While the Democrats use it as an excuse to pretend their Leftist agenda is awesome despite public disapproval, I think it is very true for the GOP. I think the Republicans have a messaging problem.
Some more thoughts:
- Romney is a great guy and I think he would have been a good president. But he played right into voters’ fears by being a rich white guy and he didn't do enough to transcend that stereotype.
- The President went small in the campaign. Romney went big. But not big enough. In retrospect, Romney should have made this election not about the economy, but a referendum on the Future. Right or Left? Small government or Big government? Fiscal sanity or Fiscal disaster?
- Romney should have made it clear that a vote for the President was a vote to embrace and cement the new norm of greater entitlement and regulation of society, which America can no longer afford.
- To put it simply, Romney failed to message how high the stakes were in the election.
-- Joseph de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules
3 comments:
While I agree with your idea that Romney failed to reach low information voters regarding the long term fiscal consequences of voting for Obama, I think that it only played a part in Romney's loss.
As noted at the blog Rorate Caeli, Obama won the Catholic vote, 50 to 47. Romney won evangelical protestants, but even his number there didn't get over 60%. The United States is realigning, definitely, socially. Post-Christian Americans are simply not prepared to vote for a Republican whom they view as a step backward.
That may be so, Jacob. But I still think the citizenry is there to be won by the Republicans.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats have been hijacked the Christian Right and Socialists, respectively, under the Big Tent of two-party politics. Low-information voters need to be educated that the Left holds more danger than the Right.
If a Rightist President is elected with a pro-Life agenda, it is still a long and twisty road to outlawing abortion. On the other hand, if a Leftist President is elected, Socialist policies can easily be enacted before the Midterm elections.
My point, just because Americans are becoming increasingly Secular does not mean they are becoming increasing Socialist.
You make a good point about pragmatic voting and who can do more sooner, a president seeking to outlaw abortion or a president looking to increase the state at the expense of the buffers that have traditionally stood between Man and the state, the family, the Church, private associations, etc. The voters, especially the Christian ones, need to be shown by those in a position to do so, that those buffers are not only welcome, but needed.
The voters may not socialist, but they are definitely anti-capitalist, something you imply in the post when referring to Romney as the rich white guy.
The tragedy of this is that the institutional Catholic Church in the US is mired in progressive politics. It would have no standing with those on the right were it to free itself from the tendrils of the left and offer up something different.
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