Aftermath

I had good reason to be anxious. We didn’t do so well in the election. There is no way around the fact that this has been a major defeat for the cause of freedom. We get to spend another four years under Obama’s incompetent management.

Well, I have spent the required day in mourning, whining about the death of the Republic on Facebook and now it is time to get back to work. I think that it is always better to see the bright side of life, so I will try to make the best of it.


Well, things are not quite as bad as they seem. Obama hardly won by a landslide. In the popular vote, Obama won 60,841,109 votes while Romney got 57,941,258 votes. I guess 50-48% against a sitting President isn’t too bad, although we could have done better. In the Electoral College it is 303 for Obama and 206 for Romney with Florida and its 29 votes still undecided. The final map looks like this.

It could have been better, but it could have been worse, but it wasn’t a landslide. Here is what a landslide looks like.

Election of 1964

or

The election of 1984

In both these cases, and in 1972 and others the opposing party was absolutely routed. This isn’t the case here. In Congress, we did better than one might expect suggesting that Obama’s coattails were short. We only lost two seats in the Senate making it 53-45 with two independents. This is a lot better situation than we had after 2008 when the Democrats had nearly a filibuster proof majority. We also held our own in the House of Representatives. We moved from 242-193 to 233-193 with several seats still being decided. If we didn’t win, at least we didn’t lose and I think we can call Congress a draw.

Things are a little better at the State level. We have 30 Republican governors, up from 21 in 2008 and 20 in 2010. I don’t have solid information about  party control of the state legislatures, but it seems to be a draw there with neither party making any major gains.

Now, the downside. It doesn’t look as if Obamacare is going to be repealed. This is bad since the federal government can hardly afford a new set of entitlements and the population doesn’t need to be even more dependent on the government. Well, if we can’t end it, we must make it palatable. The Republicans ought to find ways of adjusting and tweaking this monstrosity in order to bring it more in line with Conservative principles. I suggest arguing for more control and funding at the state level and, down the road when it is obviously not working, introduce the idea of re-privatizing health care.

Demographics seem to be against us. I do not think that the changing composition of the American population means the end of the Republican party. This is only certain if you think that party affiliation and policy preferences are somehow hardwired into various races and ethnic groups. How racist is that? We need to do more work on this. I do not believe that the Republicans should try to play identity politics the way the Democrats do. This won’t convince anyone and the people most susceptible to this sort of thing will always go for the Democrats. We certainly should not waste our time courting “civil rights” organizations like the NAACP. These groups are under the control of the Left and their sole purpose, these days, is electing Democrats. The concerns of the people they purport to represent are a distant second to them. I am not sure what the answer is, but there must be some way to persuade minorities that Conservative principles benefit them too.

We have to gain control of the media narrative. I know we have Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet, but more needs to be done. The Mainstream Media is weaker than it once was, but too many people still get their news from them. They have to be made irrevelant.I suggest that Republican politicians treat the MSM as it really is, the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and react accordingly. This means not giving them interviews, giving their reporters accommodations on campaign buses, etc. They shouldn’t complain about media bias, though. When asked, they should state dismissively, “Well, CBS (or the New York Times, etc) is old media and we prefer to spend our campaign resources on more relevant outlets”. Make it clear that they are just no longer important enough to bother with. And, we also need to fight more against the slanders of the Left. Don’t let them get away with calling us racist, bigoted, Nazis, etc. Point out the general nastiness and mendacity of the Left.

Why we are on the subject, can we stop calling them Liberals or Progressives. They are neither. Truth in advertising demands we call them what they are; Socialists, Marxists, Statists, anything but Liberal. Their intellectual forebears are not such great Liberal thinkers as John Locke or John Stuart Mill. They are rather Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

Let’s not form circular firing squads or fight each other. There are lessons to be learned from this defeat, but we cannot abandon or throw under the bus any Republican factions. We win by growing the party, not purging it.

Well, those are my thoughts, whatever that may be worth.

As Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

and

“You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

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8 thoughts on “Aftermath”

  1. I find it interesting that you are opposed to what you call leftist programs when you benefited from Hoosier healthwise, a government supplied job when you were in High School, the fact that our parents were on social security. I myself got a job when I was 16 and paid my insurance and car payment, worked full Time and paid my way through college with little debt.

    You took advantage of the programs that you now want to eliminate for others. Why?

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    1. Because I was wrong to depend to depend on such programs. I should have shown more initiative and gotten a job. I know better now.
      Social Security is going bankrupt and will need to be reformed or it will not be there for us.

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    1. Unfortunately, I am stuck in the general area of the Ohio valley due to job, family, etc. Please email me if you want to talk. I would rather not use the comment section of my blog for personal discussions.

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