Election Day, USA!

[amused]

Yes, 2008 was a high water mark for Democrats, but the Republican numbers just aren't moving all that much. Here's 2004 (the map is still 2012):

[Coito ergo sum]

Romney in 2012 would have lost the popular vote to John Kerry --56,145,950 votes for Romney this year. In 08, McCain got 59,946,378.

So, this is a concern for the GOP. In 2004, Bush was pretty popular. The economy was humming. It was one year after the invasion of Iraq, and things were looking pretty good there too. The housing market was booming. Unemployment was low. Inflation low. Interest rates low. Gas prices were low. So, Bush totaled 62,039,572, and even with a pretty good turnout for Kerry, Bush won with 62,039,572.

Now, here, from the perspective of the GOP, this was supposed to be a year when the Republican base was fired up and they were going to come in force. But that did not happen. Romney got even fewer votes than McCain. So, it seems to me, that around 3,000,000 Republicans that voted in 2008 stayed home this year. I can't imagine, with this economy, why that would be the case. Any ideas?

[Ian]

A similar situation to 2004: the challenging party's candidate wasn't especially inspiring. There's a big difference between wanting your candidate to win vice wanting the other guy to lose - if the latter feeling is stronger than the former, it tends to be a losing attitude.

I was never especially fired up at the thought of seeing a Kerry administration, for example. I went out and voted, but I wonder how many people simply shrugged and didn't bother? A few percent, I'll bet.

[amused]

I'm just guessing here because I really don't know their thought process, but I think it's possible that a lot of the Teavangelicals were so obsessed with purity that after rejecting Obama as a (supposed) Muslim they just couldn't vote for Romney as a Mormon. So they stayed home.

[Sean Hayden]

Mormonism? I mean, how many people go to churches where the pastor has actually given entire sermons on the evils of Mormonism? How Mormons aren't part of the Church, it's a cult etc. etc.

I doubt they account for much, but I do wonder just how many people, although conservative, couldn't vote for a Mormon.

[amused]

Yeah, it's probably a small block. But then you add the block that resented his earlier librul views, and other blocks that had single issues that prevented them from voting for him, and it's easy to get to 3 million who stayed home.

[Sean Hayden]

I didn't see your post there, I see we were thinking the same thing.

[Ian]

I'm just guessing here because I really don't know their thought process, but I think it's possible that a lot of the Teavangelicals were so obsessed with purity that after rejecting Obama as a (supposed) Muslim they just couldn't vote for Romney as a Mormon. So they stayed home.

There were probably a few people who fell into that category. I doubt too many, especially since Mormonism wasn't discussed much during the campaign. but a few.

(Gripe: The whole "Obama is a muslim (or socialist, or Kenyan, etc.) thing is something which has really increased my cynicism over the last few years. These things were all said in 2008, but I wondered what those yahoos who actually believed that stuff would be saying in 2012, after fours years of an Obama presidency proved to them beyond any doubt that he was, in fact, not a muslim or a socialist or a Kenyan. But in 2012 they were still saying the same things! And the only explanation that comes to mind is that many of them really do live in an echo chamber of conservtative friends and media where they tell each other the same crap to the exclusion most of the outside world. And I have little doubt that we'll get to January 2017 with more than a few people still groaning about that muslim/socialist/Kenyan President we just survived. //End gripe.)

[amused]

I didn't see your post there, I see we were thinking the same thing.

We meant to do that!

[Gerald McGrew]

It's funny to watch the conservatives pretend like there never was a Republican primary (kinda like they tried to pretend there wasn't a Bush administration). They bitch and moan about all those "negative ads" the Obama campaign aired, completely forgetting they merely repeated the same arguments Perry, Gingrich, Santorum, and Cain made against Romney during the primaries. The Bain-vulture capitalist-corporate raider-rich asshole meme didn't begin with Obama. The Republican candidates were making all those arguments long before Obama stepped into the ring.

As far as the electorate, I was reading this article this morning...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... ml?hpid=z1

and a couple of things stood out to me.

Republican officials said that they met all of their turnout goals but that they underestimated who would turn out for the other side.

If that's true, then lack of enthusiasm among conservatives wasn't the issue. They got the electorate and turnout on their side they wanted. It's just that the national electorate isn't what they thought it was.

Underscoring the thoroughness of the GOP defeat, a Florida exit poll showed that Cuban Americans went for Obama by 49 percent to 47 percent — a watershed moment for a group that has been solidly Republican for a generation.

So much for the "Cubans are Republican" argument.

Democrats think their candidates benefited from Republican policies on women’s health issues and verbal miscues on rape.

This is what pisses me off about political journalism. It's not a "miscue" if you say what you really think. All those idiotic statements on rape by Republicans were them saying exactly what they believe. That's not a "miscue", it's honesty.

[Sean Hayden]

That's not a "miscue", it's honesty.

Exactly, and thank FSM for it.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't understand how it can be true that they "met their turnout goals," because then their turnout goal would have been "3,000,000 less than in 2008." That doesn't make sense.

Yes, on the Cuban point -- if the Republicans lose the Cubans, they've permanently lost Florida, and the White House.

And, I think the GOP did, in fact, lose because of the idiot candidates with their legitimate rape nonsense and the horrid abortion position that even in cases of incestuous rape of underage girls they must be forced to bear the child. I mean - NOBODY of consequence agrees with that ridiculous position. Abortion in the case of rape/incest is something that, like 80% of Americans or more are o.k. with -- they may not like abortion, but at least on the question of rape/incest there is an overwhelming agreement that there must be some allowance.

The GOP has a big problem, and to me it's not what Rush Limbaugh says (GOP hasn't been conservative enough) and it's not what the mainstream media says (they GOP hasn't been Democrat enough).

The problem, in my view, is that the GOP accepted the hard, religious right into their fold and it gained too much power. I don't know the answer this. The GOP may be doomed to being a permanent minority party, with representatives from heavily conservative districts, and never any prayer of holding the White House.

[Sean Hayden]

I believe Barry Goldwater warned them about that too.

[laklak]

They're certainly doomed if they don't drop the religious horseshit, CES. Some of the most ardent Republicans I know are actually Libertarians. They vote Republican because of fiscal issues. If the GOP doesn't stop pandering to the evangelicals and opposing abortion they're dead meat.

[Gerald McGrew]

The Republican Party had to effectively kick the John Birch Society people out of the party in the 1960's; they may have to do the same with the tea baggers now.