Why obama won

[bucfan64 307]

This is not my article, but I thought that it would be found interesting by many on this board. It was written by the GOP Chair in LA California.

 

Although this may not be the number one reason, it most assuredly is a major contributing factor.

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On election night, as the camera panned the audience waiting to hear Barack Obama give his victory speech, what struck me was that the audience was primarily young people and minorities. My thought was, "These are the very people who will suffer the most under a second Obama administration. Don't they know they are voting against their own best interest?"

 

And then I thought about it and came to the conclusion: "No. They don't." They don't because they are, by and large, uneducated. Oh, some of them may have college degrees or even graduate degrees, but they are still substantially uneducated. I would bet that very few of them know the difference between Keynesian economics and Austrian School economics. I am sure that most of them have never heard of the Laffer Curve. I would guess that most of them aren't familiar with the first principles behind the origin of our country. I doubt that many of them know what evil lies in Socialism or Communism, or unbridled leftism. Or are even aware that Barack Obama is a man of the left, and what that means. They, for the most part, have no idea what the concept of individual liberty is, nor how a big, powerful central government reduces that liberty. I also am pretty sure that they feel that Barack Obama is someone who cares about the poor, women, minorities, and the "middle class," and that Republicans don't. I would stake my substance on the fact that they don't know what is meant by a limited government, or what the Tenth Amendment says. I am certain that most of them don't know anything about Benghazi. Substantially uneducated!

 

How is it that we have raised one or two generations of uneducated Americans? The answer, my friend, is not blowing in the wind. The answer lies in the curricula of our schools.

 

For the past several months, in my capacity in the Republican Party, I have been speaking at middle schools and high schools around Los Angeles. It has been very enlightening.

 

I love engaging with children. Most of them are very bright and ask brilliant questions. The questions give me insights into what they are most concerned about. It also makes clear what they are taught -- by either their parents or their teachers, or both.

 

To summarize -- children, for the most part, believe the following:

 

a) Republicans care about only the rich -- the top 1% -- and don't care about anyone else.

 

b) Republicans hate people of color and especially Latinos.

 

c) Republicans hate gays.

 

d) Republicans are racist.

 

e) It is the government that provides jobs. (I have asked that question many times in classrooms or assemblies. "Who is it that creates jobs in America?" The answer is invariably, without hesitation, "the government.")

 

f) Corporations are bad, and profits are very bad. Business shouldn't make profits; they should give any excess money they make to their employees.

 

g) Taxes are good; they provide the money for the government to take care of people.

 

h) Government should expand and take care of everyone in the country.

 

i) America, rather than being a force for good in the world, has been a force for evil.

 

j) Government has an unlimited source of funds. (When I ask, "Where is the government going to get the money to do all these things you want it to do?," the answer is "taxes.")

 

These children will soon be voters. How is it, in America, that we are raising children to believe that bigger government is better, that government is the engine that provides jobs, that profits are bad, that Republicans care about only the rich, that we are racist, and that we hate minorities and gays.

 

This is not something to be ignored. Our country is being changed forever by children who have had this type of indoctrination. We must figure out how to stop it. We need to create a love of country in our children as we once did. We need to have our children say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag every morning, as we once did. We need to teach our children that America has been a force for good in the world. We need to teach them that it is not the role of government to "take care" of people. We need to teach civics once again, and the Constitution.

 

Until this problem is dealt with, and it needs to be soon, we will be raising generations of children who believe in an ever-larger government and who will permanently change America into Greece. There will be no Republican Party or conservative candidates who will win elections as more and more of the population is indoctrinated with leftist thinking. Goodbye to the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free if we don't act on this issue

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/why_obama_won.html?utm_source=11-09-12+Newsletter&utm_campaign=AT+Newsletter+11-09-12&utm_medium=email#ixzz2BkP0kjJf

[deuceswild 15]

He won because he stole it. Look at the map and tell me how much red there is compared to blue. Unbelievable.

[legend11 32]

Harumph! Kids these days!!

