Either you can take this that the country wanted to go conservative or you can join us in reality and just admit that this map is generated based on Obama's lack of turnout (or third party grabbing some votes up, although they didn't grab up 9 million votes).
It's both sides "lack of turnout" in a sense. We know Romney won the independents in a pretty broad swing from Obama - exits show Romney winning them +5, while Obama won them by 8 in 2008 - a 13 point swing rightward.
Why did Romney struggle to meet McCain's total, then? He won independents, so why did the base not show up again?
Tea Party favorites were voted out
The House stayed Republican. After winning 60+ seats in 2010, they only lost 11 of them. That's far from a repudiation.
, an incumbent presiding over a slumping economy was given a second chance, and this election represents a rejection of far-right principles.
Which far right principles were rejected, then? They certainly weren't repudiated at the local district level, or on the Senate level given that one moderate and two people caught in the "rape statement" game got ousted, and the presidential candidate was a moderate, so where's this rejection you speak of? What's the evidence?
If Republicans don't learn from their mistakes, expect a repeat in 2016.
I agree wholeheartedly. The Republicans made a huge, huge mistake in running a moderate with a crappy GOTV plan. Both are things that can be fixed.
Unless more details come out in the next week - definitely possible if not outright probable - the problem has been identified in a nutshell, and that's turnout turnout turnout. A good candidate needs to worry less about that, and bad candidates need to do more for it. Romney simply did not get his people out, and here's a firsthand account of how bad this GOTV plan truly was (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/334783.php). A lot of us expected a Wisconsin recall-style GOTV campaign. What we got was this pile of crap instead, and it utterly failed. 30k volunteers for it, who knows how many of them were locked out by the system or frozen out due to its lack of workability. Romney lost the swing states by a combined 400k - think a better GOTV program could have made that up? I do.
And the focus on the GOTV misses the broader point anyway - a more conservative candidate bridges that gap and then some. A more conservative candidate understands the need to bring the base out. Romney was a failure in that regard.
no subject
It's both sides "lack of turnout" in a sense. We know Romney won the independents in a pretty broad swing from Obama - exits show Romney winning them +5, while Obama won them by 8 in 2008 - a 13 point swing rightward.
Why did Romney struggle to meet McCain's total, then? He won independents, so why did the base not show up again?
Tea Party favorites were voted out
The House stayed Republican. After winning 60+ seats in 2010, they only lost 11 of them. That's far from a repudiation.
, an incumbent presiding over a slumping economy was given a second chance, and this election represents a rejection of far-right principles.
Which far right principles were rejected, then? They certainly weren't repudiated at the local district level, or on the Senate level given that one moderate and two people caught in the "rape statement" game got ousted, and the presidential candidate was a moderate, so where's this rejection you speak of? What's the evidence?
If Republicans don't learn from their mistakes, expect a repeat in 2016.
I agree wholeheartedly. The Republicans made a huge, huge mistake in running a moderate with a crappy GOTV plan. Both are things that can be fixed.
Unless more details come out in the next week - definitely possible if not outright probable - the problem has been identified in a nutshell, and that's turnout turnout turnout. A good candidate needs to worry less about that, and bad candidates need to do more for it. Romney simply did not get his people out, and here's a firsthand account of how bad this GOTV plan truly was (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/334783.php). A lot of us expected a Wisconsin recall-style GOTV campaign. What we got was this pile of crap instead, and it utterly failed. 30k volunteers for it, who knows how many of them were locked out by the system or frozen out due to its lack of workability. Romney lost the swing states by a combined 400k - think a better GOTV program could have made that up? I do.
And the focus on the GOTV misses the broader point anyway - a more conservative candidate bridges that gap and then some. A more conservative candidate understands the need to bring the base out. Romney was a failure in that regard.