Brushfire of Freedom
The Irritable Pundit
Long column this week.
We lost. Now everyone is either trying to understand why, or going pseudo Galt or both.
Why did we lose? Well, the data doesn't lie.
First and foremost, Romney received less votes than McCain (millions). Think about that. Less of Romney's base came out than for McCain. This is not a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" moment. Romney ran as a middle-of-the-road "work across the isle" moderate, and conservatives simply stayed home. I knew this would be an issue, but I never suspected it would be this major -- no one did. Romney depressed the reliable conservative vote. Wow.
And why not? Although he viscously nuked the competition during the primaries, he praised Obama's like-ability and completely ignored the base during most of the general election. Constant refrains of "Obama's a nice guy but…" just didn't fly. It wasn't anti-Mormonism. It wasn't any "fill in the blank" theory of the month. Romney simply ran a campaign aimed at the middle and lost.
There were other issues too. For example, Hurricane Sandy and a loving embrace by Chris Christie setup truly awful optics for us just as people were going to the polls. However it was a campaign aimed at everyone but the base that really hurt. Don't even try to argue the point. Obama received 9 million less votes than last time but we were still creamed.
Ignore the base at your peril dear pols.
The funniest bit was that the media claimed Romney was an arch conservative anyway, and scared libs dutifully lined up to vote against him. When do we finally learn that trick? You can act as reasonable as you want, but the media will always call you Hitler-level evil or Stupid (or both).
All in all, I'm pretty upset about the Left's greed and stupidity in foisting this destructive idiot on us for 4 more years, but those parasites are going to get what they deserve.
Now, for the important bit.
All the demographic handwringing on TV is nonsense, with one exception. The youth vote.
The youth vote supposedly wasn't going to be a factor but they came out big. This is more important than you might first think, as political proclivity is generally lifelong and the youth vote went against us on cultural issues almost exclusively. This is the voter of tomorrow my friends, and regardless of race class or creed, exit polls state that they completely disagree with us on three major cultural issues.
1) Abortion.
I am anti-abortion. Got that? Great. We lost long ago. It has been legal for 40 years. It will not become illegal. Your tax dollars have been surreptitiously paying for it for almost all of that 40 years. You will not change this either, as any change will just be accounting tricks. This ship has sailed. Instead of giving stupid Republican candidates opportunities to show their ignorance about rape and therefore costing yourself elections, teach your children it is wrong and win demographically (you will outnumber them in the end). As a matter of law it is settled, win within your own home and church.
All that said, I will happily organize a soap-in-sock beat down of Akin. His stupidity cost us the youth vote far beyond any expected effect on his own race. His rape comments were not only repeated high and low, but left other candidates vulnerable to unscrupulous followups that occasionally cost us decent people (Murdock).
2) Gay Marriage.
I am not gay, I am religious, and I am married. That said, let it go. It is already legal in some States, therefore it is already happening. The world has not ended. Our marriages are still valid and fulfilling …mostly (I keed, I keed). Don't give me the one man/one woman argument unless you want me to bring up the number of wives (and concubines) of King Solomon. Again, win at home or church, but you will not stop this tide.
Personally, I couldn't care less what consenting adults do or who they do it with, and why should they be spared the joy of mother-in-laws?
3) The War On Drugs.
The young realize that most of us tried pot and survived just fine. They think prohibition is self defeating, makes matters worse, and that we are hypocrites on this issue. They are right. The nation survived prohibition ending on booze, we will survive this as well.
As a side note, I'm from Colorado. Pot legalization helped drive the youth vote in Colorado in numbers no one guessed beforehand. It passed and pushed Obama over the line here. Think about that long and hard.
Interestingly enough, all 3 are morality issues so win their hearts Social Conservatives. You can not hope to legislate these particular issues any longer.
See you next week.
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