My cousin-in-law, Robert, an American originally from Nicaragua, shares his thoughts.
28 Replies to “The Death Of An Election. A Post Mortem and the Pain to follow.”
I’m having trouble understanding the results.
I don’t get why America wouldn’t want to try something else after the hard facts of the past four years.
Personality politics? The debt doesn’t matter? It’s not all Obama’s fault and we should stay the course?
I don’t know. I hate to go down the hate path where everyone is a freeloader voting for free stuff etc.etc.
A thoughtful post-mortem. Like your cousin-in-law, Kyla, I agree that it was the American people who were found lacking in the re-election of a failed POTUS (along with the in-the-bag-for-Obama media).
But, there’s no mention of possible voter fraud, which seems to me a quite plausible explanation of such close numbers on so many fronts. In every state where Romney was winning, all of a sudden he wasn’t winning. Long voter lines: Long lists of voters who hadn’t yet voted? A few phone calls? A few bus loads of voters all too happy to vote in their place, especially as no photo ID was required?
Here are a couple of links to possible explanations:
The crash of Orca, a program designed to identify likely Romney voters who had not yet voted on Election Day, and then get them to vote: http://blogs.computerworld.com/governmentindustries/21310/inside-look-behind-romneys-loss-epic-failure-its-orca-big-data-app
Voting machines changing votes from Romney (and other Republican candidates) to Obama (and other Democrats): http://pjmedia.com/blog/ohio-post-mortem-glitz-gimmicks-sleight-of-hand-and-witnessing-fraud/
In Ohio, Obama won by only 107,241 votes.
Hmmm …
Yeah well….maybe it’s all for the best.
These folks are correct it not the Republicans or the donkey’s fault but the electorate’s fault…that’s whar the buck stops.
Problem is this ignorant, dumbed down electorate had an option of turning things around in 4-5 years….no instant fix. But now the hard times will last a decade longer…at least.
In the process, civil unrest may arise….the gimme culture will riot when inevitably the free stuff stops….The administration can no longer blame Bush but the Repubican House will do…but regardless the result…mob rule will rule and the donkeys inside the beltway will reap the whirlwind…perhaps a Romanian solution.
The mob unlike the Paris mob will not have leaders, a few rabble rousers but not credible leaders….picture OWS/flash mob. The lose cannon will not be the TEA party.
Property damage/violence will be concentrated in the “Blue” urban enclaves….
Logically the element able to pick up the pieces will be the military…not the bureaucracy…
Money is the biggest problem that will be felt.
This unprecedented level of debt hasn’t been felt yet. When it is, watch out.
Good article Kyla. Ring of truth, for sure. Romney would have to be super human to pierce the veil of stupid that half of America seems to live in. People voting for more free stuff. Kinda makes me nauseous.
Yeah, I would not bet on that “they cannot blame Bush” thing. I asked a guy at lunch and he explained it to me. 8 years of Clinton with no bad spillover. 12 to 16 years of Bush, maybe longer, depends how things go. 0 to 4 years of Obama. Nice little thing they got there.
If Hillary actually manages to win in 2016, I think they can stretch the blame Bush thing to 24 years. Yes, they are that good.
If you look at the balloting numbers, Obama got far fewer votes than last time and The GOP had 49% of the popular vote as opposed to Obama with 49% of the popular vote (with 2% going to other candidates or write-ins)
So where is Obama’s mandate? H produced no landslide win. He has no support for any major changes or radical agendas. This is a ham-strung administration with a lame duck POTUS who is facing two potential impeachment charges.
We shall see just how far he thinks he can go, the first challenge will be the fact he now OWNS the bad economy he helped make, the second challenge will be in trying to deliver on his anti-second amendment brags.
All this for a man who really does not really like the job of leading a nation.
If the US goes into another recession which it will then there is no chance he can get away with blame Bush. The libtards will turn eventually.
Some interesting questions raised in the article. The entire time I was reading it, I was pondering the initial questions. Here are some thoughts I had….
