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Musicmystery -> A Continuum of Post-Romney Defeat GOP Meltdowns (8/3/2017 12:39:39 PM)
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Since nostalgia seems to be the theme here, along with inevitability and denial . . .
A Continuum of Post-Romney Defeat GOP Meltdowns
If we want to know which way the Republican Party is headed after its big losses, it helps to look at how conservatives are explaining Mitt Romney's loss to themselves.
"This should have been a slam dunk," Rush Limbaugh said on Wednesday. "But it wasn't. There are reasons why. We're gonna have to dig deep to find them and we're gonna have to be honest with ourselves when we find the answers to this." From Republican pollsters to talking heads to activists, the reactions are on a continuum from analytical to thoughtful to insane. Here's a guide to the digging deep and not-so-deep:
How can we make minorities like us?
Because most of the pre-Election Day poll denialism was focused on demographics -- that there was no way the portion of the 2012 electorate that was black and Latino would be as high as in 2008, much less higher -- much of the post-Election Day soul-searching was focused on why the Republican Party is so unpopular with those groups.
At The Daily Beast, David Frum, who was outsed from the conservative movement for saying Republicans should have negotiated with President Obama on Obamacare, says that just being pro-immigration won't help the party. "It's necessary of course to refrain from insulting Latinos, or, for that matter, anybody," Frum writes. "But the crying need in the GOP is for a more middle-class orientation to politics, one that addresses concerns like healthcare as well as debts and deficits."
However, many prominent conservatives still in good standing failed to meet Frum's first requirement -- the no insults part -- even as they were talking about their unpopularity among those groups. On election night, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said if Romney loses, it's because non-whites want free stuff.
"The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore. And 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. Whereby 20 years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority."
Rush Limbaugh, too, was at a loss to explain why minorities don't like the GOP. After all, he can name some black and Latino Republicans:
Let me take you back to the Republican convention. We had Suzanne Martinez, female Hispanic governor, New Mexico. We had Condoleezza Rice, African-American, former secretary of state. Both of those people imminently qualified, terrifically achieved... We had Marco Rubio. We had a parade of minorities who have become successful Americans... Now, why didn't that work, folks?
He continued with this theme later in the show:
It doesn't count with Obama voters about whom it is said that stuff matters most. It doesn't count. Why not? Why, putting it somewhat coarsely, why doesn't the Republican Party get credit for Condoleezza Rice?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/continuum-post-romney-defeat-gop-meltdowns/321629/
Clearly, they decided to double down on the insults instead.
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