We all dodged a bullet by not electing Romney.

[Gagundathar]

@JackieLikesVariety

could be both.

could also bethe fix was in, and he knew it. Rove was really sure he was going to win Ohio…:rolleyes:

I wasn’t aware that Mr. Rove was running for office in Ohio.
Oh… wait.

[kaylasdad99]

@TriPolar

I hope for destruction of the Republican party so I can start hoping for destruction of the Democrats to follow.

:eek:

Are you . . . ME???

[Der_Trihs]

@TriPolar

The election was close enough that a concession speech wouldn’t be a top priority. How many candidates prepare a concession speech ahead of time anyway?

Obama did.

As polls closed across the country on Tuesday, President Barack Obama had a concession speech ready, while Republican nominee Mitt Romney said he did not.

During his last press conference as a candidate, Romney told reporters on his plane that he had just finished writing his 1,118 victory speech. The Republican said that was the only speech he had at that point.

“And, uh, I’m sure it will change before I’m finished, because I haven’t passed it around to my family and friends and advisers to get their reaction, but I’ve only written one speech at this point,” Romney said, according to the New York Times’ transcript.

@Onomatopoeia

I think we’ll know after the next midterms. If the Republicans clean the Democrats’ clocks in the midterms, as I believe they will, then we’ll get another Romney clone for the next presidential election.

Or the fanatics will take that as encouragement that it was all Romney’s fault, and we’ll get a “movement conservative”. Who’ll lose worse than Romney most likely.

[R.P.McMurphy]

@Onomatopoeia

I think we’ll know after the next midterms. If the Republicans clean the Democrats’ clocks in the midterms, as I believe they will, then we’ll get another Romney clone for the next presidential election. If, on the other hand, they lose seats in the house, or worse, lose the house, then I think pragmatism and self preservation will kick in and we’ll see some new faces come presidential primary time, with more moderates than ideological purists and nut-jobs.

The Pubbies still do have a big tent. They’ve welcomed the misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, anti-intellectuals, racists, and quite a surprising number of self-hating blacks with open arms, but that’s a short-term strategy, and not a winning one.

With the party’s recent trajectory, if they don’t moderate, I don’t think the Republicans can win another presidential election. They can, however, cause a lot of damage in the midterms.

@TriPolar

You know, I haven’t really considered the mid-terms yet. It will be interesting. I assume the Republicans won’t lose many seats by sticking to the ‘blacks cause high taxes’ theme since most are in safe districts. But they won’t lose those either if they moderate the message. Congressional races are very local, so they can maintain different national and local messaging. It will definitely be interesting to watch it unfold. I hope for destruction of the Republican party so I can start hoping for destruction of the Democrats to follow.

That’s kind of the way I see it. It’s hard for the Presidential party to do well in the mid-terms. I don’t think it will be as resounding as 2010 because I think the novelty of the Tea Party is wearing off. They are their own worst enemy. The Republicans will win some hard fought Senate and House battles. With gerrymandering it will be difficult for the Dems to pick up seats or regain control of the House. If there are 12 million new jobs (Romney’s number) in the next two years then there is a chance for the Dems to have a successful 2014.

That being said, the Republicans have to make some fundamental changes in their message and their platform if they ever want to regain the White House.

[Evil_Captor]

@TriPolar

I hope for destruction of the Republican party so I can start hoping for destruction of the Democrats to follow.

HELL yes!

[DigitalC]

We dodged a bullet by not letting Republicans back in power, it really wouldn’t have made any difference which of them sat on the big chair.

[Mekhazzio]

@DigitalC

We dodged a bullet by not letting Republicans back in power, it really wouldn’t have made any difference which of them sat on the big chair.

Especially since we knew that the administration would be pursuing the same policies, and even with some of the same people, that all Republican administrations have had in common for the last 30 years. The figurehead of the month isn’t particularly important, the problem is that they’re all figureheads for the same broken ship.

[shiftless]

@Evil_Captor

They want us all to think it’s the man and not the machine … but it’s the machine.

Yeah. It’s probably true of both parties but especially the Republican machine. They have some very strong personalities behind the throne so they don’t like any strength actually ON the throne. Mittens was the one candidate they had who looked pretty good but who wouldn’t mind changing his stance to whatever the Rove-mind decided.

When I voted, I asked myself, “Self, did I like the way Karl ran the country from 200-2008. Do I want Karl to have another 4 years?” The answer for me was no.

[RickJay]

It seems to me that every Presidential loser in my memory turned out to be a better guy after the election than he seemed to be before.

Romney has broken that streak.

[Buck_Godot]

@TriPolar

You know, I haven’t really considered the mid-terms yet. It will be interesting. I assume the Republicans won’t lose many seats by sticking to the ‘blacks cause high taxes’ theme since most are in safe districts. But they won’t lose those either if they moderate the message. Congressional races are very local, so they can maintain different national and local messaging. It will definitely be interesting to watch it unfold. I hope for destruction of the Republican party so I can start hoping for destruction of the Democrats to follow.

