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How is Romney Dealing With the Election Loss?

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The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning now without a plan.

Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla, a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction workers fixing up his next-door neighbor’s home, sending out regular updates on the renovation. He devours news from 2,600 miles away in Washington about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, shaking his head and wondering what if.

Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver transplant soon: “I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to treatment.”

It’s not what Romney imagined he would be doing as the new year approaches.

Four weeks after losing a presidential election he was convinced he would win, Romney’s rapid retreat into seclusion has been marked by repressed emotions, second-guessing and, perhaps for the first time in the overachiever’s adult life, sustained boredom, according to interviews with more than a dozen of Romney’s closest friends and advisers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Questions the RINO Party Establishment Won’t Be Asked (and Can’t Answer)

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Somehow both the Left and the Republican Party establishment are allowed to each go through life tip-toeing through the raindrops, with each rarely compelled to defend their indefensibles.

That has again been apparent on the Ruling Class news shows following the election, as RINO after RINO and Republicrat after Republicrat strolled in front of the cameras to say that unless Republicans become more like Democrats they just can’t win elections. Of course, all of this propaganda begs several follow-up questions that almost never get asked, which is why I will ask them here.

Questions like:

• John McCain, if it’s true that Republicans need to move left on issues in order to win elections as you have (repeatedly) suggested, then why weren’t you running for re-election last month? Why did you lose in 2008?

• How come Republicans did very well in the 2010 elections and not as well in the 2012 elections? If it’s because we were too conservative, what evidence do you have that the failed campaign Republicans waged in 2012 was to the right of the successful campaign of 2010?

• If elections are all about winning over those supposedly crucial independents, then why didn’t Mitt Romney win the election? He won independents in Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado – all states McCain lost independents to Obama in 2008 – and did six points better with independents in Florida than McCain did in 2008. If you flip all those states to Romney he wins the Electoral College, yet he did what he was supposed to do with independents in those states and still lost them all. How do you explain that?

• If elections are only about the independents, should conservatives then en masse abandon their party affiliation and re-register as independents as a means of actually getting you to care about what they think for a change?

• If it’s true we’re alienating voters because of our stance in defense of marriage, then how do you explain the fact marriage out-performed Romney in every state it was on the ballot? For example, marriage performed 10 points better than Romney did in Maryland, even though it lost as well. Romney did better with evangelical turnout in Minnesota, where there was also a marriage initiative on the ballot, than McCain did four years ago. Instead of abandoning these issues, wouldn’t the smarter, more pragmatic political play be to try and link your candidates to issues more popular than your candidates? For instance, there is legitimate concern about the GOP’s status with minority voters. Yet those same minority voters are also very pro-life and very pro-marriage. If you really want to reach out to those voters, why not start with issues they already agree with you on?

• If we have to completely abandon the sanctity of life to win female voters, then how do you explain that Romney won white women by 14 points and still lost the election?

• If you’re going to abandon the sanctity of life, the defense of marriage, limited taxation, small government, out-of-control spending, and the rule of law, then what exactly makes you a Republican? Why not become a Democrat where the ideas you believe in are more popular?

• The most energized that pro-freedom and pro-liberty voters were this year was during the rally to defend Chick-fil-a prior to the Republican Convention. Did you make sure all those people were registered to vote, and ready to vote Republican for the same reasons they were standing in line for hours to get a chicken sandwich? Did you go out of your way to let that grassroots uprising of everyday Americans know which party stood with them, or did you shun them to curry favor with your ruling class friends?

• If Romney’s problems with the Republican base were just as simple as evangelicals not wanting to vote for a Mormon, then why did fewer Catholics vote in 2012 compared to 2008 despite the presence of Paul Ryan on the ticket? Furthermore, why did Romney do worse with Mormon voters than George W. Bush did in 2004?

• Why did you go scorched earth to shove Romney down our throats in the primary, only to then abandon him several times in the general election? Didn’t you tell all of us Romney was the only candidate running this time that could win?

• This week the Gallup Poll said for the first time since 2000 a majority of the American people don’t believe it’s the government’s role to provide healthcare for everybody. So then instead of funding Obamacare why aren’t you doing everything possible can to stop it?

• Do you have a plan to recover the 7 million white voters who voted in 2008 that didn’t vote in 2012? Do you know who those people are? Do you know why they didn’t vote?

Wouldn’t you love to see someone in the ruling class media ask these people these questions? Is there anyone in the “Republican media” that will ask them these questions when they get the chance?

Nah.

I mean, it’s not as if the republic is at stake or anything. Besides, it’s two-for-one martinis at the beltway’s newest trendy hangout, and Karl Rove is there laying out his latest master plan to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Gotta roll. Ta-ta.

