Were the GOP establishment wrong to back Romney so quickly ahead of Santorum?

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

They were wrong in not backing Ron Paul. The establishment should've realized that they had no shot of winning and going to a faction of the party they have long alienated. Paleoconservatives. Which means backing Ron Paul was the best hope for victory over Obama.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

They were wrong in not backing Ron Paul. The establishment should've realized that they had no shot of winning and going to a faction of the party they have long alienated. Paleoconservatives. Which means backing Ron Paul was the best hope for victory over Obama.

Lol... you really do live in scary parallel universe don't you?

[Averroës Nix]

Gallery of candidates for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination who were superior to Romney Gallery of Republican politicians who were plausible nominees and might have run better campaigns

[Maxwell]

I think Huckabee is cancer, but he's kind of a Ronald Reagan of Conservative Populism that Santorum continued in 2012. He would do well in a general election because he seems like them, not on any issues basis, though he knows what he's talking about, or seems like it, compared to a lot of people.

Bobby Jindal maybe, if he were a little less off the wall. Kind of like Ted Cruz in a lot of ways.

The rest of those candidates absolutely (although I think Haley Barbour might have a likability deficit).

[Wisconsin+17]

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Last I checked Romney is getting destroyed in this election. How did running on the economy while sacrificing social issues work out? Pretty poorly eh?

[Wisconsin+17]

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Right. So the moderates who are even more hardcore moderates will win. This is the blackjack strategy of doubling down on your losses so that when you eventually do win that you'll win all your money back.

It's simple brand loyalty. If you have a choice between fake socialism and the real thing - who are you going to support? The real thing. Every time. Republicans win when they offer a clear alternative. They lose when they try to be Democrat light.

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Oh, that's just complete rubbish. Look - you want to expand government. Clearly, you aren't afraid of government control over your life - even over your food with food stamps. What happens when the food stamps no longer show up in the mail? If you're not afraid with letting the government essentially decide whether you live or die then it's not control you fear.

No - what you fear is lack of control. You fear people choosing to make their own decisions. That's what scares you.

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:lol:

So they'll win by standing for everything and nothing at the same time. Bullsh**t. Hasn't worked. 

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And this impression of him hasn't changed at all. I hope you do have a point in here somewhere.

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He's alienated his own base. Plain and simple. You're assuming that independents are all liberal. No, we're not.

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Yeah, with 4 percent unemployment. Republican 'failure', gotcha.

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Again, McCain was leading in the polls early into September. His slide coincided with the rather conveniently placed market crash. He chose Palin in mid August, and his polls went up after choosing her, not down.

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And remind me why he suspended his campaign? Over Palin?

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

You really think a social issues election would have favoured you?

The reason you're losing this election isn't just because Romney is a bad candidate, but because the GOP base is so completely deranged most reasonable electable conservatives are waiting until the base returns to reality.

[Wisconsin+17]

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We're fighting a social issues election, it's just that Romney hasn't figured this out yet. Clinton's figured it out already.

Look at the comment. "you're afraid of control". All of you here are going full out negative on Romney because of economics? I think not. You're going out full blast because you know this is a referendum on Obamacare.

Santorum makes this a challenge. Romney concedes the election before it even starts. I said that a year ago and I say that again now.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Romney's problems are entirely the result of his own flaws and his campaigns inability to deal with them, or organize in a way that could match what Obama is doing.

His positions are fine, it is a problem of articulation, not positioning.

Running someone who would have played right into Obama's hands on the War on Women, would have been doomed from the start. Romney's wasn't doomed from the start. He had ample chances to win this election and has blown every one of them, but he still had more then one chance at winning this general election. Every other candidate was a joke, even including Huntsman. When you spend the first two years of the Obama administration working for his administration in China, then run a campaign openly hostile to your own party's base, with a strategy primarily centered on throwing the election to Obama as a way of "teaching them a lesson" so that you can come back as the savior four years later, yes that is a joke candidate. Just as much as Bachmann, but for different reasons. Huntsman could have won a general election, but he could never have won the primary and thankfully never will and thus never had a chance of becoming President.

[Wisconsin+17]

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So you're saying that Romney was, in fact, unelectable?

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I got news for you - the war's been declared and we're losing. We might actually want to fight back for a change instead of rolling over and playing dead.

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Then why am I right about the outcome, and you were 100 percent wrong? I called this before he secured the nomination. I said that Romney didn't have what it took to beat Obama - that he wasn't electable - that the same flaws that were hampering him in the primary would cause Obama to roll over him like the armadillo caught in a passing lane.

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Nope. Romney's the joke. That's what we said before, and we've been proven right. You said that Romney had a chance, and now you've been proven wrong.