 

I'm more inclined to agree with David Frum:

 

Don’t tell me it was close. Don’t blame it on Hurricane Sandy or Gov. Chris Christie. When economic conditions are as bad as they were in 2012 and the incumbent wins anyway, that’s not “close.†That’s the challenger party throwing away a sure thing.

 

 

After-the-fact finger pointing and blame shifting will miss the bigger truth. The Republican Party is becoming increasingly isolated and estranged from modern America. In the quarter century since 1988, there have been six presidential elections. Only once—once!—did the Republican candidate win a majority of the popular vote, and then by the miserable margin of 50.73 percent.

 

We Republicans may console ourselves that we did win two big victories in the recent past, 1994 and 2010. But those were off-year elections, when 60 percent of America stays home, and those who do turn out are the wealthier, the older, and the whiter. Exit polls indicate that 34 percent of the 2010 electorate was over age 60; in 2012, only 15 percent of voters were older than 65. The Republican success in those elections only underscores the bigger problem: the GOP is rapidly becoming the party of yesterday’s America.

 

The ratification of the Obama agenda will understandably enrage and depress conservatives. Yet if there is any lesson conservatives ought to have learned from the past four years, it is the danger of succumbing to angry emotion. We’ve had four years of self-defeating rage. Now it’s time for cool.

 

Those who would urge the GOP to double down on ideology post-2012 should ask themselves: would Republicans have done better if we had promised a bigger tax cut for the rich and proposed to push more people off food stamps and Medicaid? Would we have done better if we had promised to do more to ban abortion and stop same-sex marriage? If we had committed ourselves to fight more wars? To put the country on the gold standard? Almost half of those surveyed on voting day said they wanted to see taxes raised on Americans earning more than $250,000. Exit polls do tend to oversample Democrats, but the tax result is consistent with other polling that has found that even Republicans would prefer to raise taxes on the rich than see cuts in Medicare.

 

Some combative conservatives may wish that Mitt Romney had talked more about the various plots and conspiracies they believed Obama to have launched upon the land: Fast & Furious, ACORN, Pigford, U.N. bike lanes, Obama’s imagined plan to abolish the suburbs. But while this kind of angry talk may gain eyeballs on Hannity, it’s not the stuff that swings undecided voters in Colorado and Virginia—especially not the women voters who formed 53 percent of the electorate on Tuesday; or the moderates, men and women, who formed 41 percent of it; or the nonreligiously observant, who formed three quarters of it. Only 34 percent of the vote Tuesday was made up of white men. The share of the vote that was made up of older, conservative white men must have been much smaller still. Fox Nation never was more than a very tiny slice of the American nation, and it was only sad self-delusion that ever led anyone to think otherwise.

 

And deep down, we all know it.

 

Yet if we know that extremism is dangerous, why do we see so much of it?

 

Victorious presidential candidates have always spoken to the entire country and promised to represent all Americans. “I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional, or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the earth who came here in search of freedom.†That’s Ronald Reagan, accepting the Republican nomination in 1980. The tragedy of the modern Republican Party is that it remembers Ronald Reagan’s lyrics—the specific policies he recommended for the problems of his time—but has lost his music.

 

At a time when the need to broaden the party’s appeal seemed overwhelmingly compelling, Republicans narrowed their appeal to the most ideological fragment of the conservative base.

 

The Mitt Romney who began seeking the presidency in the early 2000s—the savior of the 2002 Olympics, the author of Romneycare, the man who’d redirected Boston’s “Big Digâ€â€”was exactly the candidate the Republican Party needed by 2012: competent, managerial, pragmatic. Unfortunately, in the interval, Romney had been refashioned into something very different—to the point where nobody knew really what he was; to the point where even he may no longer have known.

 

Half a decade ago, many leading Republicans urged a rethink of their party’s direction. After the 2008 election, such calls for rethinking were shelved in favor of the back-to-basics message of the Tea Party. But now, post-2012, it’s time to return to the path of reform and rethink what Republicans and conservatives explored in the later Bush years.

