Just Some Random Post-Election Tidbits
The Republican party doesn't have a communication or a tactical problem. They have a values problem. A majority of the American public simply doesn't want what they're selling.
Vaginal Americans Delivered:I'm going to go out on a limb and say that waging a campaign against contraception was probably a bad idea. Calling women who use contraception a bunch of "sluts" was even worse. Insisting that women bear their rapists children was just the last straw.
Skewed Vision, Not Skewed Polls:From 2010 on [Republicans] acted like a bunch of assholes and the people who were only mildly paying attention or who were feeling disillusioned realized that as bad as things are, these people had to be stopped.
That GOP primary, where the arrogant audiences behaved like barbarians and booed a gay soldier, cheered lustily for the death penalty and shouted "yeah!" when a candidate was asked is someone should die for lack of health insurance presented a perfect picture of what the Party had become. The nomination of the quintessential plutocrat and a running mate known for his plan to brutally slash the modest American safety net was a perfect capper.
Right-wing Meltdown:The right-wing world view is based on a faith in several unsupported assumptions, one of which is that a solid majority of American citizens share their views, and liberal/progressive beliefs are held only by a shadowy elite fringe of egghead academics and aging hippies plus angry and demanding nonwhites, various “pervents” like gays and feminists, and foreign infiltrators. In the rightie mind, all of those groups added together make a big enough minority to be of concern in a national election, especially with that voter fraud thing going on. But still, a minority.
Is All the Lying Backfiring?:The right wing media has trafficked in lies for so long because they believe it suits their agenda. They know that if they tell the truth about the President’s actual agenda, most conservative viewers wouldn’t give a fuck. For instance, the Affordable Care Act will likely be imperceptible to people who already have employer-provided insurance, so the strategy to get them on board with fighting it is to tell them the government is taking their insurance away. Stripping the wealthiest of their tax cuts is something only said wealthiest actually care about, so right wing media runs a bunch of stories implying that people of color and single women are given a $50,000 a year salary for sitting on their butts or something. And so on.
Without lies, what does the right wing media have? Not much. One thing that continues to nag at me is how the vast majority of conservatives who come at me online are simply wrong. Not in their opinion, but in their facts. And that when you inform them of the facts, they either retreat or insist their lies are truth. That’s because if they accept the facts, their entire worldview dissipates.
Hume: U.S. ‘More Liberal Than Many May Have Thought’:Many of us have believed - and I still basically do - that that this is a center-right country. And a lot of conservatives have taken the view that liberals are really on the wane. If you look at tonight’s exit polling that we’ve seen so far, those that self-identified as liberals are about 24 percent, self-identified conservatives 35 percent, moderates 40 percent. Now, this apparent outcome tells you one thing about those moderates, that there are in that category an awful lot of them who are actually liberals.”
Romney’s Expensive Computer Get-Out-The-Vote Effort Explodes Miserably, Like Rest Of Romney Campaign:Anyway, this seems like it was quite the fuckup! The fact that the Romney campaign spent more than $100 million on services from political consulting firms close to his senior staff - services that we imagine were not vetted through a rigorous contracting process - couldn’t have anything to do with this and other failures, could it? Thank goodness the Republicans nominated a savvy businessman with so much private sector management experience to run this thing. Just imagine how badly it would’ve gone under the direction of some hippie community organizer!
John Hindraker - The Meaning Of Yesterday’s Defeat:But there is a much more important proposition that, I think, was proved false last night: that America is a center-right country. This belief is one that we conservatives have cherished for a long time, but as of today, I think we have to admit that it is false. America is a deeply divided country with a center-left plurality. This plurality includes a vast number of citizens who describe themselves as moderates, but whose views on the issues are identical or similar to those that have historically been deemed liberal.
Leeches of the GOP:A few days ago Rick Perlstein published an article at The Baffler called “The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism.” Although a bit rambling and unfocused, the article provides a fascinating view of how a culture of leeching has attached itself to “movement conservatism” and the Republican Party. All manner of people are making themselves rich by fanning the flames of alarm and then sucking money out of the rubes who believe them. It’s so blatant that conservative “media” such as Newsmax and Current Events are being subsidized by sucker schemes for Making Big Money Without Actually Having to Do Anything to Earn It.
Random RedState commenter:Yet more evidence that we have been living in fantasyland for too long now. I don't want to hear that this is all Romney's fault, or all the campaign's fault. The simple fact is that in the run-up to this election, we were fed a steady diet of lies, from all our "loyal" sources. We need to hold not only the Romney campaign accountable, but also the conservative press (specifically the Murdoch press - Fox was the worst of the bunch), and the establishment talking heads like Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan. We need to get clear about something: these people are selling us a product. They have been taking our money and telling us bedtime stories. We complain about the MSM, but can we honestly say that the conservative press has been more honest?
How do we expect to win elections if we can't even get straight facts about the electorate? But maybe it's our own fault. There was practically a revolt around here when Erik said he didn't think the polls were false. And yet he was right, and they were right. Have we become allergic to the truth?
