November 5, 2014
When Mitt Romney lost to Obama in 2012, commentators said the Republican Party was dead or ... or doomed to minority status for the next generation.
I don't think I'm misremembering, but I guess we were all supposed to have forgotten that by now. I wonder what equivalent nonsense I might be wasting my time consuming this morning.
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I wonder what equivalent nonsense I might be wasting my time consuming this morning.
Rand Paul's ascendance. I personally like him, but his presidential aspiration is never going to happen.
Althouse: "I wonder what equivalent nonsense I might be wasting my time consuming this morning."
Nothing equivalent to the pronouncements of republican party death in 2008/2012 will be coming your way.
Why?
You already know why.
Just who in the democrat-media is going to offer up such a comment?
BTW, it was this belief of democrat "forever invinceability" that led the dems to overplay everything they did, including trash the filibuster in the Senate, go around announcing negotiation strategies such as "I won", etc.
Oh what a difference the last two years have made. Everything Obama touches now seems politically branded a big fat lie that fools no one. That started when Obama turned on Israel and cut the deal for Iran have the Nukes needed to destroy the Jews.
Were the commentators Democratic? Why is that such a surprise?
This was a vote against incumbents
Republicans will now have to lead. They will have to come to the center and compromise with the president
The Tea Party is dead
"I wonder what equivalent nonsense I might be wasting my time consuming this morning."
Cruz as "real" Senate Majority Leader.
Paul's media presentation is so darn smart.
Dems lose because Obama didn't play nice with Senate campaigns.
It's all just a repudiation of Obama.
And so on.
Scott Walker is too inexperienced on foreign policy to be president. He didn't even finish college
We've tried trickle down economics and it failed. We aren't doing back there again
I admit that following Obama's reelection in 2012, I worried that the electorate had reached a tipping point where the takers would permanently outnumber the makers. Last night eased my concern somewhat. We'll see what happens in 2016. Presidential elections have higher turnouts.
Since 1953 when Eisenhower took office, the presidency has swung to the other party about every other election. There were two exceptions.
'53-61: Eisenhower (Republican)
'61-69: Kennedy/Johnson (Democrat)
'69-77: Nixon/Ford (Republican)
'77-81: Carter (Democrat)
'81-93: Reagan/Bush 41 (Democrat)
'93-01: Clinton (Democrat)
'01-09: Bush 43 (Republican)
'09-17: Obama (Democrat)
If the historical pattern remains true, odds are a Republican will win in 2016. However, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Politics mirrors sports in that they both tend to elicit manic-depressive reactions from their followers immediately after each win or loss. Wins, especially those in title games, elicit fantasies of unending dominance on past the event horizon, while losses result in demands to fire all their &#$^@(! asses, while many of the euphoric winners assume that group of losers will never beat them again.
Until they do, sometimes just 24 months later. It's the same way on both sides, and both sides always have their share of people who are shocked that the *&^*#$(! voters this time around didn't know what they were doing, when they were so smart in the last election cycle.
I still remember 1994 when the same thing happened. Democrats lost in droves and the Republicans retained all (with possibly a rare exception) their seats. The pronouncement: It was an anti-incumbent election. You have to wonder what they were smoking. It doesn't fool anyone so why do they bother?
I also remember (I believe after the 2008 election) that plenty of Democrats were saying that the Republicans would be in the political wilderness for 40 years. They really thought "I won" was chiseled in stone. That's why it was extra sweet when Nancy Pelosi (the worst of the bunch), and her obnoxiously large gavel, got kicked out the door after two short years. She didn't just lose the House, she got trashed. Apparently, lesson not learned.
Obama is ready to compromise, but the Republicans just won't work with him
I think I saw an exit poll from Georgia that said 76% of those who voted for Perdue said that uppermost on their minds was to get rid of Harry Reid.
Gridlock Grows: The GOP victory is likely to create even more obstacles
Still Time for Obama to get Things Done
What I've been reading is "just you wait, 2020 or 2024, it's happening, all these old white people will be dead and then it's democrats forever."
MSM News reporters will be wearing black armbands in mourning until the New Year.
They will be pouting like they just got dumped by their boyfriend right before the Prom.
The nonsense you will be reading is how the GOP needs to work with Obama to enact the Democrat agenda.
