cinepro wrote:Two competing theories: the "cyclical" theory which posits that voters will swing back towards Republicans after a few terms with a democrat President, or the "changing demographic" theory which says that the shift in the makeup of the population favors the Democrats (and it isn't a temporary shift).
While I can see the historical argument for the former, I think the reality is the latter. But I think the answer isn't very complicated. It's not platforms and policies and focus groups. It's simply a matter of picking the right candidate.
I have consistently maintained that Mitt Romney was the wrong candidate to run against Obama. It was a mistake to choose him, and while I was surprised at the shift in momentum after the first debate, I never thought for a second that he would win.
Republicans have to figure out a way to nominate candidates that can beat Democrats. If they can't figure that out, unless the Democrats totally drop the ball and nominate an unelectable doofus, future elections will be more predictable than yesterday's was, and worse for the Republicans.
Lucky for you, we Democrats have a history of nominating unelectable doofuses.
I agree with your diagnosis of a demographic shift as opposed to a cyclical swing. But I don't think the answer for the repubs is just nominating a better candidate. I think the answer lies in actually governing according to conservative principles. It's very easy to campaign on reducing government and balancing the budget. But the last test of government by the repubs didn't follow conservative principles at all. Instead, we got tax cuts and two wars on a credit card. And while I'm pretty confident that, had repubs won the presidency and the senate, Romney's across the board tax cuts would have been passed quickly, I simply don't believe that the loophole tightening and cuts needed to balance the budge would ever have materialized.
Oh, and stop trying to shove probes up women's vaginas against their will. The party of small government has no place staking a claim to lady parts.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
I think Mitt Romney was the best candidate the Republican party could have run this year. Seriously, which one of the other primary candidates could have done half as well as Mitt did?
DarkHelmet wrote:Marco Rubio is the GOP golden boy right now. I mentioned Chris Christie and I was told he was too fat. It seems part of the job of president is being cool and good looking.
Sadly, you are probably right. William Howard Taft was 6 feet tall and weighed 350 pounds. Don't know if he would pass muster in today's electorate. FDR's handicap was discreetly ignored by the press, a remarkable achievement over 4 terms. I actually think voters would be probably be much more likely to elect a handicapped candidate than an overweight one.
Bucking history, this time the shorter candidate won.
As for Marco Rubio, I'm sure the GOP will take a long hard look at him. But I don't think the GOP's problems weren't because Romney was white, and I don't think they would be cured by simply nominating an Hispanic or African American candidate. If looks were all that mattered, John Huntsman would have done a lot better and Ron Paul would have done a lot worse.
But I don't think there's any denying that it helps to be telegenic in the age of television.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