But the Republicans still have to worry about the primaries. With the fiscal cliff looming I suspect that the remaining sane Republicans are going to have to go back on their Grover pledge in order to keep the country from going down the tubes. This will leave them wide open from a primary battle in 2014, necessitating an even further shift to the right. I don’t we’ve heard the last of the cut-me-own-throat brand of Republicanism until after the 2016 general election at the earliest.
Now that I notice it, one thing that I find interesting is the different way the Republicans and Democrats (at least on this board) handled their electoral victory. In this thread most of the Democrats seem to hope that ideally the Republicans will turn away from the crazy and form a more moderate party that will act cooperatively as part of a balanced 2 party system.

Contrast this with the Republicans who after the re-election of George Bush, thought that the best strategy was to hit them while they’re down with the goal of creating a permanent Republican majority, doing away with the Democrats entirely.

[a35362]

I want Republicans to turn away from the crazy but only after they crash and burn.

[Modern_Master]

Democrat and proud Obama supporter here.

Obama had this election in the bag. It was only a matter of time before Romney fell apart. We had hints of his meltdown during the campaign phase, and now it’s full-swing.

[Drain_Bead]

@RickJay

It seems to me that every Presidential loser in my memory turned out to be a better guy after the election than he seemed to be before.

Romney has broken that streak.

McCain broke it well before Romney did. He’s a joke now.

[Chimera]

@Buck_Godot

But the Republicans still have to worry about the primaries. With the fiscal cliff looming I suspect that the remaining sane Republicans are going to have to go back on their Grover pledge in order to keep the country from going down the tubes.

Actually that’s the beauty of this whole thing. The Republicans were so convinced they were going to win, or that Obama would flinch on the whole Fiscal Cliff (more of a slope) that they fell into a bit of a trap. Obama doesn’t have to do anything to get a huge tax increase (truth: expiration of temporary cuts, not actual increase increase) and neither do the Republicans. They just have to let it happen. If the Republicans want to prolong the temporary cuts, then they have to c.c…cc…cccooommmprommiisse.

On the positive side for the Republicans, they can play games and maneouver about, let the tax cuts expire and at no point are any of them actually on the hook as having voted to increase taxes! (Unless you want to scream about voting for the whole fiscal cliff thing, and I think there will be plenty of retrospective howling about that from the Tea Partiers.)

Given that Grover Nordquist is now making the rounds again and the Republicans are trying to get their backs up to refuse any compromise, I think President Obama’s best option is to sit tight and let the cliff happen while working only on the spending side to prevent layoffs and defense contractor issues.

[Marley23]

@Drain_Bead

McCain broke it well before Romney did. He’s a joke now.

McCain’s concession speech was very gracious. His behavior and actions since then haven’t been, but I think that has to do with his latest primary challenge from the right on top of whatever sore-loserness and personal contempt for Obama are coming into play.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@Evil_Captor

Exactly. Just as the Republicans have distanced themselves from Dubya, but have not changed their stance on foreign policy, torture, economic policy or women’s reproductive rights by one jot or tittle. They want us all to think it’s the man and not the machine … but it’s the machine.

I couldn’t have said it better.

They do seem to be focusing on the packaging and not the content after their defeat, don’t they?

[GIGObuster]

@Evil_Captor

Exactly. Just as the Republicans have distanced themselves from Dubya, but have not changed their stance on foreign policy, torture, economic policy or women’s reproductive rights by one jot or tittle. They want us all to think it’s the man and not the machine … but it’s the machine.

Indeed, one item that was not talked much during the election was related to foreign policy; and I have to say, the defeat of Romney turned into a personal matter when I learned this about Romney:

Romney, Bain, Oligarchs And Death Squads

In The Real Romney, the author mentions Romney’s trip to Latin America to raise money for the initial Bain Capital funding rounds. Romney and his partners had been encountering difficulties raising funds for that initial round and had agreed not to approach existing Bain investors. So Romney reached out to his Latin American friends for help. The family mentioned in the book is the Poma family, but the Huffington Post article has much more.

“I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent,” he said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. “When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira.”
Romney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans – the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.
While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of these prominent families – including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans – were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador’s civil war.

Of course he made his sidekicks at Bain that found those “charming” money people to promise to him that the money they gave Bain was not obtained from shady deals, I guess blood money was not a problem, and there was not (that I’m aware of) any reported effort from Romney and Bain buddies on returning any money after reports like the Truth Commission from El Salvador appeared.

Romney was just like all the proud banana Republicans that follow the old ostrich system of foreign policy, a system where it does not matter if we support criminals and thugs in other countries as long as we get a cut in their evil profit. When in the last debate Romney showed complete ignorance of the military dictatorships that the US and the west supported and helped become established, like the Sha in Iran, it was clear that Romney had already internalized that classic head in the sand Republican method of ignoring gross human right violations as long as there was a benefit for the right kind of people.

That is, Romney’s and many Republicans kind of people.

Bullet dodged.

(And yeah, some could say that there is not much difference with the current Democratic administration, to that I only have to say that Obama did visit the tomb of the martyred Monsignor Romero and gave his respects, Romero was one of the best known victims of the death squads. And there was no problem that the current president in El Salvador is from the leftist party of the former guerrillas that won the elections and no, the world did not end, as many right wingers still want and hope to see happening in the world when leftists win in elections.)
-Ed, a Salvadoran-American Doper.