Go here just for the look on their faces
Good for you, AA. I was going to bring this up today but you've preempted me. I remember those posts too. I would be nice if some of those commenters would show up for their crow-eating breakfast.
Maybe Sam Tanenhaus will write another book.
Maybe Wisconsin voters were fooled by the ballot that listed the incumbent as John Doe.
Everybody knows the Democrat agenda is correct. Voters are only tricked into voting Republican by a false consciousness created by libertarian billionaires and "corporations!"
Ann: For over ten years now, Althouse has been a zeitgeist blog, among other things. And you've been very prolific with tagging. The result of a cross section of politics with a lot of indexing. Your best source for what was the received wisdom circa 2012 might be your own blog, perhaps aggregated with a few additional sources.
The biggest shocker of the night came when Republican Larry Hogan picked up the Maryland governorship, a sharp rebuke to Gov. Martin O'Malley's stewardship of the state and a sign that President Obama was unable to rally his base to the polls despite campaigning for Democrat Anthony Brown. But Republicans nearly ran the table in all the competitive contests, picking up Democratic-held governorships in Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts, while holding a lead in Colorado. In all these blue-state races, Republican candidates had to reach out to nontraditional voters for support, while their Democratic challenges had trouble expanding their appeal beyond the base.
-Ross Douthat
"Rand Paul's ascendance. I personally like him, but his presidential aspiration is never going to happen."
I agree. He lost me with his idiotic statement that Bush invaded Iraq to aid Cheney's Halliburton investments. That's straight DNC lie.
There's the big disadvantage of founding your coalition upon people who aren't paying attention. It doesn't matter how easy they are to fool if they don't bother voting for you once you've fooled them.
What I've been reading is "just you wait, 2020 or 2024, it's happening, all these old white people will be dead and then it's democrats forever."
Part of the problem there is that Republicans are selling hard into the non-white and non-old crowds. They elected Tim Scott and Mia Love, and easily reelected Govs Martinez and Sandoval. They now have the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, etc.
I find it interesting that the three front runners for the Dem Presidential nomination are all really pre-Baby Boomers, or at least will be nearing 70 at the time. Meanwhile Rand Paul is going on campuses and actually making sales and even on occasion getting an ovation, while Much older college administrators are paying Hillary! Nearing a quarter of a million dollars so that she can grace their campuses, and Paul seems better received on occasion.
Why are the young so liberal? Churchill called it - when young you have your entire life ahead of you, and so Utopian voting comes easy. But as many age, their growing cynicism pushes them to the right. But this generation, the Millenials have less reason for Hope, and more for worry, if not dispair and panic, and much of it is a direct result of their enthusiastic support of the Hope and Change progressive agenda.
What the demographics boys are forgetting is that we're making more old people faster than they die off-- and that, whether or not you believe that facts have a liberal bias, life experience sure as hell has a conservative one. Another 20 years will see Sandra Fluke and Lena Dunham looking anxiously at their teenaged daughters and wondering whether the unimpeded exercise of the lady parts is really the summum bonum they once believed it to be.
rehajm said...
Obama is ready to compromise, but the Republicans just won't work with him.
Obama's idea of compromise is when others give him everything he wants. He hasn't shown the slightest ability or interest to actually compromise on anything.
I really think that everyone here has missed the easiest way to answer the professor's question....
Just wait for Garage to show up with his talking points
From Politico:
"Obama doesn’t think too much should be read into election results from a handful of states..."
No intellectual honesty or complaisance will issue forth from the executive branch. He always planned on decreeing his wishes through the agencies and personal fiat anyway.
I wonder what equivalent nonsense I might be wasting my time consuming this morning.
That this election is not a repudiation of Barack Obama?
Obama will not lower his Marxist Elite self to speak to ordinary Americans that he sees as a sociology project.
Once again we, the people of the United States, have failed President Obama.
Yahoo says that last night's big winner was Hillary!
I blame Bush, of course.
Another bit of nonsense of more recent vintage -- that the House GOP shutting down the government last year was bad politics.
Now, I'm not going to claim it actually helped. But with the House GOP getting its largest majority since the 1940s, possibly the 1920s, the proposition that it hurt the GOP is untenable.