So, might as well take your lumps now. Moderate Republicanism is dead and Romney killed it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

1. Nope, see part three.

2. How do you win it by conceding that Obama is right? You still aren't reading the numbers I see. If you want to win, you got to be strategic and pick your fights with care.

3. Nope, go back to point one. You can disect a post to respond, but you can't pretend as if the various segments exist in isolation and the others conveniently disappear and thus allow you to reject one and then other with critiques the others answer. Especially if you include both of them in single post. So your nice little tactic there defeated itself.  

How was I 100% wrong? I always said Romney had problems. I even stated that whether or not he overcomes them will depend on whether or not his campaign improves over time time. OMG, I WAS ACTUALLY RIGHT!!! The others had more catastrophic problems, to the point of precluding competativeness as a possibility.

4. Romney did have a chance, HE BLEW IT! not me. Now you are changing the definition of "chance" to "guarrantee". You can't do that either. I don't peddle in absolutes so interpreting my words they way you would use them, will always lead to you not understanding what I say. Romney was electable, if he could successfully deal with the various hinderances specific to him as a candidate. That is a weak candidate for sure, but it is more then Rick or John had. That was no chance.

I won't take jack crap from you or anyone else. And I can legitimately do that because I can analyse problems objectively, and have done so, even on a candidate I have supported for six years. I don't get emotionally attached to politicians, like so many on both the right and the left love to do.

Quit trying to personalize this. It isn't about me or my positions. It is about achieving reforms on issues that are vital for the country's sake. This back and forth between moderates and conservatism is more like a surreal distraction, a contest to see who was more out of touch on either reality or sanity. Fine, fancy yourselves playing "Oh my buddy Rick would have won" or "my buddy John would have won". Reality says something different about both candidates. A candidate who doesn't have a chance to win is just as bad as a candidate who ignores reality about pressing problems in order to win. Romney was willing to address the problems and still remain electable. Electability isn't a guarranteed victory, it just ensures you aren't guarranteed defeat.

You will never be able to credibly argue that any of Romney's primary opponents could have done better. Not because it can never be tested, but because the logical backing for it is weak at best. I liked some things that Santorum advocated and he did have some good ideas, but he was far too hindered by his own weaknesses to even become competative in the first place.

[Wisconsin+17]

Electable to you, means nothing more than 'candidate is a moderate republican' who supports abortion and homosexuality.

Why are you a republican? What is it that Obama isn't doing for you? Romney's loss here proves that moderate republicanism is the problem. The problem isn't Romney. The problem isn't the candidate. The problem is the ideas behind Romney which are sabotaging him and the party.

How many elections is it going to take before you finally wake up to this fact? Republicans want someone who supports what they believe - traditional marriage and the humanity of the unborn. Having a nominee in a year where Obamacare is one of the top election issues who is most famous for being the architect for his own plan is like trying to win a football game with the opposition's playbook.

We are not going to beat the Democrats by playing their game. Republicans have to play their own game with their own goals that are not the same as what the democrats want.

What would it take for you to admit that moderate republicans are the problem? How many election losses would it take for you to change your mind, NC Yankee?

[Averroës Nix]

Quite a few posters in this thread are ignoring the lessons of political science and overrating campaign effects.

Most fundamentals-based election models predict that Obama should be a mild favorite for re-election. Barring some external shock to the campaign, we should have expected Romney - or any other Republican, for that matter -  to be a few points behind in the polls at this point. Sure, his campaign could be responsible for some of that deficit. But to ascribe great importance to Romney's admittedly lackluster efforts to get elected - whether you're a Democrat (or a moderate Republican) arguing that voters are finally rejecting Republican extremism, or a Republican arguing that a Huntsman or a Santorum would be demolishing Obama and his failed policies - is to give the campaign more credit than it really deserves.

(As my earlier post implies, I especially take issue with claims that any of the declared candidates who challenged Romney would be outperforming him. First of all, after Perry's collapse Romney was the only plausible nominee. Second, as I've already pointed out, all of the other candidates ran terrible campaigns. There's no reason to assume that Santorum - who had incredibly high unfavorables among the general electorate by the time he withdrew -  would've stopped saying stupid things or that Huntsman - to whom no one ever paid any attention - would have stopped being painfully awkward and transparently condescending.)

[Wisconsin+17]

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Romney had higher unfavorables than Santorum throughout the campaign.

Are you forgetting just how many states Santorum actually won?

[Badger]

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Last I checked Romney is getting destroyed in this election. How did running on the economy while sacrificing social issues work out? Pretty poorly eh?

