Quote:
Originally Posted by scoundrel
A healthy democracy needs both viable choices at the ballot box and a rational political discourse. If the Republicans had been able to give the American people a decent offer, the Obama administration would have been in serious trouble and that would not have been a bad thing. The risk now is that if the Democrats start to believe that the Republicans are unelectable, the Democrats will start to abuse their power. The Republicans have a responsibility to the broader electorate to put forward an electable candidate in 2016.
But I would point out that, for all his faults, candidate Romney played a rotten hand skilfully and did give the Obama camp a serious fright. Mr Romney was fatally undermined by his party; it was his party which was rejected by the electorate. Todd Akin delivered a timely reminder of how offensively misogynist and extreme mainstream Republican positions on abortion truly are. For such people to exercise legislative power over women was a very disturbing prospect to a lot of male Republican supporters.
In particular it drew attention to Paul Ryan and his voting record in support of really hardline anti-abortion bills in Congress, designed to pander to the most mean-spirited religious bigots in the Republican hinterland. I was struck by the dignity and self-discipline of many young Republican supporters when absorbing the scale of their defeat. I was also struck by the way in which so many of them identified social conservatism, religious bias and abortion as issues which had cost them a lot of support. Mr Ryan was not an asset to Mr Romney in the search for independent and centre ground support. Like Sarah Palin before him, he was there as a sop to the reactionary right wing; but like Ms Palin he sent a bad message to the rest of the voters about what a Romney presidency might be like.
This is the problem the Republicans have got. They select candidates who preach to their choir rather than candidates who might win support outside the door of their increasingly narrow church. Those young college and graduate aged Republicans who were gently discussing what went wrong in 2012 may go on to ask themselves if this party represents them anymore anyway. They might reconsider their allegiance.
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A lot of the people sounding the death knell of the Republican party are forgetting that most Americans are probably slightly conservative by nature. Another way to read the last election was a spoon fed, grossly out of touch rich boy infamous for destroying working class jobs, out-sourcing Jobs to other countries, and basically being in the pocket of big business and special interest lobbies came dangerously close to winning the Presidential election of 2012. People forget that the same things were being said about liberals and democrats not too long ago. There was once a time when having a political opponent call you a liberal and having it stick was tantamount to being labeled a child molester in most voters eyes. What's fun now is that the shoe is somewhat on the other foot. Calling someone a conservative and having it stick is to paint a portrait of someone who tends to watch a lot of reality TV, needs help keeping their jaws from drooping, and tends to panic and whine about the end of the world at the drop of a hat. It flip flops about every other generation or so.