The Democrats (progressives, liberals) have done a good job of framing Republicans (conservatives) as enemies of everyone. While this is a spurious claim, they also have control over our education system and our mass communications. As a result, many people have never been exposed to the conservative way of looking at things. If everything you’re told in life is told with a progressive/liberal bias, how could you not believe that conservatives/Republicans are as evil as they’re painted by the progressive left? I guarantee you that most democrats/lefties would be shocked at the demographic makeup of the Republican party. But because the liberal bias dominates the media organizations, you won’t see that sort of information. Instead, you see the extreme cases. Even though a huge majority of the Republican party would agree that abortion in the case of rape should definitely be allowed, all we heard about was a single opinion, and yet it was somehow painted as a widely held belief. As much as we want to believe that the internet and citizen journalism is exploding and taking over, the fact is the television is still the primary delivery vehicle for news. Even printed news is capable of influencing a large number of our population. Imagine if all you ever read was the New York Times, and all you ever watched was ABC, CBS, and MSNBC. Sadly, there are many people that can claim these as their only source of information. Combine this with an education system that promotes liberalism, and you can see how a large number of our population are so easily led astray.
Voting age should be raised to 30. Did you see that clip of university students being asked about Benghazi?
I cannot blame Governor Romney nor Congressman Ryan although blame will be assigned to them. They ran a strong campaign against an incumbent who ran his campaign modeled after “Seinfeld”.
That’s how far I got. Anyone who thought R/R ran a strong campaign should whack their head against a wall. There campaign was pathetic.
Also enough with the Christian persecution complex.
Here’s a much better article about how the GOP needs to stop alienating everyone and start actually standing for limited government. http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/09/nick-gillespie-on-why-romney-and-the-rep The short answer is that the GOP insisted on pushing backward-looking social issues in a country that is increasingly libertarian. Romney called for “self-deportation” during the Republican primary season and attacked Gov. Rick Perry—who pulls upward of 40 percent of Latino voters in Texas—for his mildly pro-immigrant stance (in his 2004 re-election bid, George W. Bush received around 40 percent on the Latino vote). If Republican representatives such as Steve King (R-Iowa) continue to talk about immigrants as akin to dogs and livestock, there’s no way that the party can expect Hispanics to vote for them. Or non-Hispanics who are rightly disturbed by such attitudes.
THEIR campaign, LAS, was where the electorate’s head should have been- the economy.
Furthermore, the rancid fear of Mormonism, Catholicism and conservatism cannot be ignored or forgotten. The stench of it was everywhere in the Obama camp. When you cannot explain away sixteen trillion dollars in debt, high unemployment or the rise of Islamism with American help, the next best thing is to paint your opponent as a monster. The electorate fell for it hook, line and sinker.
I’m still waiting for the Dems to explain how a President Romney would have gone about overturning two landmark SCOTUS decisions.
The article was dead on. Watching the election was like having a ringside seat while the Visigoths sacked Rome. Americans squarely, fairly and enthusiastically chose irreversible decline. Rarely can one witness folly on such a grand scale.
The only pertinent question now is how to survive the inevitable collapse. I’m taking such precautions as I can, as I’m sure are many others.
THEIR campaign, LAS, was where the electorate’s head should have been- the economy.
No it wasn’t. Their campaign was ‘I’m not Obama so vote for me’. They were weak and didn’t attack Obama. Truly the GOP is America’s answer to the Liberal Party. Vacuous, largely devoid of substance and arrogant in the ‘we are America so you have to vote for us’ mold.
LAS, give it up. YOu were never a fan of Romney and would have gladly spit in his face.
Asking (or putting faith in) you to ‘objectively’ describe RR’s campaign isn’t a formula for finding nuggets of truth.
Your words here precede you.
If you look at the black vote it went 90-99% for Obama(at least it did in Ohio and I don’t think it was different anywhere else) One black person voting for another black because he is black and will act like Santa Claus. What can be more powerful than one black person voting for another black person who will give you a free cell phone.
What Jim303 said. Rarely does a generation witness such a downfall. We have.
LAS, when Romney was talking about unemployment, ect, that was all “I’m not Obama”, right?
Here’s a couple of chew toys for the troll: Happy Fiscal Cliffmass, and the Obamacare Layoff Bomb.
All of which laid out nicely by the Romney campaign, all of which paid attention to by half the population. And now coming as a rude shock to the other half that voted for it without knowing what they were voting for, because they refuse to pay attention or lack the wit God gave a chicken.
Same people whose cars got flooded by Sandy because they were TOO STUPID to move them.
YOu were never a fan of Romney and would have gladly spit in his face.
Yes! I knew he was a crap candidate and was totally vindicated! Instead of whining about it maybe you should learn from it. By which I mean ‘do as I say’.
From an email:
Subject: FW: Czech Quote on re-electing Obama
Interesting Czech Quote
This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. It was translated into English from an article in the Prague newspaper Prager Zeitungon:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.”