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You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.

Mitt Romney: A good man. The right fight.

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Over the years, one of the more troubling characteristics of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self-loathing. It would be a shame if we Republicans took a narrow presidential loss as a signal that those are traits we should emulate.

I appreciate that Mitt Romney was never a favorite of D.C.’s green-room crowd or, frankly, of many politicians. That’s why, a year ago, so few of those people thought that he would win the Republican nomination. But that was indicative not of any failing of Romney’s but of how out of touch so many were in Washington and in the professional political class. Nobody liked Romney except voters. What began in a small field in New Hampshire grew into a national movement. It wasn’t our campaign, it was Romney. He bested the competition in debates, and though he was behind almost every candidate in the GOP primary at one time or the other, he won the nomination and came very close to winning the presidency.

In doing so, he raised more money for the Republican Party than the party did. He trounced Barack Obama in debate. He defended the free-enterprise system and, more than any figure in recent history, drew attention to the moral case for free enterprise and conservative economics.

When much of what passes for a political intelligentsia these days predicted that the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan meant certain death on the third rail of Medicare and Social Security, Romney brought the fight to the Democrats and made the rational, persuasive case for entitlement reform that conservatives have so desperately needed. The nation listened, thought about it — and on Election Day, Romney carried seniors by a wide margin. It’s safe to say that the entitlement discussion will never be the same.

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters. While John McCain lost white voters younger than 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 4½million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.

Read more from this article HERE.

Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for the Romney presidential campaign.

Pat Caddell: Republican ‘Consultant-Lobbyist-Establishment’ Complex Responsible For Romney Defeat

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Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s “Restoration Weekend” in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment” complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning.

“No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.”

Caddell, the former Jimmy Carter adviser who consulted on the “Hope and the Change” movie that profiled disaffected Obama 2008 voters who were not going to vote for him in 2012, warned Republicans that the consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex may threaten to take the party into oblivion if not marginalized.

The Romney campaign, Caddell said, was driven be establishment consultants and was a failure of mechanics and message.

“But most of all, it was a failure of imagination,” Caddell said. ““It was the single worst campaign in modern history of a challenger who had a chance to win … and that’s the truth and nothing can take away from that.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Romney Adviser Calls GOP Attacks on Former Nominee ‘Stunning’

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photo credit: gage skidmoreDan Senor, a top adviser to the Mitt Romney campaign, said it was “stunning” how quickly the Republican establishment turned on the GOP challenger in the wake of his election loss.

“It is stunning,” Senor told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday.

“The Friday night before the election, we were in Cincinnati for this huge rally … Tens of thousands of people, you could feel the energy, a hundred top-tier Romney surrogates were at the event,” Senor added. “I’m backstage with some of them, I won’t mention their names, but they’re talking about Romney like he’s Reagan. ‘His debate performances were the best performances of any Republican nominee in presidential history. He’s iconic.’ They were talking about him because they believed he was going to win in four or five days. And in fact, some of them were already talking to our transition [team] to position themselves for a Romney Cabinet.”

Senor declined to name anyone specifically, but indicated the offending parties had been high-profile Romney supporters up through Election Day.

“I won’t say who they are,” Senor said. “They know who they are. They were on television, it was unbelievable, it was five, six days later, absolutely eviscerating him.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Senators Plot To Control State Nominating Processes

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photo credit: dbaronRead their lips: no more Todd Akins.

In the wake of the GOP’s Election Day beatdown, influential Republican senators say enough’s enough: Party leaders need to put the kibosh on the kind of savage primaries that yielded candidates like Akin — and crippled Republican prospects of taking the Senate in two straight election cycles.

It’s time, they say, for Washington bosses to be more assertive about recruiting and then defending promising candidates. They argue that it’s critical to start enlisting local conservative activists as allies and to ease the tea party versus Washington dynamic that’s wreaked havoc on the party.

All easier said than done, of course. Tea party types have relished showing the chosen candidates of the Washington establishment a thing or two — and it’s hard to see them laying down arms overnight. But after a sure-bet election in 2012 turned into an electoral disaster, Republicans say resolving their primary problem is, well, their primary problem.

Now, top Republicans are considering splitting the difference between the heavy hand they wielded in 2010 that prompted sharp blowback from the right and their mostly hands-off approach of 2012. Both strategies produced a handful of unelectable candidates, so senators are gravitating toward a middle ground: engage in primaries so long as they can get some cover on the local level.

Read more from this story HERE.

