What can be learn from Tuesday's grim verdicts?....
Worse, as Ronald Radosh writes, a critical mass of voters bought the demonization of Romney:
Romney did not convince voters, as Florida and Ohio voters said to the press who asked, that he cared for people like them. Obama, they said, showed that he cared and understood their problems. In other words, Obama was successful in his portrayal of Romney as a spoiled man of wealth who cared only for the profit of vulture capitalists, such as those at Bain Capital as it was portrayed by the Democrats.
Radosh also writes of Sandy's impact:
[T]here is the hurricane factor. The nation saw Obama in his bomber jacket, accompanied by Republican keynoter Gov. Chris Christie as he visited the devastated areas of New Jersey hit by Hurricane Sandy. For the Democrats, it became the perfect storm that allowed the nation to believe what it wanted desperately to think — that Barack Obama had become a leader whom even the conservative governor of New Jersey worked with and praised for his leadership. The news coverage of Obama and Christie, and the governor’s effusive over-the-top praise of the president, hurt Romney in a significant fashion.
A single Obama photo-op drop-in trumped the federal government's manifest inability to do anything consequential to help Sandy's victims.
Thomas Sowell sees freedom & constitutional governance waived, in favor of authoritarian rule.
A nuclear Iran is now a virtual certitude. And MSM can take a bow: liberal media bias insulated President Obama from the Benghazi fallout, and canonized him as to Hurricane Sandy, whose aftermath in reality is emerging as a a cold-weather Katrina.
We chosen to follow the path of Europe, just as Europe is literally economically & socially imploding.
Michael Goodwin, sadly, summed it up:
He won because enough voters still believe in him with a quasi religious fervor, making the actual content of many of his policies largely irrelevant to them.
Strangely transfixed by his remote and haughty aura, they believe that, even without a real coherent economic plan, life will somehow get better for them if only they follow him.
For others, his “likability” edge made up for Romney’s advantage on the all-important economic issues. Life’s not fair, and the idea that likability trumps competence, in the Oval Office no less, strikes me as absurd, yet there it is in 21st century America.
Of course, Obama did have a message for those who feel left out of the American dream. He told them they had been cheated, that the nation was rigged against them and that he would soak the rich and redistribute their wealth. The first term proved he meant it, with a surge in disability benefits, food stamps, bailouts and class warfare, so we’re likely to get more of the same.
Bitter medicine for those of us who thought the moment could be saved: The country is changing. And not for the better.
George Will sees Marco Rubio as the GOP winner, due to his presumed ethic appeal. But in Utah Mia Love, an appealing GOP conservative of Haitian origin, lost a close race. Entitlement-manic Sandra Fluke won, and enterprise-oriented Mia Love lost. Even a decade ago this was unimaginable.
Senate. For the second straight election two senatorial races were lost by Tea Party candidates too far to the right of the state's electorate. In 2010 Christine "I am not a witch!" O'Donnell lost a winnable Blue state seat in Delaware that GOP moderate Mike Castle would surely have won; and in Nevada Sharron Angle proved too far right of the state's voters to unseat vulnerable incumbent Harry Reid, the current Senate Majority Leader. And in 2012 the "rape/abortion" twins, Missouri's Todd Akin & Indiana's Richard Mourdock, lost surefire GOP seats; especially appalling is that Akin, aided in the GOP primary by Democratic funds, refused to bow out after his mega-gaffe.
Simply put, Tea Partiers need to learn that in Purple states a Tea Party candidate can win, if not too far right; and in Blue states only a moderate Tea Partier (conservative on economic issues, moderate or liberal on social issues) has a decent chance to prevail. States are far more diverse than House districts, many of whom are monolithic for one party or another.
Four lost Senate seats in two election cycles.
House. No surprise: GOP retains, with slightly diminshed majority.
Bottom Line. America remains deeply divided, and likely will drift downward over the next four Obama years. The results will hardly be good for America's economic & national security positions.
Famously, Charles Krauthammer said: "Decline is a choice." Tragically, America has chosen--by many voters, unwittingly--decline for the next generation.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Conservative Politics
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