I rarely agree with “LAS”, but do on this. Blaming the American people for the election is like blaming the Leaf’s fans for the team’s dismal showing.
The Presidency was up for grabs,and the GOP failed in their mission. Romney himself,as a former executive, knows that “the buck stops here”,and it stops with the GOP old guard who chose a compromise candidate, one THEY felt safe with.
Some SDA’ers have short memories. During the seemingly endless GOP candidates debates, few,if any here,championed Romney,and most made sounds of disappointment when he was the chosen Presidential candidate.
I notice most pundits are now experiencing the same memory loss,as when Romney WAS chosen, most weren’t very enthusiastic.
The GOP had some good candidates, some came with scandals attached,some were controversial, and the old boys network wasn’t comfortable with them, so Mr.Bland was their choice. At the time,many said he was the wrong choice, and we were right,he was,he failed.
We can dissect this election until Hell freezes over,but in the end,the GOP had a job to do,they knew the field they were playing on, and failed to deliver. We’d fire a football coach for the same performance,we WOULDN’T blame the fans for not cheering loud enough.
pete says it well by reminding us of the Media Party and its accomplice, the educational system, herding the bread and circus crowd toward Obama and socialism.
Eastern paul, the Prager Zietungon has it right.
Sadly, we are witnessing the decline of a great nation.
The US needs a Conservative party that has no ties to religion. What killed the Republicans was all the religious stuff like repealing Roe v. Wade, abolishing access to birth control, etc. This is 2012. No body will vote for junk like that. So Americans voted for Obama knowing he is a failed president but better than the alternative. If the GOP had not wrecked themselves with the religious crap, they might have won. But then, I am not all that sure that the Republicans are a conservative party.
Well, actually, Eve Stevens, the problem with America now is that it, largely, has fewer and fewer ties to religion, which has meant lower moral and ethical standards — thus all of the voter fraud met by only a shrug and a weak lament, “Whatever”.
It’s unfortunate that you think that ethical behaviour and the rights of the unborn (too many of whom are female) are “junk like that.”
I’m having trouble understanding the results.
I don’t get why America wouldn’t want to try something else after the hard facts of the past four years.
Personality politics? The debt doesn’t matter? It’s not all Obama’s fault and we should stay the course?
I don’t know. I hate to go down the hate path where everyone is a freeloader voting for free stuff etc.etc.
A thoughtful post-mortem. Like your cousin-in-law, Kyla, I agree that it was the American people who were found lacking in the re-election of a failed POTUS (along with the in-the-bag-for-Obama media).
But, there’s no mention of possible voter fraud, which seems to me a quite plausible explanation of such close numbers on so many fronts. In every state where Romney was winning, all of a sudden he wasn’t winning. Long voter lines: Long lists of voters who hadn’t yet voted? A few phone calls? A few bus loads of voters all too happy to vote in their place, especially as no photo ID was required?
Here are a couple of links to possible explanations:
The crash of Orca, a program designed to identify likely Romney voters who had not yet voted on Election Day, and then get them to vote:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/governmentindustries/21310/inside-look-behind-romneys-loss-epic-failure-its-orca-big-data-app
Voting machines changing votes from Romney (and other Republican candidates) to Obama (and other Democrats):
http://pjmedia.com/blog/ohio-post-mortem-glitz-gimmicks-sleight-of-hand-and-witnessing-fraud/
In Ohio, Obama won by only 107,241 votes.
Hmmm …
Yeah well….maybe it’s all for the best.
These folks are correct it not the Republicans or the donkey’s fault but the electorate’s fault…that’s whar the buck stops.
Problem is this ignorant, dumbed down electorate had an option of turning things around in 4-5 years….no instant fix. But now the hard times will last a decade longer…at least.
In the process, civil unrest may arise….the gimme culture will riot when inevitably the free stuff stops….The administration can no longer blame Bush but the Repubican House will do…but regardless the result…mob rule will rule and the donkeys inside the beltway will reap the whirlwind…perhaps a Romanian solution.
The mob unlike the Paris mob will not have leaders, a few rabble rousers but not credible leaders….picture OWS/flash mob. The lose cannon will not be the TEA party.
Property damage/violence will be concentrated in the “Blue” urban enclaves….
Logically the element able to pick up the pieces will be the military…not the bureaucracy…
Money is the biggest problem that will be felt.