Oh, Romney's undeniably getting his backside handed to him, but that's because he's done such a horrid job campaigning. He undeniably has notable and unique handicaps--an uber-patrician style that belies his status as one of the wealthiest men to ever run for president (rather than a folksy style that plays down one's wealth like W had), having pioneered individual mandated health insurance as governor while trying to run against Obamacare, never truly earning the trust of the conservative wing--but the biggest problem has been just plain incompetence in delivery.

Romney's business and executive record could've at least had the chance (and still does--barely) to present an alternative to Obama's record on the economy; for Santorum that would've been a non-starter due to being seen, justifiably, as a cultural warrior rather than a Pat Toomey type. I realize Santorum wouldn't have by any means whatsoever abandoned the economy as an issue and would've hit Obama as hard as possible there (as he did during the primaries), and for that matter Toomey's social issues voting record is near-identical to Santorum's, but voters would've been far more reluctant to support an alternative to Obama whose raison d' etre is opposing gay marriage, abortion, secularization of society, etc, when their focus is overwhelmingly on jobs and the economy.

From reading your subsequent exchanges with NYC, we'll just have to agree to disagree on whether running against Obama by emphasizing social issues with persistant unemployment and erratic economic growth would've been the best strategy.

[sg0508]

Santorum wouldn't have done any better and is perceived to be way too far to the right socially.  He wouldn't be able to connect with the average American either.

This is the GOP's problem.  No matter who they nominate, they all seem to be misfits.

[Averroës Nix]

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Romney had higher unfavorables than Santorum throughout the campaign.

I don't remember Santorum's net favorability rating among all voters ever exceeding Romney's.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Again, I don't see evidence this is true. Obamacare is a huge pocketbook issue - it's the largest tax raise in American history. That Romney shelves this entire issue from the start was a losing proposition. Anyways, moderates are now 0-2, and 0-3 going back to Reagan if you include Dole. 1-4 if you include GHWB.

That's not a good track record. Conservatives are 2-0.

[Wisconsin+17]

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By whom? The majority of Americans? The majority of Americans agree with Santorum. Atlasia is not representative of the nation as a whole.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Electable to you, means nothing more than 'candidate is a moderate republican' who supports abortion and homosexuality.

Why are you a republican? What is it that Obama isn't doing for you? Romney's loss here proves that moderate republicanism is the problem. The problem isn't Romney. The problem isn't the candidate. The problem is the ideas behind Romney which are sabotaging him and the party.

How many elections is it going to take before you finally wake up to this fact? Republicans want someone who supports what they believe - traditional marriage and the humanity of the unborn. Having a nominee in a year where Obamacare is one of the top election issues who is most famous for being the architect for his own plan is like trying to win a football game with the opposition's playbook.

We are not going to beat the Democrats by playing their game. Republicans have to play their own game with their own goals that are not the same as what the democrats want.

What would it take for you to admit that moderate republicans are the problem? How many election losses would it take for you to change your mind, NC Yankee?

How many times are your going to insist on being so presumptious about people you are talking about? It is very insulting and pisses people off, because usually you are wrong.

Yes I support people who can win in their states? Is that so horrible? Does that make Pat Toomey pro-choice? Does that make Sarah Steelman pro-Gay Marriage? Reagan was electable. Electability is a set of skills and qualities, and is often not so much about ideology, though it can be if you are so distant from where the voters are.

Crazy thing is that I actually agree with you to extent about moderates and moderate candidates. The difference is I am not playing a game of absolutes like you are. Not every GOPer who has lost an election was a moderate, and not every Conservative who has ever ran has won. Angle and Buck lost in Colorado. Goldwater lost by 20 points while Ford lost by 2. At the end of the day, if people are sick of your party, a recession has taken hold, or a war gone badly, your party is going to lose the election regardless of which faction the candidate came from. The other difference is that I don't consider Romney to be a "moderate" in terms of this factional bs. I consider him to be a full spectrum conservative, who has an emphasis on fiscal issues. 

How many losses is it going to take before you realize that both can be the problem?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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Again, I don't see evidence this is true. Obamacare is a huge pocketbook issue - it's the largest tax raise in American history. That Romney shelves this entire issue from the start was a losing proposition. Anyways, moderates are now 0-2, and 0-3 going back to Reagan if you include Dole. 1-4 if you include GHWB.

That's not a good track record. Conservatives are 2-0.

I must have missed two elections where a guy from Texas was litterally buying votes with new entitlement programs, more centralization of education policy in Washington, and amnesty. Is that conservativism to you? Or does moderation only concern you if it is on social issues?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Or what about that episode where Mitt Romney sided with Rush Limbaugh and Tom Tancredo to stop your conservative hero, after he had joined with Ted Kennedy and former opponent John McCain, from successfully passing a deeply flawed immigration bill?