I think we need to take a few minutes and reflect on why we, as a people, continue to fail President Obama.
I believe it is the result of too much free speech.
Enabling wreckers and hoarders and Kulaks to spread lies undermining the glorious revolution that our light-bringer President works ceaselessly for.
(Except for occasional golfing outings needed to revive his spirits after having to deal with the obstructionists Rethuglicans.)
Every time I saw that idea that the government shutdown would hurt Republicans, I wondered what the writer was thinking.
Sure it hurt them among the 41% who still support Obama, but so what?
Without Obamacare, the Republicans might be marginal right now. That was an enormous mistake.
The post-mortem on Romney in 2012 wasn't actually wrong--demographically, the GOP will be in serious trouble if it doesn't find a way to broaden its appeal. It took some serious crapulence on Obama's part to give the GOP the massive gains they got this year. But this shouldn't be taken as some sign that the country is more receptive to the GOP beyond that.
The real question is whether over the coming years the GOP can appeal to younger, less conservative voters and growing racial minorities. It's certainly possible--there was a time when Catholics and Southerners were solidly in the tank for the Democrats, and now the first group splits about evenly and the second group is solidly for the GOP. Hispanics aren't necessarily going to remain Democrat-leaning for the next generation.
"Every time I saw that idea that the government shutdown would hurt Republicans, I wondered what the writer was thinking."
That doesn't mean the shutdown was a good idea--imagine how much worse Obama's ratings would be if the news during those weeks was focused solely on the botched health care rollout instead of a shutdown that achieved nothing.
It helps the GOP that the shutdown ended when it did, and the ACA rollout fiasco soon made up for it, and then we got another year of Obama screwing everything else up. Most voters probably forgot about the shutdown by now.
I still wouldn't recommend doing that again.
The shutdown gave us the sequestration and a trajectory towards a balanced budget and P.O.'d some people who love government rather than view it as a necessary evil.
No House majority is safe from the next election.
The Dems had 257 House seats going into 2010. Now they look to have ~185.
The Senate takes longer to switch, but it still does. From 59 seats in 2009 the Dems now look like they will have 46.
Ooops.
Obamacare was such a bad decision, and it's amazing how few Democrats will admit how terrible it turned out to be. There's a big historical "what if" here. What else could they have done with their majorities?
Good one, Dallas Morning News:
"AUSTIN — Greg Abbott rode into the governor’s office Tuesday..."
...and Politico:
Clinton Plugs Kay Hagan.
You know, Repubs COULD be Obama's saving grace. THey will present legislation that will work better tahn what he's done up till now. And all he has to do is pivot. Then the dems will later claim it was Obama all along, and take credit.
But first he hast to pivot. Dont know if he has it in him.
Obama's ratings will go up now. He'll have lots of political theatrics opposing the evil Republicans.
What's good for Obama is not necessarily what's good for Democrats. I don't think a Republican Congress will do anything but help him continue to do nothing.
Apparently we get a different kind of Hispanic here in Texas. The Republican candidate for the Senate, according to the exit polls, got the support of 54% of Latino men. Granted, the D got 54% of Latina women, but gender gaps are normal in US politics.
There's this bit of "fully legal" nonsense at FiveThirtyEight:
"Nearly 18 Million People Live In Areas Where Marijuana Is Fully Legal"
Today's nonsense: Hillary Clinton is a viable presidential candidate and will lead the Democrats to victory in 2016.
The sooner you accept her reality, the sooner you can get past her.
The electoral map being circulated looks nothing like a "New Confederacy" which some idiot pundit blathered about in 2012.
Not naming names.
https://www.google.com/search?q=image+time+magazine+cover+republican+doomed&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=856&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7QxbVNO9JoyiyATr24DoDg&ved=0CCwQ7Ak#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=p2t1BYrpDjRXsM%253A%3BsO8LXzngIN6jjM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F1.bp.blogspot.com%252F_uzVZA7KHnGA%252FTNBTpts0A6I%252FAAAAAAAABZk%252FfvvyPWsjCa4%252Fs1600%252Ftime%252Bmag%252Bgop%252Blost%252Bits%252Bway.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.creativeminorityreport.com%252F2010_10_10_archive.html%3B400%3B529
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