 

The emergency phase of the Great Recession has ended. We are moving into a phase of economic growth, but a growth that will not restore Americans to their prior prosperity for a very long time—let alone bring new progress. What will conservatives say in the months and years of reconstruction ahead? What ideas and what hope can we offer a battered and pessimistic country?

 

“Your answers are so old I’ve forgotten the questions.†That was the retort from a famous ex-communist to a much younger man who presumed to lecture him about Marxism.

 

 

If conservatives are to succeed in the century ahead, they need to rethink what conservatism means in a time as far removed from Ronald Reagan’s as Reagan’s was from World War II.

 

In 1980, the U.S. and its core allies produced half the planet’s output. As things are going, that group of democracies will do well to produce even one third in the 2020s. Back then, the U.S. was threatened by a great military adversary. In the 21st century, the U.S. faces an economic and technological rival for the first time since 1917.

 

As the GOP relies more heavily on less- educated voters, it finds itself relying on a class of people who have lost ground economically. Those voters understandably tend to mistrust business.

In 1980, the gap between rich and poor had only just begun to widen from its narrowest point of the whole 20th century. Today, the typical worker earns less than his counterpart of 1980, middle-class incomes are stagnating, and wealth and power have concentrated to a degree that would startle even the Astors and the Vanderbilts.

 

In 1980, presidential elections were publicly financed, and post-Watergate reforms tightly governed congressional elections. Today, the post-Watergate reforms have collapsed, and presidential elections are increasingly financed by small numbers of extremely wealthy individuals who can bend the political system to their will.

 

In 1980, middle-class Americans regarded economic progress as the norm, and tough times as the exception. Today, a plurality of non-college-educated whites say they expect their children to be no better off than they are themselves.

 

In 1980, this was still an overwhelmingly white country. Today, a majority of the population under age 18 traces its origins to Latin America, Africa, or Asia. Back then, America remained a relatively young country, with a median age of exactly 30 years. Today, over-80 is the fastest-growing age cohort, and the median age has surpassed 37.

 

In 1980, young women had only just recently entered the workforce in large numbers. Today, our leading labor-market worry is the number of young men who are exiting.

 

In 1980, marriage remained the norm among heterosexuals and unimaginable for homosexuals. Today, a majority of American women are unmarried, and same-sex marriage is on its way to becoming the law of the land.

 

In 1980, our top environmental concerns involved risks to the health of individual human beings. Today, after 30 years of progress toward cleaner air and water, we must now worry about the health of the whole planetary climate system.

 

In 1980, 79 percent of Americans under age 65 were covered by employer-provided health-insurance plans, a level that had held constant since the mid-1960s. Back then, health-care costs accounted for only about one 10th of the federal budget. Since 1980, private health coverage has shriveled, leaving some 45 million people uninsured. Health care now consumes one quarter of all federal dollars, rapidly rising toward one third—and that’s without considering the costs of Obamacare.

 

These realities do not dictate any particular political choice. But they do shape the menu of choices that will be available to political actors, as well as the range of outcomes that are achievable.

 

For example: it’s certainly possible for Republicans to choose to be a white person’s party. If we do so choose, however, we are also choosing to be an old person’s party. Since the elderly receive by far the largest portion of government’s benefits, an old person’s party will be drawn by almost inescapable necessity to become a big-government party. Indeed, that is just what happened in the George W. Bush years: Medicare Part D and all that.

 

In the Obama years, the GOP rebelled against Bush-era big government. But because it remained an old person’s party—more so than ever—the only way to reconcile the voting base and the party’s ideology was to adopt Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which loaded virtually all the burden of fiscal adjustment onto the young and the poor. And that of course intensified the party’s dependence on the old, white voters who set the cycle in motion in the first place.