This unprecedented level of debt hasn’t been felt yet. When it is, watch out.
Charles Darwin was right. Even with voters it’s all about evolution.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/darwin-4-000-votes-ga-race-article-1.1199595
Good article Kyla. Ring of truth, for sure. Romney would have to be super human to pierce the veil of stupid that half of America seems to live in. People voting for more free stuff. Kinda makes me nauseous.
Yeah, I would not bet on that “they cannot blame Bush” thing. I asked a guy at lunch and he explained it to me. 8 years of Clinton with no bad spillover. 12 to 16 years of Bush, maybe longer, depends how things go. 0 to 4 years of Obama. Nice little thing they got there.
If Hillary actually manages to win in 2016, I think they can stretch the blame Bush thing to 24 years. Yes, they are that good.
If you look at the balloting numbers, Obama got far fewer votes than last time and The GOP had 49% of the popular vote as opposed to Obama with 49% of the popular vote (with 2% going to other candidates or write-ins)
So where is Obama’s mandate? H produced no landslide win. He has no support for any major changes or radical agendas. This is a ham-strung administration with a lame duck POTUS who is facing two potential impeachment charges.
We shall see just how far he thinks he can go, the first challenge will be the fact he now OWNS the bad economy he helped make, the second challenge will be in trying to deliver on his anti-second amendment brags.
All this for a man who really does not really like the job of leading a nation.
If the US goes into another recession which it will then there is no chance he can get away with blame Bush. The libtards will turn eventually.
Some interesting questions raised in the article. The entire time I was reading it, I was pondering the initial questions. Here are some thoughts I had….
The Democrats (progressives, liberals) have done a good job of framing Republicans (conservatives) as enemies of everyone. While this is a spurious claim, they also have control over our education system and our mass communications. As a result, many people have never been exposed to the conservative way of looking at things. If everything you’re told in life is told with a progressive/liberal bias, how could you not believe that conservatives/Republicans are as evil as they’re painted by the progressive left? I guarantee you that most democrats/lefties would be shocked at the demographic makeup of the Republican party. But because the liberal bias dominates the media organizations, you won’t see that sort of information. Instead, you see the extreme cases. Even though a huge majority of the Republican party would agree that abortion in the case of rape should definitely be allowed, all we heard about was a single opinion, and yet it was somehow painted as a widely held belief. As much as we want to believe that the internet and citizen journalism is exploding and taking over, the fact is the television is still the primary delivery vehicle for news. Even printed news is capable of influencing a large number of our population. Imagine if all you ever read was the New York Times, and all you ever watched was ABC, CBS, and MSNBC. Sadly, there are many people that can claim these as their only source of information. Combine this with an education system that promotes liberalism, and you can see how a large number of our population are so easily led astray.
Voting age should be raised to 30. Did you see that clip of university students being asked about Benghazi?
I cannot blame Governor Romney nor Congressman Ryan although blame will be assigned to them. They ran a strong campaign against an incumbent who ran his campaign modeled after “Seinfeld”.
That’s how far I got. Anyone who thought R/R ran a strong campaign should whack their head against a wall. There campaign was pathetic.
Also enough with the Christian persecution complex.
Here’s a much better article about how the GOP needs to stop alienating everyone and start actually standing for limited government.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/09/nick-gillespie-on-why-romney-and-the-rep
The short answer is that the GOP insisted on pushing backward-looking social issues in a country that is increasingly libertarian.
Romney called for “self-deportation” during the Republican primary season and attacked Gov. Rick Perry—who pulls upward of 40 percent of Latino voters in Texas—for his mildly pro-immigrant stance (in his 2004 re-election bid, George W. Bush received around 40 percent on the Latino vote). If Republican representatives such as Steve King (R-Iowa) continue to talk about immigrants as akin to dogs and livestock, there’s no way that the party can expect Hispanics to vote for them. Or non-Hispanics who are rightly disturbed by such attitudes.
THEIR campaign, LAS, was where the electorate’s head should have been- the economy.
Furthermore, the rancid fear of Mormonism, Catholicism and conservatism cannot be ignored or forgotten. The stench of it was everywhere in the Obama camp. When you cannot explain away sixteen trillion dollars in debt, high unemployment or the rise of Islamism with American help, the next best thing is to paint your opponent as a monster. The electorate fell for it hook, line and sinker.
I’m still waiting for the Dems to explain how a President Romney would have gone about overturning two landmark SCOTUS decisions.
