You know, I'm not so upset because Romney lost as I am because, basically, America lost last night. Romney is a decent guy and a good manager but I am pretty sure that he would have pissed me off during his Presidency by constantly "reaching out" to liberal democrats at the expense of conservative values, something that I wrote about back in February, when I was arguing against his nomination tooth and nail. But he would have been a better President than Barack Obama and he would have at least given us a sliver of a chance to get out of the mess we are in.
We are to the point where we are structurally unable to balance our budget, where our entitlement spending plus our interest on our debt is about equal to our tax revenues. And that is even before the expenses that will come from the giant behemoth of a boondoggle known as Obamacare (which we now have to live with forever). What was Obama's answer to that? Force employers to offer free contraception as a payoff to single women voters, who voted for him 67-31%. Talk about raising taxes on the rich to "pay for" spending that will go to those that don't really pay much taxes. That helped Obama take the under $50k a year crowd by a margin of 60-38%. These are people who have effective tax rates in the single digits, if they pay any net taxes at all. They aren't paying for their Obama phones or Obama money so why should they care where the money actually does come from or what has to be done to pay for it. Note that all other income groups, people who actually are impacted by tax increases because they actually make money, all went for Romney. The point is, Obama doesn't have any solutions, he only has payoffs to get his base to vote for him. He has no plan that can fix anything. Just more of the same, taxes and payoffs.
What could Romney have done differently? I think he needed to do more to excite the base. He should have gone on more conservative talk radio and other venues to excite them. He should also have unleashed Paul Ryan instead of shackling him. One telling number is that Obama received slightly fewer votes in Ohio in 2012 than McCain did in 2008, which is sad since McCain practically didn't even have a Get Out the Vote organization there. Ohio was eminently winnable if people were willing to turn out. But they weren't, not as much as they should have given his organization and funding.
Other than that, I don't think Romney could have done much more. The demographics of this country have changed so much over the last couple decades. Romney won the white vote 59-39%, the highest margin since Bush I beat Dukakis 59-41% enabling a 426-111 electoral landslide. Obviously the black vote was completely off limits as they are completely in the pocket of the Democrats who offer them handouts and special treatment in exchange for votes. Outreach and inclusion of the Latino community might have been a good idea but it's unclear if it would work. He would have essentially have had to endorse some version of amnesty and that would have created a firestorm amongst the base. This is a quandry that needs to be figured out and fast as we continue to import more natural democratic voters every single year. Even amongst legal immigrants, only 8.5% of permanent residents come from Europe. The rest come from areas with histories of questionable governments and lax views of the rule of law with no real affinity for arguments regarding the constitution or what the founding fathers intended (just like Obama).
Our one last hope to right our fiscal ship may come in the negotiations over the fiscal cliff (which we go off on January 1) and the debt ceiling (which we will hit before the end of the year and all extraordinary measures to keep spending going will expire in February or March). If Republicans don't waiver like they did last time, we might get serious spending cuts. They just need to be prepared to pull the trigger. Though I have a feeling they will do nothing, hoping to put off any real decisions as long as possible, as usual.
Just about all empires decline and fall at some point and it looks like America will be no different. It just is sad that we are doing it so that toothless bums can get Obama phones and 30 year old law students can have sex at the expense of the rest of us.
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