Untold Story of 2012 Election: GOP Thrives Outside Beltway

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Once again, the collective wisdom among the talking heads on TV, editorial boards across the country and the consultant class on both the right and the left is that the Republican Party is on the ropes and basically needs to become more like the Democratic Party if it wants to survive. One hears this “helpful advice” with some skepticism, as it is a verbatim repeat of the voices of 1964, 1974, 1982, 1986, 1992 and more recently 2008. That history and more importantly, a look at the hard numbers tell a different story.

Republicans made historic gains at the state level in 2010, hitting their historical high watermark with a gain of more than 700 seats and securing control of 61 legislative chambers. A look at what happened last Tuesday shows that while Democrats had a good day at the federal level, Americans just reaffirmed the decision they made two years ago to put a majority of state legislative chambers in Republican control. And despite outrage from folks like Rachel Maddow over the reforms enacted by GOP-controlled legislatures over the past two years, in the same election that Americans reelected Barack Obama, they also issued a vote of confidence in what Republicans have done to put state fiscal houses in order.

Standing in stark contrast to the outcome of the presidential and U.S. Senate races, Republicans strengthened their control of state capitols on Nov. 6. The GOP went into 2012 with unified control of the governor’s mansions and legislatures in 24 states and will come out with full political control of 25 states. Democrats will head into 2013 with a disadvantage at the state level, having total control of just 13 states.

This is significant. While we may expect more of the gridlock in Washington that we’ve have seen over the past two years – evidenced by President Barack Obama’s continued insistence on tax hikes on small businesses and a GOP House majority returning to Capitol Hill with a fresh mandate to continue opposing them — the states, over three-quarters of which are completely controlled by Republicans or Democrats, are unobstructed from moving in whichever direction the party in power chooses.

In these single party states, we will get to see each party test its product and observe the results. Californians just voted for a $7 billion annual tax hike and awarded Democrats a supermajority of the Legislature, giving them free reign to pass further tax increases on energy, soda, plastic bags and a host of other new levies that they have long wanted to impose but couldn’t. The fact that California has a two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes and that the GOP had over a third of the seats in that Legislature was the only thing preventing the tax floodgates from opening in Sacramento. That check is no longer there.

Read more from this article HERE.

Rising Number of States Seeing One-Party Rule

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photo credit: photologue_npDivided government still rules in the nation’s capital after last week’s Tuesday’s vote, but unity is increasingly the name of the game in cities such as Annapolis, Topeka, Concord and Little Rock.

In a little-noticed footnote to last week’s election, state legislature elections this year have produced the highest number of states with one-party rule in 60 years. Democrats or Republicans now have sole control of the governorship and both legislative chambers in 37 state capitals around the country.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which tracks party representation in the country’s 50 state governments, Democrats now control all three bases of power – the governorship and both houses of the state legislature – in 14 states and Republicans in 23, with only 12 states sharing power. (Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is considered nonpartisan.)

Regional power bases are also emerging, with Democrats increasingly dominating state governments across New England.

Conversely, after last week’s vote, the GOP for the first time since 1872 now controls the Arkansas House and Senate. Just 20 years ago, Republicans didn’t have a majority in a single legislative house in the states of the old Confederacy – now they control all 11.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dead Pig In Mitt Romney T-Shirt Dumped At California GOP Office (+video)

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In a shocking display of hatred and contempt, a dead pig dressed in a Mitt Romney tee shirt and wrapped in barbed wire was dumped at a California Republican Party office yesterday. Witnesses who saw the carcass, initially thought the gruesome sight was a human body.

Law enforcement is still looking for clues as to a motive. It is unclear whether it was just a distasteful prank, an act of intimidation, or perhaps something more sinister.

See the news report from local ABC affiliate KABC below.

GOP’s Problem With Women: Twice As Many Unmarried Women Voted for Obama

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The Republican party is suffering from a serious failure to attract the female vote, exit polls following the election released on Wednesday reveal. Just 44 per cent of female voters supported Mitt Romney, while 55 per cent voted to re-elect Barack Obama – and with women making up 53 per cent of the electorate, those numbers were enough to play a significant role in keeping the GOP out of the White House.

Republicans fared particularly poorly among single women, 67 per cent of whom voted for Obama while just 31 per cent supported Romney. If Romney had been able to attract the votes of just half of women, he would have cruised to an easy victory.

The Republican failure among women was not for lack of trying – with Ann Romney playing a large role in the last few weeks of the campaign. But in the end, the party was arguably damaged by its position on key issues such as abortion and contraception.

Exit polls showed Obama holding an 11-point lead over Romney with female voters, while the Republican candidate won the male vote by just seven points.

While nearly all elections have some sort of ‘gender gap’, with women leaning left and men tending towards the right, 2012 has seen a much more pronounced trend. The total gap in this year’s election was 18 points, compared to a 12-point gap in 2008.

Read more from this story HERE.