Category Archives: 2012 Elections

Conservatives Are In a Funk, Me Included

Obviously, I am very discouraged with the outcome of the election. The main mistake Spencer and I made (and others including Gallup, Rasmussen, Pew, Rove, Morris, etc., etc) in our pre-election analysis was to significantly underestimate the turnout rates among Democrats. The widely-held view that Democrats were unenthused and wouldn’t turn out to vote, as suggested by numerous pollsters, was simply wrong. Obama won both the popular vote and the Electoral College comfortably.

Now we face four more years of President Obama’s liberal policies, and he no longer has to care about being re-elected. Now we get to see the real Obama! You’ve no doubt seen how the stock markets have responded to “four more years.” But if necessary, Big Ben can just print more money earmarked for equities.

Since I’m in no mood write, I have reprinted a good article from Fred Barnes (of the Weekly Standard and Fox News), which I think you’ll find interesting, however you voted on Tuesday.

“The Survivor in Chief
  by Fred Barnes

Billions of dollars were spent, and the politics of the nation dominated, by a presidential campaign that led to nowhere. Never has so much time, money and energy been put into a presidential election with so meager a result. Washington today is a carbon copy of what it was when the campaign began many months ago. Democrats control the White House and Senate, Republicans the House.

Republicans were hoping for a change election. They didn’t get one. President Obama would have liked a mandate. He didn’t get one. What the voters desired is anybody’s guess. Their intentions, besides re-electing Barack Obama, were unclear.

What we’ve just endured might be called a strategist’s election, and Mr. Obama’s strategists were victorious.

The president didn’t run on his record or a vision or a plan for the next four years. His campaign consisted of using policy favors to lock up the support of his party’s interest groups—liberals, labor, environmentalists, feminists, minorities—and dehumanizing his opponent, Mitt Romney. It worked.

The Obama campaign exposed the myth of the unenthusiastic Democratic voter. The idea was that millions who backed Obama in 2008 would be too dispirited to show up to vote on Tuesday, and a surge of Republican voters would elect Mr. Romney. I bought this notion and figured the Republican would win. Alas, the unenthusiastics voted, thanks in part to an Obama get-out-the-vote effort as effective as it was in 2008.

The Obama approach to winning re-election was very old-fashioned. It was time-tested. All that mattered was winning. Mr. Obama’s share of the vote declined from 2008, his rhetoric was far less soaring, and he neither did nor said anything to make it easier to tackle the fiscal crisis his presidency must now confront. Partisan and ideological polarization lives on in Washington.

Had Mr. Romney won, the Republican plan was to ignore the lame-duck session of Congress after Thanksgiving and kick the deficit and debt issue into next year. That would let the new president and Congress work out a compromise on spending and taxes. Mr. Obama might be wise to adopt this plan. His influence would be marginally stronger, since Democrats gained two seats in the Senate and a handful of new House members.

And it would give him time to improve relations with congressional Republicans. At the moment, those relations are at rock bottom. Mr. Obama’s frequent insinuations over the past two years that Republicans are unpatriotic hasn’t helped. Nor did his penchant for lecturing them rather than negotiating forthrightly in budget and debt-limit talks in 2011.

Having even a modestly successful second term depends on his ability to get along passably with Republicans. Second terms can be daunting. Who was the last president to have a successful one? Ronald Reagan perhaps, but he had the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton? He was impeached. Obama lacks the political skill of either.”   Continued…

To read the full article, CLICK HERE

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