Being wrong is one thing. Being so far off the mark that you don’t hit the target is another. In a previous post I gave 15 reasons why the 2012 Presidential Election wouldn’t be close and Mitt Romney would win in a landslide. I was wrong.
Where I really missed the mark.
Polls
One of the primary reasons I thought Romney would win was the polling data. The pollsters were “over-sampling” Democrats by a + 6 margin. Meaning we were going to see a repeat of the 2008 Presidential turnout. I didn’t believe the turnout was going to be anywhere near that and thus Romney had a huge lead. As it turns out, exit polling showed exactly that. A D+6 electorate. I just didn’t believe that was possible. I was wrong. With an electorate like that, there was no way he could possibly win.
The War on Women
I didn’t think a campaign that reduced women to a sexual organ was going to be effective. It was. “Reproductive Rights” polled as one of the reasons women under 30 voted for Obama. Reproductive rights… I’m not even sure what that means. Whatever it means, the Obama campaign was effective in convincing women that Mitt Romney was going to obstruct it. That’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Apparently women actually thought Romney was going to take away their birth control and stop them from having abortions. Neither of which is even close to being possible. But they believed it.
Hurricane Sandy
I really missed the mark with this one. I thought the abysmal response from this President would result in fewer votes for him. His response polled as the number two reason people were voting FOR him. Over 60% of people believed he did a good job. Ask the people of Staten Island how good of a job he did. Not only did/do people believe he did a bang up job, Sandy also appears to have stopped the momentum that Romney was gaining. Sandy not only destroyed people’s lives, she might just have destroyed the Romney campaign.
Online Sentiment
I based my online sentiment argument on the fact that there were more negative posts about Obama than negative posts about Romney. What I failed to recognize was the amount of online content coming from the Obama campaign and being consumed by online viewers. I was looking at what social media users were saying, not what they were seeing. The Obama campaign flat outworked (again) the Republican party online. 9 to 1 in number of posts to be exact.
Where We Are
Without going into statistics ad nauseam, President Obama was elected to a second term with one of the worst records in modern history. Millions unemployed, poverty through the roof, entitlements at record highs, debt growing at break neck rates with the United States headed straight for an economic collapse with no apparent plan of how to change things. How could so many people vote for a platform that promotes the big government principles that helped make things as bad as they are and can only make things worse?
What creates prosperity? Hard work, self-reliance, charity, etc. The things that helped make this country what it is today. Pope Paul VI said it well when he said ”All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.” The Romney campaign was devoted to the traditional American vision of what creates prosperity. That vision was outright rejected.
The progressive movement subscribes to the notion that prosperity results from something being taken from someone and given to someone else. This progressive big government movement reduces prosperity for all and simply doesn’t work. It never has and it never will. How could so many people be deceived into believing that this was the best path for America?
The Democratic Party has been hijacked by a progressive, liberal movement that is nothing less than immoral and socialistic. From partial-birth abortions to the destruction of the traditional family, this growing wave of progressives have their sites set on a new America. An America that looks nothing like the ones my grand-parents knew. One that looks nothing like I know. One that looks more like Greece than the United States. An America that redistributes wealth rather than creating it. An America that cannot sustain itself.
Where we go from here.
I’ve heard many talking heads say the Republican party must compromise its core beliefs and move more toward the middle to have any chance with what has become the “new electorate.” Wrong. If I hear one more consultant of pundit say “we need to change who we are” or “soften our stance” I think my head is going to explode. If the Republican party and the conservative movement compromises, it’s no longer the Republican party nor is it conservative. These “traditional American values” are what made this country different. They are what made this country special. They are what this country was founded on and what makes the United States of America the greatest nation the world has ever known.
We MUST NOT change who we are but we MUST learn how to communicate our vision more effectively. Stop ignoring the “new electorate.” Learn how to engage them. Learn how to have a conversation with them. Don’t let them only hear the other side of the story. Can this be done with current power structure within the Republican party? I don’t believe so. I think it’s time for a new generation of conservatives and Republicans to step up and take the wheel. We need leaders. We need statesmen.
Some say this nation will completely fall apart over the next four years. I don’t subscribe to that notion. I believe the American people are more resilient than that. I do however, believe that there are very dark days ahead of us. The GDP, National Debt, Fiscal Cliff… these are real things and there is no way to avoid them if we continue on our current path. Maybe that’s what we need. Maybe it’s going to take some very hard times to wake people up. Maybe it’s going to take people looking to the Government for help and the Government saying, “sorry, I’m tapped out.”
Obama ran and won with an undeniably atrocious record and without an agenda for a second term. He ran a campaign filled with lies and hate. He ran on the idea it’s evil to be rich and successful. That’s what he ran on. And that’s what he won on. I didn’t think that was possible. I was wrong.
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Lionel Rainey III
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