Republican elite and the GOP has compromised it’s role as a party of small government conservatives and Reagan’s populist roots.
From November 2012- This article was written in 2012 and warned the GOP establishment that would need to change or face a civil war within the party. Ironically, it predicted the rise of Donald Trump and the raging war we now face within the party.
I’m a big fan of numbers when it comes to analyzing elections, and this last presidential election had more statistics and facts than any other previous election recorded. After a careful reading of numbers for the last few days, some shocking facts have come to light that refutes the mantra that the GOP can’t win anymore in this climate of entitlements and rising populations of minorities.
Most importantly, it’s disheartening to learn that the GOP leadership clearly hasn’t read the numbers as they proceed to drive the party off the political cliff. Or maybe they are just choosing to ignore them in order to damage the Tea Party.
The mantra right now is that the party needs to adjust its philosophy and that standing the line on issues like abortion and immigration cost them the election. The numbers simply don’t show that however, despite the party leaders ‘gut feeling’ that the Tea Party is the problem, and sticking to conservative principles cost them the Presidency.
First of all, the main reason that the GOP lost was that the Republicans simply did not go out to the polls and vote. Numbers provided by exit polls and statistical analysis by precinct provided by numerous sources, including Rasmussen and the NY Times show that voter turnout in 2012 was well below 2008 and almost below 2004. While President Obama was 7 million votes off his 2008 pace (probably due to the economy), Mitt Romney got nearly 1 million fewer votes than John McCain—and Republican voters made up the highest percentage of that total.
Worse, hard right Libertarian candidates had some of the highest voter turnouts in US history in a Presidential campaign (barring Ross Perot, who is not considered libertarian) with Gary Johnson getting over 1.2 million votes, nearly triple that of 2004 and 2008—a number that, in swing states, might have altered the electoral map in favor of Romney.
Something else of note- the amount of minorities, women and other non-white voting categories actually went DOWN for Barack Obama. Team Obama didn’t scare any voters away from voting for Romney, nor did Romney not appeal to them—he got more of those votes than McCain did 4 years earlier. Team Romney completely ignored the realities of the conservative movement, the Tea Party and the historic 2010 election in order to appeal to a narrow group of swing votes. In almost every election, presidential candidates chase the proverbial wild goose with swing votes, which almost always split down the middle.
The bottom line is that the GOP lost the White house in 2012 for the very reason I predicted they would lose in my column in February of 2012 (SEE: ‘Electable Romney’). Mitt Romney, a moderate, failed to capture the imagination of his voting base and motivate his core constituents. This is the same reason why primary after primary, Romney failed to get much more than 25% of the votes in any single state. Mitt is a fine politician and a good leader, but in a Presidential election, you have to, above all else, appeal to the base of your party. It’s why Dole lost, Bush the Elder lost, and McCain lost. They were all moderates, and they all were chosen in order to garner swing votes.
Barack Obama knew this. Throughout the entire campaign he went hard left, talking about class warfare and wealth re-distribution. He pounded home the corporate crony image on Romney, and practically sounded like Lenin from the bully pulpit. Even though he got substantially lower votes this time around, his base came out and voted so strongly he was able to capture key districts in wing states and maintain the White House. Romney was the perfect candidate to run against for Team Obama. Rich, elite, and a white collar businessman, he fit the bill for their leftist mantra. The selection of Paul Ryan who stuck his neck out over Medicare and Social security was ideal to the Dems as well—it would play into their classic Mediscare gambit, and the choice probably lost Florida for the GOP.
Thus the GOP needs to get back to basics, and emphasize their message of small government, low taxes and defending personal liberties as well as appeal to small business owners, rather than corporate interests. While it’s always a good idea to pound the pavement to explain to the Hispanic population why conservative principles help them more than entitlements, to simply abandon or compromise principles will not garner more votes, it will simply make the GOP a lightweight Democratic party that has lost its message and its ‘fire in the belly’. Picking candidates because of their skin color, giving up on immigration issues and backing down into amnesty and avoiding the issue of abortion are all losing strategies.
They need to stand up for their principles and defend them and explain WHY they stand for what they did. Their message was badly marketed in this last election; and by backing down to challenges to it they looked like a child caught with their hand in a cookie jar, guilty and non-electable.
The compromise of principles never ends well for anyone that does so, and this time it was done at the peril of liberty at the profit of the GOP party bigwigs.
