So that happened.
Meh. I told you people to never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. That wasn’t merely tongue-in-cheek. There’s a cynical, if foundational principle of politics that, despite it’s age, will never fail: people will always vote themselves free sh*t. And Barack Obama is like, 90% about free sh*t. End of story.
Like I said, I told you it was gonna happen. Jennifer Granholm and Kwame Kilpatrick and Pat Quinn and all that. Burn the economy? Meh. WHERE IS MY BIRTH CONTROL.
But life goes on. Get yourself a shotgun and some canned food and a good tax attormey and buck up, camper. It’s gonna be an interesting four years. And you all need to calm the f**k down. It’s a lot harder to work with people who are running around tearing their hair out and screaming. Some of you have children. You know what I’m talking about.
And now that I’m recovered from doing a blue shot for every swing state I lost to the Dark Side, I do have some takeaway that I’ll share with you. So I will.
1. There are certain elements of the Republican Party that need to be jettisoned or taught to obey. Evangelicals, for example, were more than happy to stand for hours in line to get themselves a chicken sandwich, but seemingly unwilling to wait in those same lines to vote their values, though lots of us assumed they would. On the other hand, Republicans kept sending a Cuban to talk to a Mexican like they were totally the same thing. Look at your landscape, people. It’s changed since the Bush years. It’s time to start reaching out and acting like minorities, young people and immigrants are valuable to your operation. The left works hard on identifying needs and serving them, even when that comes at the expense of taxpayers. The right works hard at assuming the people who have always been with them will always BE with them.
Plus, white people just aren’t having babies anymore.
2. Elections are reality shows now. For better or worse, campaigns have become less about policy and more about entertainment. Although Republicans criticized the left for resorting to “Twitter trending topics,” in this day and age of public school and Honey Boo Boo, cultural phenomenons and taste-based advertising are at the crux of voter communication. If you’re not smart, funny, engaging and quick witted, you’re going to be left behind. And when I say this, I mean, get involved in culture. And not culture from thirty years ago. And not whining about culture being too brash or bold or grotesque. Be brash. Be bold. Be grotesque. COMPETE.
3. Republicans need to stop talking about rape. I’m not saying that just to be facetious. I’m anti-abortion myself, but let’s be clear here: plastic babies and scripture verses and thirty year old slogans and talking points memos are totally useless. Stop letting ladies in stretch pants and embroidered cat sweatshirts define how you speak about the more important issues. You’re a uterus in a vagina world.
4. Rich dudes from Massachusetts are probably a losing bet.
5. The world is changing. The priorities are changing. And you play the Game of Thrones or you die.
Good luck, America. You’re gonna need it. Well, at least for the next month or so, if they Mayans were right.
UPDATE: One more thought occurred to me. Conservatives, quit being whiny pussies. The media isn’t your friend. People will call you racist. Everyone hates you and wants you to die. Put on your goddam big girl panties and suck it up. Enough with this mid-1990′s-Ann-Coulter-esuqe-waahhhh-everyone-is-mean-to-us crap. The media isn’t your friend. Hollywood isn’t your friend. So f**k them. Or at least quit chasing them down their rabbit holes.




This is a really bad day for America.
The country didn’t just re-elect a somewhat centrist Bill Clinton—the country re-elected Saul Alinsky.
I wonder if three or four years from now, when the economy is still inevitably sluggish, will Obama be blaming the state of the economy on the Administration’s policies of the past 7 or 8 years. (cue up audience laugh track)
Winston Churchill famously stated that democracy is the worst form of government…except for all the other forms.
One of the toughest obstacles we face in persuading the clueless zombies who are the “swing voters,” is the fact that “free stuff” and the proverbial “safety net” are actually very appealing to one’s human nature.
On the other hand, conservative values such as self-reliance, responsibility, and doing the right thing even when nobody is watching, requires fighting against one’s own impulse to be lazy, idle, casual, dependent, and to get free stuff that someone else pays for.
You absolutely nailed the pop culture divide between right and left. That’s why Andrew Breitbart was so indispensable to our team—he recognized this, and was the driving force to change that paradigm, particularly within the Hollywood community.
Even if just 2% of voters receive most of their “news” from Letterman, Colbert, Stewart, Saturday Night Live, and Gawker.com, that’s the difference in the popular vote in many Presidential elections—including this one.
