Ah, well, to all you conservatives out there — we tried. We really did try. And the American people spoke, and their message was clear: “We are complete and utter idiots.”
Now comes the part where the liberals tell us how out of touch we are and how we have to change, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Do not listen to them! Do you really think the liberals want us to *win*? No. They want to change us into “Democrat Lite”, basically. So ignore all advice from liberals.
What happened is pretty simple. We had a candidate who was a moderate, and he ran against the first black president. It’s amazing Romney got as close as he did. Now, the mistake the Dems are going to make is they will assume the turnout model will be the same for a white candidate. It won’t. Not even for a female candidate. Not even for Hillary. She’s not going to bring out the same demos that Obama did in droves.
So, pretty much, we live with it. On the bright side, I have a friend who lives in the Bay Area in California, and he was, as he put it, “shocked” that I thought that a lot of Obama’s advantage came from the fact that he was black. Now, I understand that my friend lives in a liberal Bizarro-world bubble, but to be that out of touch with what’s really going on shocks me. And this is not a “racist” statement: if it had been the first black *conservative* president running for re-election, with a less-than-stellar record, I would be absolutely nuts about making sure he got re-elected as well. Anyway, the point is, if people like my liberal friend truly believe that race wasn’t a factor — they will lose in 2016. Probably lose a fair amount of seats in the House and possibly tip control of the Senate to Republicans in 2014.
Us conservatives, however, do not need to change our message. Our message is strong. It resonates with people. Even with one of the most vicious campaign attacks leveled at him, Romney still captured almost half the popular vote. However, here’s where I’m going to start giving a little advice for the way forward for the GOP. The first point is that moderates keep losing elections. Look at every moderate Republican for the last 30 years or so. Reagan, a conservative, took every state in his re-election except Minnesota. Talk about a mandate! George H.W. Bush, however — a moderate — road Reagan’s coattails into his first term, but was rebuked when he ran again. Partly because of the spoiler candidate, H. Ross Perot, but mostly because of his problem with, as he put it, “the vision thing”. Moderates don’t get the conservative vision. They just don’t. And so there’s less reason for us to enthusiastically vote for them. Let’s face it; most of the Romney voters were voting against Obama, not for Romney. To continue with the list of failed moderates — Bob Dole and John McCain. In-between we had W, who was a conservative, although unfortunately he spent like a liberal. Of course, it pales in comparison with the spending Obama has racked up, but that’s a matter for another time. So learn the lesson, GOP — conservatives win, moderates lose. Do you really need any more proof?
The only policy change I think we need to make is on immigration. We need people to shut up about building 800-foot-tall fences, “self-deportation”, and the like. Because we need the Latino vote. If a Marco Rubio is nominated in 2016 and he shows a compassionate, conservative way forward on the immigration front, I think he will be almost unbeatable. Even by Hillary. Remember, Reagan, a staunch conservative, signed one of the largest amnesty bills in history.
Other than that, we need merely refine our message. We need to tailor it so that people realize they agree with it. An example: abortion. Most of us find abortion morally repugnant, and that crosses party lines. Abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”. I think 90% of the country agrees on that. So instead of uttering these moronic statements about rape (Akin’s an idiot; now, Mourdock, I understood what he was trying to say — all life is precious, even if it comes from a rape — but there are certain things you just don’t say in politics, and that’s one of them), we need to focus our efforts on the areas where people overwhelming support the GOP over the Dems. For instance: partial-birth/live-birth abortion. The vast majority of Americans find the abhorrent practice of partial-birth abortion…well, abhorrent. So let’s focus our energy on that message. Let’s propose a ban on partial-birth abortion. I dare — I double-dog dare — the Democrats to run on a platform of unfettered partial-birth abortion.
What I’m trying to tell you here is to fear not. Our message has not failed. We simply couldn’t get a candidate exciting enough to beat the incumbent, first black president in US history. Which unnerves me a bit, because we’re not exactly following MLK Jr.’s dream of judging people by the “content of their character” and not the “color of their skin”. We quite clearly re-elected a president with one overriding reason being simply because he was black. Not that I would have been any less vehement in trying to re-elect the first conservative black president, as I said. But we certainly are far from a “post-racial” society.
Our message resonates. Our message works. Our policies are the right ones. It’s just a shame that we have to wait four more years to get a crack at selling that message again to the American public. Well, two years, I guess; hopefully in 2014 we can increase our majority in the House, and maybe grab the Senate, and block everything Obama is trying to do. Sometimes gridlock is a good thing. If gridlock is keeping bad policy from going forward, God bless it. And it was, by the way, intended to do just that. Despite our modern view of the Presidency overriding the other branches of government, the checks and balances are in place precisely so that one president can’t effectively destroy the country. Despite that, Obama has a nasty habit of simply ramming his policies into place (witness what happened with Obamacare) — and in the last 90 days, he has put into place over six thousand new regulations on business. Job-stifling regulations. Liberal regulations. He’s putting lead ankle weights on business owners and telling them they’ll just have to run faster.
That, my friends, is a message that the American people will eventually rebel against. 2012 is over; we lost. But it’s not, by any means, a reason to throw our hands up in the air, say, “Well, we obviously have to become liberals!”, and change our message of individual liberty and individual responsibility. Our message works. But sometimes our messengers screw it up for us.
Have some faith and all will be well.