“Romney Was Too Liberal to Win”
Another myth busted. Now can we please stop talking about how Obama won by “supressing” voter turnout, or that Romney lost because he couldn’t get conservatives to come out for him due to his being somehow insufficiently conservative? At the very least, can we wait until the votes are finished being counted?
As things stand already, the only person to ever receive more votes than Barck Obama in 2012 is….Barack Obama in 2008. When the votes are finished being counted, it’s pretty clear that Romney will have received more votes than McCain in 2012, as Tom Maguire points out here; while less likely, I suspect it’s also within the realm of possibility that Romney will have exceeded George W. Bush’s 2004 total of votes, such that the only person to have ever received more votes than Romney this year will have been Barack Obama. Mind you, relying on popular vote totals from different elections is still no less foolish, but since that is the metric some have put forward, I think it worth pointing all of this out.
Further, as even Stacy McCain emphasizes, Romney outperformed – significantly in many cases – his party’s Senate candidate in 11 of the 15 most strongly contested Senate races. And this is all before you get to the issue of how poorly conservatives did on ballot measures around the country last week. The simple fact is that the GOP’s loss last week has very little to do with Mitt Romney, and an awful lot to do with the fact that, for an awful lot of people, the party is viewed as having lost its collective mind. It would behoove conservatives and Republicans to try to understand why this is.
As things stand already, the only person to ever receive more votes than Barck Obama in 2012 is….Barack Obama in 2008.
I am shocked, shocked that the American population increases over time! Come on, this is quite possibly the world’s most meaningless statistic. It’s like all the entertainment sites pointing to yet another “record-breaking” opening weekend (caused by the combined effects of inflation and a growing population).
If the Republicans are playing things that way, shame on them for being idiots, but I’m not playing along with that game. Obama got more votes than Romney; that’s the relevant stat.
Further, as even Stacy McCain emphasizes, Romney outperformed – significantly in many cases – his party’s Senate candidate in 11 of the 15 most strongly contested Senate races. And this is all before you get to the issue of how poorly conservatives did on ballot measures around the country last week.
This, on the other hand, is very interesting; at least, it gives the lie to the idea that the Republicans lost because Romney was a weak candidate, which was at least part of the explanation I was leaning towards. It (along with the ballot measures) adds support to the thesis of a turn against conservatism generally.Report
Actually, I fully agree (see my disclaimed at the end of the second paragraph). I only noted this in response to claims by others around these parts that Obama lost support from 2008 (which is indisputably true, but, as you say, meaningless, and in any event is less true than those advancing this argument think it is), and that the only reason he won was because Romney couldn’t mobilize conservatives (which is hogwash).Report
oh, he was a weak candidate. but he was done in because his coalition is quite simply too small.Report
” The simple fact is that the GOP’s loss last week has very little to do with Mitt Romney, and an awful lot to do with the fact that, for an awful lot of people, the party is viewed as having lost its collective mind.”
As I said elsewhere, it wasn’t Romney that lost the election; it was Akin, and Bachmann, and Gingrich, and everyone else who made it easy to portray the Republican Party as the Three Stooges: Mean, Stupid, and Crazy.Report
Did the Dems or the MSM make Gingrich Speaker?
Who bears responsibility for Akin, and Bachmann, and Gingrich representing the GOP? If you have a mat in front of your door saying “Stooges Welcomed”, can you be surprised when they come in and start making themselves at home?Report
Heh.Report
I think you mean “nyuk nyuk nyuk”.Report
“Who bears responsibility for Akin, and Bachmann, and Gingrich representing the GOP? ”
50% of the voters in their Congressional district. That’s all.Report
Akin, absolutely. But Bachmann and Gingrich aren’t spending their PR time trying to get a slot on their local cable access stations.Report
And local voters did not make Gingrich Speaker of the House.Report
Without adjusting for population change, this chart is meaningless. (Many of the comments on the article say the same thing.)Report
Unlike, say, coming to the opposite conclusion by using your “gut.”Report
My gut tells me you’re right.Report
My gut tells me to always trust zic.Report
That’s stupid.Report
Bill Kristol makes the point that only four presidents in the last century have won 50% of the vote twice: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Obama.