[Adam Griffin]

Right. So the moderates who are even more hardcore moderates will win. This is the blackjack strategy of doubling down on your losses so that when you eventually do win that you'll win all your money back.

It's simple brand loyalty. If you have a choice between fake socialism and the real thing - who are you going to support? The real thing. Every time. Republicans win when they offer a clear alternative. They lose when they try to be Democrat light.

You seem to be confusing 'moderate' with 'lack of conviction'. You'd be right in the sense of how your past two nominees fit both categories, but you're dead wrong in assuming that there are moderates who don't stand strongly on divisive issues. The largest sliver of the electorate considers itself to be moderate and desires candidates that have both liberal and conservative stances on various issues. It's how the Bayhs thrived in Indiana - along with Richard Lugar for so long - despite being one of the most Republican states in the country by party affiliation. It's how Jon Tester is in the Senate and Brian Schweitzer was a two-term governor in Montana. It's how Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. Susana Martinez and Dean Heller in New Mexico and Nevada. And most importantly, in a race between a barely Democratic Claire McCaskill and your vision for America - Todd Akin - moderate Claire McCaskill will crush social conservative hero Todd Akin.

Oh, that's just complete rubbish. Look - you want to expand government. Clearly, you aren't afraid of government control over your life - even over your food with food stamps. What happens when the food stamps no longer show up in the mail? If you're not afraid with letting the government essentially decide whether you live or die then it's not control you fear.

No - what you fear is lack of control. You fear people choosing to make their own decisions. That's what scares you.

Go f[inks] yourself. I made a perfectly reasonable post without personal attacks. You're the one who has claimed to live on $10,000 per year. Other than $6,000 in government-subsidized student loans, I have never received direct government assistance. I know it's hard for someone like you to imagine someone who is neither rich nor poor that believes in more of his check going into government investment, but try for a minute. It certainly is a different form of self-hate than that of actually being poor and wanting to cut your nose off to spite your face.

And I'm not acknowledging the rest of your truncated quotes and spliced comments because it's bad form. You attempt to win arguments by splicing posts down to individual sentences. It's what teenagers do on internet forums. In one part, you bitched about getting to the point; perhaps if your attention span allowed you to focus on an entire post in totality and likewise respond with a similar counterpoint, every topic in which you enter wouldn't end up being 10 pages long and opposing arguments would make more sense to you. I encourage all other forum members - many of which are far more rational than I am capable of being - to stop engaging you until you begin to reply to others with some semblance of respectable dialogue and respect for how the format of debate should function.

[Wisconsin+17]

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Who's the last president who's actually cut spending? There haven't been any fiscal conservative presidents in recent years. Just social liberals and social conservatives. If you're looking for a fiscal conservative - good luck.

This is why it's so important to get it right on social issues. Otherwise you get a social + fiscal liberal vs another social and fiscal liberal. What's the whole point of having a party if they all are liberal?

[Wisconsin+17]

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We shall see. You can call me names all you like, but yes, I believe that Akin will defeat Claire McCaskill, for the simple reason that he is a better representative for the state of Missouri. For the same reason that the state also went strongly to the handsome fellow in my sig.

Now, as for the rest, since you don't want me cutting and pasting.

Yes, I live on about 10k per year. No, I'm not a teenager. No, I don't have any dependents yet. No, I don't have any debts at present, and those debts that I had formerly, I've paid off. You say that I am cutting my nose to spite my face, by supporting someone who is conservative, both fiscally and socially.

By keeping my wages low, I can help the school that I teach at make budget. I enjoy teaching for a school that states that my faith is an asset, and where I can help train children to speak, read, write and learn much more capably and efficiently than they could previous. I also happen to be damn good at my job. How is it cutting my nose off to spite my face, when my contract explicitly states that I am to conduct myself in a manner that is coherent with the catechism of the Catholic church?

That's what you don't get. You ever watch Field of Dreams? Remember what Shoeless Joe said - it's an excellent speech.

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That is what you don't get, and what you will never understand. You're standing out there in the cornfields of Iowa, wondering why all the hick farmers are clustering about in a field. Why do I work? Is it to make sure I have enough money at the end of the month to eat and pay my bills? Sure. But paying bills doesn't give you a reason to live - to put your talents to use and to improve society.

I don't need the government coming in and saying I need to give them 20 percent for this other program or another that says, "no white people need apply". I don't need to sign up for my EBT. No, I earn my money, and I'm proud of that. Doing what I enjoy and what I love.