 

Another example: the GOP’s social conservatism has increasingly repelled college-educated voters. In 1988, college-educated whites voted for George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis by a margin of more than 20 points. In 2008, John McCain bested Barack Obama among college-educated whites by only 2 points. As the GOP relies more heavily on less-educated voters, it finds itself relying on a class of people who have lost ground economically. Those voters understandably tend to mistrust business. It’s an odd predicament for the party of free enterprise to base itself on the most business-skeptical voters—a predicament that cost Romney dearly in the industrial Midwest.

 

What do we stand for? For Republicans, the Tea Party was the beginning of that rendezvous. It must not, however, be the finale. It cannot be the finale. The outpouring of anguish and anxiety that characterized the Tea Party should command attention. Yet nostalgia for a misremembered past is no basis for governing a diverse and advancing nation.

 

The central divide in American politics is the same as the divide in almost every advanced democracy on earth: between one party more committed to private enterprise and another party more supportive of the public sector. These parties may be called Conservative and Labour, Christian Democrat and Social Democrat, Gaullist and Socialist. By comparison with some other democracies—in fact, by comparison with most other democracies—the purely ideological differences between the parties in this country are relatively narrow. Yet the political game is played in this country with a vehemence and recklessness unseen almost anyplace else in the democratic world.

 

If the parties are to serve the country for which they profess such patriotism, they must step back from the brink.

 

On the Republican side, the road to renewal begins with this formula: 21st-century conservatism must become economically inclusive, environmentally responsible, culturally modern, and intellectually credible.

 

I can remember a Republican Party that was not backward-looking. I can remember a Republican Party excited by science and its possibilities. I can remember a Republican Party that regarded those Americans who thought differently not as aliens and enemies, but as fellow citizens who had not yet been convinced of the merit of our ideas.

 

When I began to pay serious attention to politics, it was the Democratic Party that housed all that seemed most obsolete and reactionary in American politics: urban machines that misgoverned troubled cities; industrial unions that looked to trade protectionism to maintain their advantages, foreign-policy experts who saw the next Vietnam in every challenge to U.S. power, members of Congress who dispensed expensive favors as if nothing had changed since 1965, writers and thinkers still dazzled by the Bright Tomorrow promised by revolutionary socialism.

 

Where the airports were new, where the businesspeople wore casual clothes, where young people were getting married and buying homes—anyplace the future seemed nearest—there, the party of Reagan was strongest. Where the good old days had ended with the Japanese surrender, where the pay phones were broken, and where aldermen were indicted—there you found the Democratic strongholds.

 

In those days, it was the Democratic Party that fought internal battles over the need for change: Gary Hart, Les Aspin, and other “Atari Democrats†(as they were called back when Atari was a cool, new brand) vs. Walter Mondale, Tip O’Neill, and other machine pols who sneered back, “Where’s the beef?â€

 

Yet in the end, it was the Atari Democrats who won. A century before, a great British conservative, the Marquess of Salisbury, warned, “The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.†The Democrats of the 1980s and 1990s had the courage and honesty to identify which of their policies had died and then ruthlessly discard the carcasses. It falls to modern conservatives now to heed Salisbury’s advice: to abandon what is obsolete—and to meet the challenge of the new.

 

The work of developing a conservative policy agenda adequate to the 21st century will require months or even years. It must involve many people. Political work is collaborative work, and although we all have our 10-point plans, the immediate need is for a plan with just this one goal: we must emancipate ourselves from prior mistakes and adapt to contemporary realities. To be a patriot is to love your country as it is. Those who seem to despise half of Amer*ica will never be trusted to govern any of it. Those who cherish only the country’s past will not be entrusted with its future.

[RichlandsAlum 678]

 

e) It is the government that provides jobs. (I have asked that question many times in classrooms or assemblies. "Who is it that creates jobs in America?" The answer is invariably, without hesitation, "the government.")

 

 

All kinds of fodder for good dialogue here, but I'll zero in on this one. I think the author is positively spot-on with this observation.