Seems like maybe conservatives are starting to realize that what the rest of us have been telling them for like, a decade, is true.
Vaginal Americans Delivered:I'm going to go out on a limb and say that waging a campaign against contraception was probably a bad idea. Calling women who use contraception a bunch of "sluts" was even worse. Insisting that women bear their rapists children was just the last straw.
Skewed Vision, Not Skewed Polls:From 2010 on [Republicans] acted like a bunch of assholes and the people who were only mildly paying attention or who were feeling disillusioned realized that as bad as things are, these people had to be stopped.
That GOP primary, where the arrogant audiences behaved like barbarians and booed a gay soldier, cheered lustily for the death penalty and shouted "yeah!" when a candidate was asked is someone should die for lack of health insurance presented a perfect picture of what the Party had become. The nomination of the quintessential plutocrat and a running mate known for his plan to brutally slash the modest American safety net was a perfect capper.
Right-wing Meltdown:The right-wing world view is based on a faith in several unsupported assumptions, one of which is that a solid majority of American citizens share their views, and liberal/progressive beliefs are held only by a shadowy elite fringe of egghead academics and aging hippies plus angry and demanding nonwhites, various “pervents” like gays and feminists, and foreign infiltrators. In the rightie mind, all of those groups added together make a big enough minority to be of concern in a national election, especially with that voter fraud thing going on. But still, a minority.
Is All the Lying Backfiring?:The right wing media has trafficked in lies for so long because they believe it suits their agenda. They know that if they tell the truth about the President’s actual agenda, most conservative viewers wouldn’t give a fuck. For instance, the Affordable Care Act will likely be imperceptible to people who already have employer-provided insurance, so the strategy to get them on board with fighting it is to tell them the government is taking their insurance away. Stripping the wealthiest of their tax cuts is something only said wealthiest actually care about, so right wing media runs a bunch of stories implying that people of color and single women are given a $50,000 a year salary for sitting on their butts or something. And so on.
Without lies, what does the right wing media have? Not much. One thing that continues to nag at me is how the vast majority of conservatives who come at me online are simply wrong. Not in their opinion, but in their facts. And that when you inform them of the facts, they either retreat or insist their lies are truth. That’s because if they accept the facts, their entire worldview dissipates.
Hume: U.S. ‘More Liberal Than Many May Have Thought’:Many of us have believed - and I still basically do - that that this is a center-right country. And a lot of conservatives have taken the view that liberals are really on the wane. If you look at tonight’s exit polling that we’ve seen so far, those that self-identified as liberals are about 24 percent, self-identified conservatives 35 percent, moderates 40 percent. Now, this apparent outcome tells you one thing about those moderates, that there are in that category an awful lot of them who are actually liberals.”
Romney’s Expensive Computer Get-Out-The-Vote Effort Explodes Miserably, Like Rest Of Romney Campaign:Anyway, this seems like it was quite the fuckup! The fact that the Romney campaign spent more than $100 million on services from political consulting firms close to his senior staff - services that we imagine were not vetted through a rigorous contracting process - couldn’t have anything to do with this and other failures, could it? Thank goodness the Republicans nominated a savvy businessman with so much private sector management experience to run this thing. Just imagine how badly it would’ve gone under the direction of some hippie community organizer!
John Hindraker - The Meaning Of Yesterday’s Defeat:But there is a much more important proposition that, I think, was proved false last night: that America is a center-right country. This belief is one that we conservatives have cherished for a long time, but as of today, I think we have to admit that it is false. America is a deeply divided country with a center-left plurality. This plurality includes a vast number of citizens who describe themselves as moderates, but whose views on the issues are identical or similar to those that have historically been deemed liberal.
Leeches of the GOP:A few days ago Rick Perlstein published an article at The Baffler called “The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism.” Although a bit rambling and unfocused, the article provides a fascinating view of how a culture of leeching has attached itself to “movement conservatism” and the Republican Party. All manner of people are making themselves rich by fanning the flames of alarm and then sucking money out of the rubes who believe them. It’s so blatant that conservative “media” such as Newsmax and Current Events are being subsidized by sucker schemes for Making Big Money Without Actually Having to Do Anything to Earn It.
Random RedState commenter:Yet more evidence that we have been living in fantasyland for too long now. I don't want to hear that this is all Romney's fault, or all the campaign's fault. The simple fact is that in the run-up to this election, we were fed a steady diet of lies, from all our "loyal" sources. We need to hold not only the Romney campaign accountable, but also the conservative press (specifically the Murdoch press - Fox was the worst of the bunch), and the establishment talking heads like Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan. We need to get clear about something: these people are selling us a product. They have been taking our money and telling us bedtime stories. We complain about the MSM, but can we honestly say that the conservative press has been more honest?
How do we expect to win elections if we can't even get straight facts about the electorate? But maybe it's our own fault. There was practically a revolt around here when Erik said he didn't think the polls were false. And yet he was right, and they were right. Have we become allergic to the truth?
Seems like maybe conservatives are starting to realize that what the rest of us have been telling them for like, a decade, is true.