CBS News: Romney Camp "shellshocked" by loss cuz they were unskewing polls

it's just you

 

Well, not sure this is original, but the fact that his team ran a poor ground operation and could not properly read mathematical models makes me 2x glad we didn't get him to run the greatest nation on earth at a critical time.

Yikes.

 

faith over fact

 

Before the election, I tried telling our resident Righties that in 2010 a bunch of TPers quit calling themselves Repubs in favor of Independents, but was met with much derision.

(By the way Commodore, you never did offer a citation for the table you posted.)

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=218302&highlight=independents&page=167

 

Commodore's source

 

as every one else has pointed out this isn't some in your face gloating but an important analysis of the changing electorate.

i always appreciate your attempts to be bipartisan but you were off base on this thread

 

They could have won Ohio. And Florida. And Virginia. And still lost.

 

They were counting on "independents" like jopatmc. Lol.

Here is why the R-Money's lost:
They invested so much in trying to BS their way into the White House that, at some point, they started to believe their own BS. This campaign was doomed from the day they decided to etch-a-sketch their way into the general election. Actually, scratch that: it was doomed the day it decided to BS its way into convincing the far right that Mitt was "severely conservative".

No, scratch that as well. The Republican strategy was doomed when in 2010 they decided to BS their way into a house majority by lying to a bunch of old and almost senile people that Obamacare was going to take away their Medicare and enact death panels for them. (In a delicious irony, the House Republican candidates actually earned fewer votes as a whole than the Democrats this election! But they kept their majority because of gerrymandering/redistricting.)

They lied with impunity almost by the hour, created their own reality and invested in that alternate reality so hard that they eventually got stuck in their own reality distortion field. Never was there a clearer moment of Zen than when Megyn Kelly on Fox News blatantly asked Karl Rove whether he was just making up math to make himself feel better as a Republican (iow, "you really believe your own BS?").

To the bitter end Mitt and his friends were cynical to the uttermost, to the point of lying so hard in the final hours of the campaign that even the auto companies were forced to call them out for their lies.

Welcome to the 21st century, Republicans. Your strategies may have won you elections a decade ago, but today we have the Internet. You can't just spend money spreading lies and expect everyone to believe them. There is no post-truth political era. This is 2012.

 

Next to Romney, the biggest loser on election day.

 

It's amusing that Romney was asking the country to hire him based on his experience running organizations and data-driven mind, and yet his campaign was financially inept (throwing money at useless states, paying ridiculous bonuses, paying excessively high rates for advertising, etc) and his organization was faith-driven instead of data-driven. He built a completely incompetent organization by just about all accounts.

 

The three biggest losers Tuesday were Romney, Rove and uhhhh..........the EPA.

 

Yeah, unfortunately Romney's claims would have no bearing on how he'd govern. Dubya and Obama have run some brilliant campaigns.

Just sayin...

 

You have to wonder what was going on inside his campaign. Who had influence, who didn't, how much decision making regarding campaign strategy was made by Romney himself. I'm a bit shocked at how inept they were. For example... who told Romney to stay away from the press for nearly a month in the runup to election day? Who's bright idea was that? It insured a reduction in the press coverage of the Republican ticket. Ryan did the same thing, if not for as long a stretch. It was stupid. If you can't face our free press, how can you run this enormous country? Even Nixon took questions from the press.

I'm still shaking my head over just how weird this campaign was.

 

They put the Con in Conservative...

http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_long_con/print

It's a long article by Rick Perlstein and well worth your time as it explains some of the disconnect

 

This graphic from Nate Silver and the Times shows just how up against it Republicans are now:





Just looking at the states President Obama didn't need must be sobering for the GOP leadership.

 

When I first read this, my immediate reaction was "holy ****, what? No way." But, sure enough, it's true. That is very sobering.

 

I am not so sure this is a permanent shift away from Republicans. We're still a conservative country and a Republican who doesn't disenfranchise Latinos, women, and students probably could have won this thing. Plus the right with all the abortion comments didn't help. Future Democratic candidates might not pull such a high African American turnout either. And finally, Romney was an easy candidate to attack and not nearly as charismatic as Obama. A George W. Bush might have won this election.

It was after all a pretty close election.

What's more disturbing is that the Republicans didn't see this happening and were surprised. That indicates they are operating on bad information and assumption. What other bad assumptions and information are they relying on to run this country?

That Iraq had WMD? That cutting taxes for the rich will boost the economy?

This is the bigger issue. That this party is so against the facts that they ignore them. And while it may cost them the election - had they won, it could have cost us all dearly.

 

I sort of agree with the theory - but it has to be GOP-wide, and that seems unlikely right now. Romney didn't do anything that disenfranchises any of those groups. He wasn't the one making the rape comments. He wasn't the one passing voter ID laws. He wasn't ever talking about immigration policy. He was just a member of the party that is seen as nuts. So the standard-bearer not only has to not do any of those things, he has to aggressively repudiate them and make overtures to those groups.

That said, demographics and targetting is a constantly changing game. The Dems had huge advantages this time, but those can easily change over an election cycle of two. I'm not nearly as convinced that this is a long-term issue as others are.

 

Said this the whole campaign.

thanks for the article.

 

Not sure if posted elsewhere but it seems to not matter so much about polling data. It just comes down to which camp can energize their base enough to get people out to vote. THAT was the difference.

The demographics haven't changed in 150 years and won't change much anytime soon.

The only difference is people other than whites have opportunities now ...but the demographics is what they is.