 

I taught a freshman-level political science class for a few years. In an effort to try to best serve my students' long-term interests, I always went around the room and asked everyone about their career plans. An overwhelming majority of responses pertained to public sector positions (mainly teaching and law enforcement). One semester, I had an entire class full of aspiring civil servants. The labeled themselves variously as "liberals" and "conservatives" or "Republicans" and "Democrats," yet they all took for granted that government employment was the highest and best use for their talents.

 

The fact that politicians at all levels (and in all parties) take credit for job creation has at least something to do with this. I'm not sure that I ever convinced them of anything to the contrary despite my best efforts.

[blueinbama 259]

Good stuff, bucfan. We now have four more years to combat the lies. The hard core libs will hold their ground. After Obama gets through with us I just pray there's enough left to save. In four years these younger voters will realize what has happened. I hope it's not too late.

Edited November 9, 2012 by blueinbama

[Deleted Account 5,203]

b) Republicans hate people of color and especially Latinos.

 

As RA tackled (e) very well, I'll tackle (b).

 

It's frankly mindboggling that the leaders in the GOP cannot connect socially and fiscally conservative the vast majority of Latinos are. We're losing that segment of society because of the dated immigration stances. If we've learned anything, it's that Reagan's "grant amnesty now and watch the border like hawks" later policy has failed. We don't have the manpower to patrol our borders.

 

What the GOP needs to realize is that a faster, more concise track to citizenship is going to speak to Latinos far more than some variant of "ship their asses back to Mexico". It's ridiculously hard for an immigrant to obtain U.S. citizenship. The liberals' favorite moron, George W. Bush, actually pushed for this and pushed hard...until the GOP establishment threw up the gates. Not coincidentally, he's the last presidential candidate to get close to 50% of the Latino vote.

 

Cuban Latinos are right in Republicans' hands. They still harbor a grudge for "Bay of Pigs". We're losing that, though.

 

As much as that population is growing, we MUST take them back. And it wouldn't be hard. Full amnesty + easier track to citizenship.

[legend11 32]

As RA tackled (e) very well, I'll tackle (b).

 

It's frankly mindboggling that the leaders in the GOP cannot connect socially and fiscally conservative the vast majority of Latinos are. We're losing that segment of society because of the dated immigration stances. If we've learned anything, it's that Reagan's "grant amnesty now and watch the border like hawks" later policy has failed. We don't have the manpower to patrol our borders.

 

What the GOP needs to realize is that a faster, more concise track to citizenship is going to speak to Latinos far more than some variant of "ship their asses back to Mexico". It's ridiculously hard for an immigrant to obtain U.S. citizenship. The liberals' favorite moron, George W. Bush, actually pushed for this and pushed hard...until the GOP establishment threw up the gates. Not coincidentally, he's the last presidential candidate to get close to 50% of the Latino vote.

 

Cuban Latinos are right in Republicans' hands. They still harbor a grudge for "Bay of Pigs". We're losing that, though.

 

As much as that population is growing, we MUST take them back. And it wouldn't be hard. Full amnesty + easier track to citizenship.

David Frum said more or less the same thing...

[swvacsas2 15]

The Republican party has to come to terms with practical politics.

 

Example:

 

Great uncle's grandson- traditional Republican- cast his first vote for Eisenhower- moved to Ohio about '51. Has never voted Democratic until this year. He was a regular Republican voter until '92 when he went for Perot. He and the family worked in various manufacturing concerns until jobs started going overseas in the 90s. Got mad at the older Bush because of free trade and Bush's veto of the extension of unemployment benefits in the '92 recession. When Newt Gingrich helped Clinton get NAFTA through he became a certified Newt hater. A mortal and undying foe of free trade and business-banking deregulation. He will not vote for any candidate who supports unrestricted free trade. Many of the family have experienced layoffs, loss of insurance etc. When the house GOP- with concerns about the budget- took some of the actions they took on umployment benefits etc.- they were furious. Romney' positions on the auto bailout, the 47% comment, plus free trade killed him with these people. Romney's position on Chinese trade did not help him since he endorsed Latin American free trade. I pointed out that Obama had backed free trade- but he covered himself with them with his proposal to eliminate tax breaks for companies creating overseas jobs. They hate Americans for Prosperity and The Club for Growth. Needless to say they are not hostile to Obamacare- too many of them have lost insurance with the Midwestern jobs climate. Paul Ryan hurt with them.

