In addition to the one depicted by Rich Terrell here,
The following links are to articles that provide a lot for conservatives to think about who want to make a difference, rather than just make noise. We do not agree with every point in every analysis however we do see the discussion as a path to renewal.
Kevin Williamson at National Review Online suggests three things are responsible for how Romney lost to Obama (extrapolate from his reference to Ohio to the nation’s electorate). Bold emphasis applied by Veritas.
1) Ohio likes crony capitalism – the stock in trade of every “bring home the bacon” politician — when politically successful — it is always perceived to be at some one else’s expense.
2) Class warfare works. It is juvenile and it is economically illiterate, but a fair number of Americans worked themselves up into a lather over Mitt Romney’s paying a relatively low tax rate.
3) Repealing Obamacare was not a deal cincher in Ohio. A number of people I spoke to in the state suggested that the Romney-Ryan ticket paid too much attention to repealing Obamacare without spelling out an alternative that was sufficiently simple and attractive to voters who are not committed conservatives.
The lessons of Ohio are that Barack Obama is a skillful demagogue, that the ancients were wise to number envy among the deadly sins, and that offering Americans a check is a more fruitful political strategy than offering them the opportunity to take control of and responsibility for their own lives . . . For many years, Republicans have relied on Jude Wanniski’s “Two Santa Claus” theory, the strategy of using the promise of tax cuts to compete with Democrats’ promises of cash and other benefits. In part as a consequence of that strategy, a great many Americans pay little or no federal income taxes, while many of the other federal taxes they pay are indirect or partly hidden. Mitt Romney was right: You can’t use tax cuts to buy off people who are net recipients of tax transfers. Figuring out what we can offer them that is consistent with our principles is the task of conservatives between now and the next election.
Also from National Review, Jonah Goldberg, reminds us that politics is about persuasion (we add “and not turn out models” – a subject we at Veritas plan to address as a critique of the local and national efforts).
Goldberg shares our philosophy when he says ” I have a different view from some about the coming wave of recriminations: I welcome it. I don’t know that things need to be vicious or personal, but they do need to be honest. And honesty requires we say things that may feel personal to our friends. This is one of the great and abiding strengths of the conservative movement and the thing I love about it most. Contrary to the conventional wisdom among liberals, conservatives are actually far more willing to examine their dogma and their first principles than liberals or “centrists” are. This has been the source of conservatism’s lasting strength.”
At Newsmax we see that Christopher Ruddy’s perspective on the reasons for the loss has eight components, a couple of which we definitively do not share. One point or two boil down to being too careful. Read them here.
Grand concepts that our friends have suggested (in part) that should be examined more fully include:
- The tipping point, a concept which animated our efforts this election to pull out the stops to oppose the obamanation had already been reached . . . Susan Frazer
- Our own Resident Crank has made a strong case in conversation that the reason people did not vote against Obama is that however high the unemployment numbers are, people are not hurting as a historical concept – hard to vote against Santa Clause as Rush Limbaugh also suggested today.
- We would also suggest that in spite of a number of influential newspapers endorsing Romney, abandoning their endorsement of Obama in 2008, their own pages, and their reliance on AP had served for five years to obfuscate Obama’s record. The public was not to be much affected after they had lionized Obama for so long. Further that the obamantion was a triumph of the NEA. The dumbing down of the less than forty-five year old voting population had worked marvelously. More on that and the “too little too late” realizations passed on by the nation’s Catholic Bishops later in this series of articles.