The article was dead on. Watching the election was like having a ringside seat while the Visigoths sacked Rome. Americans squarely, fairly and enthusiastically chose irreversible decline. Rarely can one witness folly on such a grand scale.
The only pertinent question now is how to survive the inevitable collapse. I’m taking such precautions as I can, as I’m sure are many others.
THEIR campaign, LAS, was where the electorate’s head should have been- the economy.
No it wasn’t. Their campaign was ‘I’m not Obama so vote for me’. They were weak and didn’t attack Obama. Truly the GOP is America’s answer to the Liberal Party. Vacuous, largely devoid of substance and arrogant in the ‘we are America so you have to vote for us’ mold.
LAS, give it up. YOu were never a fan of Romney and would have gladly spit in his face.
Asking (or putting faith in) you to ‘objectively’ describe RR’s campaign isn’t a formula for finding nuggets of truth.
Your words here precede you.
If you look at the black vote it went 90-99% for Obama(at least it did in Ohio and I don’t think it was different anywhere else) One black person voting for another black because he is black and will act like Santa Claus. What can be more powerful than one black person voting for another black person who will give you a free cell phone.
What Jim303 said. Rarely does a generation witness such a downfall. We have.
LAS, when Romney was talking about unemployment, ect, that was all “I’m not Obama”, right?
Here’s a couple of chew toys for the troll: Happy Fiscal Cliffmass, and the Obamacare Layoff Bomb.
All of which laid out nicely by the Romney campaign, all of which paid attention to by half the population. And now coming as a rude shock to the other half that voted for it without knowing what they were voting for, because they refuse to pay attention or lack the wit God gave a chicken.
Same people whose cars got flooded by Sandy because they were TOO STUPID to move them.
YOu were never a fan of Romney and would have gladly spit in his face.
Yes! I knew he was a crap candidate and was totally vindicated! Instead of whining about it maybe you should learn from it. By which I mean ‘do as I say’.
From an email:
Subject: FW: Czech Quote on re-electing Obama
Interesting Czech Quote
This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. It was translated into English from an article in the Prague newspaper Prager Zeitungon:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.”
I rarely agree with “LAS”, but do on this. Blaming the American people for the election is like blaming the Leaf’s fans for the team’s dismal showing.
The Presidency was up for grabs,and the GOP failed in their mission. Romney himself,as a former executive, knows that “the buck stops here”,and it stops with the GOP old guard who chose a compromise candidate, one THEY felt safe with.
Some SDA’ers have short memories. During the seemingly endless GOP candidates debates, few,if any here,championed Romney,and most made sounds of disappointment when he was the chosen Presidential candidate.
I notice most pundits are now experiencing the same memory loss,as when Romney WAS chosen, most weren’t very enthusiastic.
The GOP had some good candidates, some came with scandals attached,some were controversial, and the old boys network wasn’t comfortable with them, so Mr.Bland was their choice. At the time,many said he was the wrong choice, and we were right,he was,he failed.
We can dissect this election until Hell freezes over,but in the end,the GOP had a job to do,they knew the field they were playing on, and failed to deliver. We’d fire a football coach for the same performance,we WOULDN’T blame the fans for not cheering loud enough.
pete says it well by reminding us of the Media Party and its accomplice, the educational system, herding the bread and circus crowd toward Obama and socialism.
Eastern paul, the Prager Zietungon has it right.
Sadly, we are witnessing the decline of a great nation.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/10/conrad-black-the-obama-disaster-part-ii/
Conrad Black says pretty well what many of us believe, that Romney was a “weak” candidate,compares him to Landon and Goldwater.
The ice was slushy,the field was muddy,the refs were against us…..and we lost.
The US needs a Conservative party that has no ties to religion. What killed the Republicans was all the religious stuff like repealing Roe v. Wade, abolishing access to birth control, etc. This is 2012. No body will vote for junk like that. So Americans voted for Obama knowing he is a failed president but better than the alternative. If the GOP had not wrecked themselves with the religious crap, they might have won. But then, I am not all that sure that the Republicans are a conservative party.
Well, actually, Eve Stevens, the problem with America now is that it, largely, has fewer and fewer ties to religion, which has meant lower moral and ethical standards — thus all of the voter fraud met by only a shrug and a weak lament, “Whatever”.
It’s unfortunate that you think that ethical behaviour and the rights of the unborn (too many of whom are female) are “junk like that.”