 

Republicans cannot elect a President without doing better in the Midwest. Until the party can get Midwestern voters back prospects are dim. We also have had problems since the late Reagan era with small farmers in much of the Midwest. A laissez faire conservative is pretty much dead in the water in that area,

 

Ryan was a mistake. Marco Rubio would have helped tremendously. Ryan was too controversial, had too much baggage.

 

This election was really about economic security. Voters in the Midwest, NV, CO, FL, etc. felt that Obama would give them that security- so he won. The cousin I mentioned from Ohio is pretty well informed, one of his last comments to me the other day was "I don't want to live in or see an Ayn Rand type America." Figuring out how to solve this problem is key to how Republicans survive.

[RichlandsAlum 678]

The Republican party has to come to terms with practical politics.

 

Example:

 

Great uncle's grandson- traditional Republican- cast his first vote for Eisenhower- moved to Ohio about '51. Has never voted Democratic until this year. He was a regular Republican voter until '92 when he went for Perot. He and the family worked in various manufacturing concerns until jobs started going overseas in the 90s. Got mad at the older Bush because of free trade and Bush's veto of the extension of unemployment benefits in the '92 recession. When Newt Gingrich helped Clinton get NAFTA through he became a certified Newt hater. A mortal and undying foe of free trade and business-banking deregulation. He will not vote for any candidate who supports unrestricted free trade. Many of the family have experienced layoffs, loss of insurance etc. When the house GOP- with concerns about the budget- took some of the actions they took on umployment benefits etc.- they were furious. Romney' positions on the auto bailout, the 47% comment, plus free trade killed him with these people. Romney's position on Chinese trade did not help him since he endorsed Latin American free trade. I pointed out that Obama had backed free trade- but he covered himself with them with his proposal to eliminate tax breaks for companies creating overseas jobs. They hate Americans for Prosperity and The Club for Growth. Needless to say they are not hostile to Obamacare- too many of them have lost insurance with the Midwestern jobs climate. Paul Ryan hurt with them.

 

Republicans cannot elect a President without doing better in the Midwest. Until the party can get Midwestern voters back prospects are dim. We also have had problems since the late Reagan era with small farmers in much of the Midwest. A laissez faire conservative is pretty much dead in the water in that area,

 

Ryan was a mistake. Marco Rubio would have helped tremendously. Ryan was too controversial, had too much baggage.

 

This election was really about economic security. Voters in the Midwest, NV, CO, FL, etc. felt that Obama would give them that security- so he won. The cousin I mentioned from Ohio is pretty well informed, one of his last comments to me the other day was "I don't want to live in or see an Ayn Rand type America." Figuring out how to solve this problem is key to how Republicans survive.

 

Actually, the Republicans have figured this out. Those seeking "economic security" of the type you described simply are not a traditional GOP constituency. Furthermore, as the U.S. economy moves to models that are increasingly post-industrial (and post-retail, for that matter) laborers of all types are likely to find that they are either closely aligned with the Democrats or disenfranchised altogether.

 

Priceline just bought out an online competitor (Kayak) for $1.8 billion. That's the new base of the U.S. economy, like it or not.

 

Just my opinion, of course.

Edited November 9, 2012 by RichlandsAlum

[Deleted Account 5,203]

David Frum said more or less the same thing...

 

I didn't gather that interpretation from his statement you posted.

Good to have similar opinions, I suppose.

[BIGkid 18]

Neither Romney nor Ryan carried their own state. What should that tell you about them.

[redtiger 1,742]

If the Republican party will run Christie as President and Rubio as VP they will stand a much better chance in 2016. Thats no silver bullett but it will help alot. The GOP is in need of reforms and a move toward the middle imo.