That’s some fairly rarefied company.Report
I have been reliably assured that it is, in fact, not. In fact, he lost 13% of his 2008 vote, therefore he was practically impeached and winning as he did was practically winning on a technicality.Report
“Now can we please stop talking about how Obama won by “supressing” voter turnout, or that Romney lost because he couldn’t get conservatives to come out for him due to his being somehow insufficiently conservative? At the very least, can we wait until the votes are finished being counted?”
No, because it helps to delegitimize him, it plays into right-wing victimization propaganda, and most important it redefines ‘voter suppression’ as ‘saying bad things about Republicans’, rather than, well – voter suppression.Report
Hard to believe Romney didn’t win with fans like this: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1286888–woman-runs-down-husband-with-car-for-not-voting-in-u-s-election-say-police
“PHOENIX- An Arizona woman, in despair at the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama, ran down her husband with the family car in suburban Phoenix on Saturday because he failed to vote in the election, police said on Monday. [She] was arrested after running over [her] husband following a wild chase that left him pinned underneath the vehicle.”
Since Romney won Arizona, I’m not sure what she thinks one more vote would have done.Report
Mark –
You say…
But, the link you provide to Stacy McCain demonstrates why an attempt by grassroots Republicans to understand the reason for their loss is so very unlikely.
See, we haven’t lost our collective mind. We’re being smeared by the liberal media (and some of our lousier candidates who actually said what they think and then didn’t have the grace to quit when what they think came to light). That Romney did his best in the polls after the first debate when Moderate Mitt appeared is already conveniently forgotten by the base.Report
True dat.Report
We’re being smeared by the liberal media
Not this again.
It’s not the “liberal media” smearing anyone, it’s you betraying your true colors and people noticing. The best the “liberal media” could ever do is shine a light on what you are saying.
http://www.ericgarland.co/2012/11/09/letter-to-a-future-republican-strategist-regarding-white-people/
Putting creationist knuckle-draggers like Akin and Broun on to the Science Committee did nothing to show the country you haven’t lost your collective minds.
The insane crusade against marriage equality endears you to less and less people the more they get to know actual gays, who are about as normal as anyone and whose sexuality is probably the very least notable aspect of their personality and morality.
The Republican race to deny climate science – again, how insane do you have to be to believe some of the conspiracy theory claptrap that comes out of the GOP, the talk radio circuit, and the rest of the spokesholes for that movement?
I’ll also note just as a point of order that quoting Robert Stacy McCain, White Supremacist, is probably not the high point of intellectual discourse.
John Stewart’s “Chaos on Bullshit Mountain” segments probably summed it up best:
Let me sum up the message from Bullshit Mountain if I may. “This inartfully stated dirty liberal smear is a truthful expression of Mitt Romney’s political philosophy, and it is a winner.”
Let me tell you something, you don’t summit Bullshit Mountain unless you know your way around a turd or two.Report
I also offer you this gem from Bill Maher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ccE_rQKz3k
This is the biggest problem Romney had. It wasn’t a “liberal smear” to say that if Romney was elected, the Tea Party and every far-right-wing crazy group would have had direct White House access.Report
It’s clear I’m in agreement with you here and that I was voicing Stacy McCain’s position, isn’t it?Report
I thought so.Report
I just generally find giving RS McCain any daylight whatsoever is bad policy. The solution isn’t to talk about him, the solution is just to ignore the old white supremacists till they finally die out.Report
I’m all for keeping RSM in the shadows, but he is representative of the constituency that will have to be brought along on any meaningful Voyage of Discovery for the GOP. They will not be going quietly into that good night.Report