And I share your concern about how some of the evangelicals are too acquiescent to answer trap questions about abortion and rape. They act like they never anticipated the question. They need to go to some kind of training seminar to learn how to deal with the hostile media, and develop a strategy to pivot away from potentially controversial questions, and toward talking about something innocuous that won’t end up on a loop on MSNBC and YouTube.
The only time “rape” should emanate from the mouth of a GOP candidate is when asserting that the Democrats are raping the US Treasury.
The birthrate among fairer-skinned Americans is indeed alarming.
I guess I should put my money where my mouth is and get married and produce some future GOP votes. Of course, getting married might interfere with my bachelor dating life.
Therefore, in order to make up for the disadvantage in demographics, I vote early and often on Election Day.
Hey, after all, a poll worker asking me to produce photo ID is totally against the Constitution. Or something.
Rubio/Jindal 2016.
“They need to go to some kind of training seminar to learn how to deal with the hostile media…”
I think Mark Bauerlein has the right idea. http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2012/11/obamas_win_is_an_indictment_of.html
We need to start with the basics. http://constitution.hillsdale.edu/page.aspx?pid=824
As for the gotcha questions? Use the Democrat’s talking points style against them. Anytime someone uses rape and abortion in the same question. Split the question and either talk about how abortion is killing half the next generation of Americans of African ascent. Or, declare that rapists should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and the penalties should be quite severe. I’m thinking “eunuchs” sort of thing.
47 million people are on Food Stamps.
Countless more millions are on section 8 housing or receive the “earned income tax credit” and a host of other government freebies.
And then add the armies of government workers.
Face facts, so many people’s votes are bought and paid for that even if Romney had made guest appearances on Hillybilly handfishin, Honey boo boo and Dirty Jobs it would not have mattered.
The Democrats have so many people dependent on government that all national elections are forever going Democrat.
At some point the government will collapse and the welfare bums will stop receiving their checks, but until then we can’t overcome these odds.
Look at Detroit. It’s literally a no man’s land of poverty and violence and yet the people vote the Democrats back in year after year.
According to this article if a candidate would just be able to quote the Founding Fathers better and articulate conservatism better he could run for Mayor of Detroit and win.
lol.
Agree on all points. We got our butts kicked, because we ran a moderate, AGAIN.
Next time run someone who’s a real Conservative and embraces all three legs of the stool.
You know, I’m thinking we have this just a little backwards. Is it that the idiots that voted for BO are for getting more stuff. Or, rather, is it that BO convinced them that they would have the free stuff hey already have taken away.
While talking to a SSI recipient (who actually had good reason to be on the program) she told me that there was no way she was going to vote for someone that wanted to take away her means of living (Referring to Mitt of course). This struck me as very odd for a few seconds after she said this, because I didn’t think she’d ever vote for Obama.
Then it hit me… The people aren’t necessarily voting for more free stuff, but they honestly think that an RR admin. would take away support for people who are legitimately on said programs.
I think that we are correct in that we do need to reach out and get more than just the angry white guy crowd, but in the same respect we need to truly educate people (especially those legitimately on help programs) about the intentions of the people we want to elect.
And it also wouldn’t hurt to mislead a few Democrats about when and where they are really supposed to vote, can’t tell you how many of them I tried to tell “you probably shouldn’t waste your time, your vote doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things anyway.” Don’t know if it did any good, but hey, if they can lie about my candidate then I can suppress their urge to vote.
The problem is that without big changes to Social Security, someone who needs to rely on it 20 years from now, like the woman you described, might not be able to. Congress has been spending the money that was collected for Social Security on general fund budget items for decades. You’d hear them talk about the “lock box” when elections rolled around but they were addicted to having a steady stream of cash that was garnished from everyone’s wages before they got their paycheck.
There might be a crazy few who begrudge supporting truly needy people through Social Security, but they are rare, even among conservatives. My anger is directed at Congress and their refusal to admit that they put the program on the rocks. The sad thing is, the retirees who are getting Social Security now are the same people who benefited from Congress dipping into Social Security to cover other bills. Younger workers are going to be the ones stuck with the huge federal debt and nothing in the Social Security fund to secure their retirement.
