenhal

    He didn’t track right enough. Millions of Social Conservatives sat on their hand and didn’t vote because he wasn’t “prolife” enough.. Or because he was a mormon. Sorry to any mormons on here, but your theology is NOT Christian theology. You take Christian words and change their fundamental meaning. I fought with these people constantly on site after site over the last couple of weeks. They are all over the US and even in swing states.

  • wrenhal

    You mean who selects the candidates??? Because the voters select themselves by registering R or D.

  • wrenhal

    And put Biden in the presidency??? :runaway:

  • brunostrange

    He is not a radical. Without meaning to cause offense, until you get it through your heads that the president is a center-left politician and not the socialist radical you painted him to be, you’ll continue to roam the political wilderness as far as national (and in some cases statewide) elections are concerned. A little self-reflexion about the very real hard-right tilt the Republican party has taken, and whether such a tilt actually has a chance of speaking to a majority of the country in a meaningful way, would be in order. I hope you take it on for the sake of the GOP.

  • brunostrange

    If you think you lost because you werent conservative enough, you’ve got a few more defeats coming your way….

  • http://www.TerriersOfTheRight.blogspot.com Flagstaff

    Thanks to those who replied. I heard today that whatever the total turnout was for Obama yesterday, the turnout of young voters and women, both of whom were his target groups, WAS as big as 2008. Their campaign targeted them and got them out. If so, that is a credible and easily understood fact. An Obama win would be the result.

    Obviously we didn’t get our constituencies and the independents who claimed to be for Mitt out in the numbers they indicated before the election. Maybe the independents simply lied to the pollsters. I know at least one person who did (not me).

  • http://www.TerriersOfTheRight.blogspot.com Flagstaff

    After the fact, it may be that Romney was too “nuanced.” That is, he tended to talk about Obama’s shortcomings as if we all already knew it and he was telling us that he would be different. Perhaps (I’m sure of it) he should have been specific about just what those errors in judgement were.

    For instance, instead of “I’ll allow the Keystone pipeline,” he should have pointed out how by denying its permit, Obama was making us MORE dependent on foreign oil rather than less. He should have reminded everybody exactly what Obama did after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and how counterproductive it was, and WHY.

    I don’t believe that most people knew the details of either issue, yet he talked to us as if we all DID know.

    I publicly stated, right here at Redstate, that I would trust Romney to run a great campaign, that he knew what he was doing as he failed to mention Benghazi (and I still believehe did, but he needed to do more). I was wrong. We will all pay.

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