I was shocked last night less at the outcome (it seemed early on in the night things weren't well and they just got worse as the night went on) then at the speed at which it all happened. I had assumed that -- largely because of absentee ballots still coming in Ohio among other states -- it would take some days for everyone to know for sure who had won. Though I never bought into the Mitt Romney-wins-in-a-landslide theory, I was cautiously optimistic about his chances.
I grew to like Romney more and more as a candidate, but I fear that his flaws helped in part to do him in. His record on health care while governor of Massachusetts seemed to blunt his attacks against Obamacare when they were needed the most. I agree with Jonah Goldberg on the mistakes made by those Romney trusted, beginning with his cheif strategist, Stuart Stevens:
I think Romney strategist Stu Stevens’s contempt for ideas — never mind conservative ideas — was absurd. I think the failure of the Romney campaign to offer a compelling explanation of any kind (at least until the second debate) for how it wasn’t a third Bush term was fatal (as I discussed here and elsewhere). Politics is aboutpersuasion. And persuasion requires making serious arguments. Stevens, by all accounts, has contempt for serious arguments.
But it wasn't just Romney. For decades, the GOP has basically ceded entire groups (blacks immediately come to mind) to the Democrats, believing that those groups were just monolithic voting blocs, not amenable to persuasion of any kind. This really really needs to change.
But I think at the same time we can't get too caught in up in seeing people as defined by their race, gender, ethnicity, etc. The editors at NRO understand this all very well:
Most of the post-election discussion, we can predict, will dwell on the predictable demographic divides of sex, race, and age. Most of this conversation will be unproductive. Until conservatives devise a domestic agenda, and a way to sell it, that links small-government principles to attractive results, they are going to have a hard time improving their standing with women, Latinos, white men, or young people. And conservatives would be deeply unwise to count on the mere availability of charismatic young conservative officials to make up for that problem.
We have to better articulate the principles of the American Founding and attempt to persuade those not immediately familiar with conservative principles. Romney, speaking conservatism as a second language, was not the best person to entrust this project to, though I think he probably did the best out of anyone who ran in the Republican primaries
We have to, in the words of Lincoln, once again grasp "the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together." This can be done by appealing to principles of right and wrong, just and unjust; principles that are accessible not simply through biblical revelation but through unassisted human reason. I am reminded of a few lines from a sermon given by the Rev. Samuel Cooper in 1780:
We want not, indeed, a special revelation from heaven to teach us that men are born equal and free; that no man has a natural claim of dominion over his neighbours, nor one nation any such claim upon another.
Those especially in the pro-life movement would do well to think over these kinds of arguments (I am talking to you Todd Akin).
But I digress.
After seeing President Obama talk about bipartisanship and working across the aisle in his speech after he won last night, it sounded a little more reassuring back in 2008. We'll see if anything changes in the years ahead from what occurred during his first turn. Call me skeptical if it just ends up being more of the same. If it is more of the same, some dark days for our country may lay ahead.
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