We never had a chance, not a shot in hell. Anyone with half a brain new this, and indeed everyone with half a brain kept their pocketbook out of the presidential election. That’s why Rove and Trump stepped up like they did, they thought this was their chance to put on the big-boy pants.
There was no strategy in the universe that was going to get Obama out of office, no amount of money was going to sway this thing. The dems have simply done far too good of a job painting any and all ecomonic woes as ‘Bush’s legacy’. The plebes simply can’t see past SNL skits and The Daily Show comments.
Quit whining about the media. The home team always gets to bat last in baseball, that’s the way the game is played. The media will always take the side of the liberal, that’s the way the game is played. Understand the rules, and then use them to your advantage. Your point about culture is very well taken, either use it to your advantage, or it will bludgeon you.
“Evangelicals, for example, were more than happy to stand for hours in line to get themselves a chicken sandwich, but seemingly unwilling to wait in those same lines to vote their values…”
Excuse me? The Evangelicals have been standing in line for 40 years voting like good little Republicans, only to be told “SHUT UP ABOUT ABORTION!! We can’t afford to upset the Two-bit Syphilitic Crack-Ho constituency right now!”
If you want to keep the Evangelical vote you can kill two birds with one stone and reach out to the African American voter at the same time. Since the mid 70′s Planned Parenthood and their more than willing accomplices in the Democrat Party have slaughtered at least 1/3 of all unborn Americans of African ascent. By the mid 90′s they were killing 2/5, and now, almost 1/2 of their unborn babies. Those who do survive into childhood have been sold down the river to the Teachers Unions.
Reach out to the African American community where they live, in the churches, and neighborhoods with failing schools. Both pro-life and school-choice are winning issues when framed correctly.
Get the base fired up and maybe gain inroads to a new voting block. Start now and in two years without Obama at the top of the ticket things could change greatly.
Perhaps not calling them “two bit syphilitic crack hoes” would go a long way to building bridges.
I think it’s called “hyperbole” we should look it up.
I’m just saying to some Christians is sounds as if your Republican Establishment is saying “Thanks for your vote, now GET TO THE BACK OF THE BUS WHERE YOU BELONG!”
Tim,
Evangelicals got Jimmah Cahtah elected in 1976 because they believed he was one of them.
A number of them also voted for Bill Clinton because they thought he was a good ol’ Southern Baptist who had Jesus in his heart.
And a lot of them stayed at home in 2000 when the Gore campaign dropped the “Bush was ticketed for drunk driving 25 years ago on a summer night in Maine” the Friday before the election, even though Bush had been stone cold sober for about 14 or 15 years prior to that election.
There was also a lot of consternation among Evangelicals because Mitt Romney was….sit down for this one….a Mormon, just as his father and grandfather were.
Evangelicals need to grasp the concept that we’re not electing a Minister of the United States.
Rather, we’re electing a President, US Senators, US Congressmen, and state Governors to govern our secular state, albeit with values informed by theology.
Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock and Joe Walsh all put their foot in their mouth with stupid remarks and they scared the be-jeesus out of voters—that’s just a fact.
Romney carried Missouri and Indiana handily, yet Akin and Mourdock got crushed in their Senate races.
Akin and Mourdock played right into the hands of the Republicans Hate Women narrative that the left wing kooks were pushing, and it had spill-over effect all over the country.
Evangelicals need to learn how to be a little more stealth in appealing to a diverse electorate. After all, you don’t get to govern unless you win elections.
The peanut farmer from Georgia was pro-life until he hit the national stage as was Al-Gore. The Democrats at a national level know how to keep their alliances intact.
Bush had visited a rehab center a couple of days before the whole pile hit the fan. Saying something along the lines of “I was once where you are, even getting in trouble with the law. If I can change for the better so can you.” (maybe not his style of speaking but you get the idea) He could have diffused the whole situation before it even started.
You do have a point about keeping things a little less scary. I think Mark Bauerlein has the right idea. http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2012/11/obamas_win_is_an_indictment_of.html
In other words you want consercatives to be more like Obama. No thanks, I’ll keep my guns and religion and when the country implodes, We will pick up the pieces and not allow people to vote unless they have skin in the game. In other words unless they pay income taxes, no matter their income, they don’t vote.