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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.

Hispanic Female GOP Governor Says Romney “Set Us Back as a Party”

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After two days of meetings at the Republican Governors Association conference this week, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez heard a lot about the party’s need to reach new constituencies–particularly women and ethnic minorities–but few specifics about how.

As a Republican governor of Mexican descent who won all but four counties in a Democratic state, Martinez has ideas for how the party can reach voters who traditionally support Democrats. But it’s going to take some work–and a touch of humility–from her colleagues.

“Republicans need to stop making assumptions, and they need to start talking to younger people, people of color, and ask them–not talk to them–ask them, What is it that we can do better? How do we earn your vote? How do we earn the ability for you to see that we can be the party that will make your life better and that of your children?” Martinez said in an interview after the conference here. “But we can’t be the ones that come and tell them how things are going to be and how we have all the solutions.”

President Barack Obama in 2012 expanded his lead among Hispanics, black voters, Asians and women, according to exit polling, leaving many Republicans wondering what they need do to adapt to the nation’s rapidly shifting demographics.

The topic has dominated much of the party’s post-election soul searching. Some have placed part of the blame on the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, who wrote off nearly half the electorate as inevitable Obama voters when he told donors at a closed-door fundraiser last spring that 47 percent of the population would support Obama “no matter what.” Martinez criticized Romney’s comments when they were reported in September, and on Wednesday reiterated that she found them “ridiculous.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Reporter Details Journalists’ Private Anti-Mormon Bigotry

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The press corps following presidential candidate Mitt Romney frequently displayed anti-Mormon bigotry through the election season, according to fellow reporter and BuzzFeed Politics author McKay Coppins.

Coppins, who is also a Mormon, offers several interesting bits of information and even makes Mitt out to be the John Kennedy of Mormonism; like Kennedy did for Catholics, Romney’s candidacy brought his religion out from under the shadows of suspicion and into the mainstream in politics.

Most importantly, the piece reveals the stark and casual anti-Mormon bigotry of fellow members of the Old Media establishment.

Coppins recalls that other reporters following Romney constantly sniggered about his “Mormon underwear” and often made jokes about his religion in the privacy of the press plane or on their many bus trips.

The jokes from his fellows made Coppins uncomfortable. At one point he “slid down in his seat” and pretended to look at his phone to avoid eye contact with the guffawing bigots surrounding him.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Long Line of Nice Losers

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photo credit: donkeyhoteyMitt Romney now joins the long list of the kinds of presidential candidates favored by the Republican establishment– nice, moderate losers, people with no coherently articulated vision, despite how many ad hoc talking points they may have.

The list of Republican presidential candidates like this goes back at least as far as 1948, when Thomas E. Dewey ran against President Harry Truman. Dewey spoke in lofty generalities while Truman spoke in hard-hitting specifics. Since then, there have been many re-runs of this same scenario, featuring losing Republican presidential candidates John McCain, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and, when he ran for reelection, George H.W. Bush.

Bush 41 first succeeded when he ran for election as if he were another Ronald Reagan (“Read my lips, no new taxes”), but then lost when he ran for reelection as himself– “kinder and gentler,” disdainful of “the vision thing” and looking at his watch during a debate, when he should have been counter-attacking against the foolish things being said.

This year, Barack Obama had the hard-hitting specifics– such as ending “tax cuts for the rich” who should pay “their fair share,” government “investing” in “the industries of the future” and the like. He had a coherent vision, however warped.

Most of Obama’s arguments were rotten, if you bothered to put them under scrutiny. But someone once said that it is amazing how long the rotten can hold together, if you don’t handle it roughly.

Read more from this story HERE.

Where’s the Beef? No Media Outrage Over Mitt Romney Getting Shut Out in 59 Philadelphia Precincts

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photo credit: kiskeacityIt’s one thing for a Democratic presidential candidate to dominate a Democratic city like Philadelphia, but check out this head-spinning figure: In 59 voting divisions in the city, Mitt Romney received not one vote. Zero. Zilch.

These are the kind of numbers that send Republicans into paroxysms of voter-fraud angst, but such results may not be so startling after all.

“We have always had these dense urban corridors that are extremely Democratic,” said Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University. “It’s kind of an urban fact, and you are looking at the extreme end of it in Philadelphia.”

Most big cities are politically homogeneous, with 75 percent to 80 percent of voters identifying as Democrats.

[But] was there not one contrarian voter in those 59 divisions, where unofficial vote tallies have President Obama outscoring Romney by a combined 19,605 to 0?

Read more from this story HERE.

Pew Research: Romney Received Greater Percentage of Evangelical Vote than Mormon Vote

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photo credit: tim pearce, los gatosStatistics from a report released this week by the Pew Research Center indicate that Romney’s “Evangelical problem” never materialized. In fact, the numbers bear out that if the Republican nominee had a problem with religious conservatives, it was with voters who shared his Mormon faith. Though that really wasn’t the case either.

The Pew Report reflects that Romney received 79% of the Evangelical vote and 78% of the Mormon vote.

The report also revealed that Romney bested John McCain’s showing among Evangelicals coming in six points better than the 2008 nominee. Also of note, fewer Mormons voted for Romney than did for George W. Bush eight years ago.

Far from the message projected by establishment political pundits and mainstream media commentators, the facts bear out that Evangelicals and people of Mormon faith vote their values, not their denomination. It’s time to call the politicos and pundits out for religious profiling. Convicting folks in the court of public opinion based upon their religious affiliation is a form of bigotry. It needs to stop.

Video: “If We Stay Together They Cannot Defeat Us”

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Have conservatives failed because we have not been compassionate enough, we’ve been too hard core? On abortion and the traditional family, too uncompromising? On the fiscal side, too stingy? This is a growing theme among the RINO establishment.

Absolutely not! We didn’t fail because weren’t compassionate or soft enough. We failed because we offered no real choice to the US electorate.

So how do you motivate the base with a candidate who fails to fight and offer sufficient contrast to the electorate? Obviously, when there’s not enough difference, they stay home just as I predicted earlier this year during an interview with John King. Turn out is not just a function of GOTV, it’s a natural response to an inspiring, principled leader. And a leader who has solutions sufficiently different from the status quo.

So what kind of differences? How about getting back to the constitutional role of states:

This is not an easy fight; it will take extraordinary sacrifice and servant leadership. But if you love your country and wish a secure future for your children, you can’t give up.

And keep faith – there are millions of Americans whose first allegiance is to the Constitution. If we stay together, they cannot defeat us.

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.

Chris Christie Telephones Obama to Congratulate Him, But Emails Condolences to Romney

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[Editor’s Note: Chris Christie lashed out over the media’s report that he had called Obama. Christie claims that is was, in fact, Obama who called him.] New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that he had called President Obama to congratulate him on his win in the 2012 presidential election — but has only sent an email to Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for whom he campaigned heavily earlier this year.

“We didn’t have a political strategy discussion,” Christie said of his call to Obama, according to Bloomberg. “I said congratulations on your win last night Mr. President, he said thank you governor.”

Christie added that he had sent an email to Romney on Wednesday night.

“We haven’t spoken on the phone yet,” he continued.

Read more from this story HERE.

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.