Look, wingnuts, all throughout the campaign we told you that Mitt Romney and his team were giant liars and you chose to not believe us. Well, let’s take a look at this:
Rich Beeson, the political director for the Romney campaign, says that the problem wasn’t the GOP get-out-the-vote efforts, but the astounding success of the Democrats to turn out groups that generally didn’t vote in such large numbers.
“We turned out the groups we needed to on our side,” Beeson says, adding that Democrats “did a better job of turnout than we thought they could do. They did alter the electorate.”
There are still some votes to count but as of right now Mitt Romney has 58,777,012 votes. In 2008, John McCain received 59,934,814 votes. So, Rich Beeson is telling the National Review with a straight face that his team turned out the votes they needed to win according to their own models even though they turned out 1.2 million fewer voters than John McCain did four years ago. John McCain lost by 9.5 million votes, and Romney turned out 1.2 million less than that. Basically, John Beeson is saying that his model indicated that Romney could get approximately 11 million fewer votes than McCain needed to tie, despite population growth over the last four years, and that he would be in a perfect position to beat the president.
When someone tells you that they had a model that indicated getting 11 million fewer votes than John McCain needed to tie would put them in the catbird’s seat to win, you really ought to throw them out of your office and never talk to them again. That’s not spin. That is just contempt for your intelligence.
“The ground game worked fine,” Beeson continues, commenting that 160,000 more African-Americans voted in Ohio than had in 2008, while the percentage of 18 to 25 year olds who voted in Colorado jumped to 20 percent from 14 percent in 2008.
First of all, your ground game doesn’t work fine if the other side is churning out 160,000 new black voters in the most important state and you are getting 84,000 fewer votes in that state than John McCain received. But when your model doesn’t even call for matching McCain’s performance, that is to be expected.
But, this is all bullshit. The Romney campaign didn’t set out to get 11 million fewer votes than John McCain needed to win the popular vote or 84,000 fewer votes than he received in Ohio. Rich Beeson is just lying to your face. Their ground game collapsed and was epic failure of monumental proportions.
Team Romney is doing what they did for the last seven years. They are treating the truth with unprecedented contempt and insulting everyone’s intelligence.
“The ground game worked fine,” Beeson continues, commenting that 160,000 more African-Americans voted in Ohio than had in 2008, while the percentage of 18 to 25 year olds who voted in Colorado jumped to 20 percent from 14 percent in 2008.
I know Besson, like the Zombie-eyed Granny-starver hates that Blah people show up to vote, but does that idiot have any idea why more 18 to 25 yr olds did? It was something else besides the President. It’s called legalizing(or hoping) marijuana.
They also treated competence with unprecedented contempt and I do believe that caused them a few problems as well..
“”The ground game worked fine,” Beeson continues, commenting that 160,000 more African-Americans voted in Ohio than had in 2008,”
I could be wrong, happily, but that doesn’t sound even remotely possible.
it’s true.
Blacks made up 11% of the electorate in Ohio in 2008.
In 2012?
Blacks made up FIFTEEN PERCENT of the electorate in Ohio.
I’m not sure about your interpretation. The example shows bullshit of a sort, but perhaps more self-deception than intentional deception. Or so much of both that it’s difficult to distinguish. (Not reality based, remember?)
Isn’t it generally accepted that the typical GOP voter is a dying demographic? What did they do to expand it? Nothing.
Especially in hindsight (since the election), do you really think they had an accurate estimation of what they were up against? Their judgment was hugely distorted by psychological defense mechanisms, such as denial, projection, magical thinking, etc.
Isn’t it at least as likely that they were overconfident and completely misjudged the Democrats (as they have been doing every day since 2008)? Both the appeal of their message and their GOTV abilities?
You compare it with 2008, which of course makes sense, but I think they probably put more stock in 2010, which makes them look alot stronger, and the Dems a lot weaker and apathetic, than they actually are.
Clearly the voter-suppression aspect of their strategy was largely squelched or neutralized.
Also, their GOTV methods are outmoded and inefficient, completely outclassed by the Democrats.
Orca, whatever good it might have done them, crashed.
Somebody cut off his credit card.
If I’m reading these web sites right, Obama also received fewer votes in 2012 than in 2008:
62,278,404 in 2012 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012)
vs 66,882,230 in 2008.
(http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/)
For whatever reason, looks like fewer people voted this year, on both sides. Obama got 4 1/2 million fewer votes, while the repub candidate got ‘only’ 1.2 million fewer, but it was still enough for us to win. So maybe Beeson meant that their models had somewhat lower turnout built in for both sides, but Obama did better than expected.
Not that I like giving these rightwingers any benefit of the doubt — they don’t deserve it after all their other lies — but maybe you have gone a bridge too far on this one, Boo.
Yes, thanks for pulling these up, I was wondering about this point.
It seems clear that many millions fewer voted in 2012 than 2008, despite population growth. That Rmoney’s team imagined they would beat Obama with a McRube level turnout seems insane. Using mid term turnout levels as a model in prez year would be gross incompetence.
But what I am curious about is what can be said about the millions of (mostly Obama) voters in 2008 who stayed home in 2012. Is this some identifiable demographic? Who are all the non-voters (on both sides) in 2012? Evangelicals who really took seriously their years of being told that Mormons are a cult? I don’t get it.
And yet as badly as Romney did, does anyone think that Gingrich, or Santorum, or Cain, or Perry would have done any better? It’s stunning how the modern Republican party has fallen.
So it’s all about the ground game? About turnout?
It’s not about the singer?
Or the song?
That’t the lesson, for us and for the GOP, of this election?
.
People can’t tell me that this has nothing to with race at all. I mean, I don’t remember this type of weird stuff when Bush or Clinton were re-elected. Four more years!
Man, this is so sad. Republicans scare mentally ill people into acting out in horrible ways. This poor family. Their children are so screwed, and it’s all because of the demons the mother imagined (with a little help from the wingnutosphere).
The Republicans are in the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. They are in denial, which seems to be followed rather quickly by the anger stage. I expect they’ll start the bargaining soon, but I wonder if they’ll ever get to the acceptance part.
Well, I guess we demonic libs all got to the acceptance phase after 2004. But we are reality based, haha. And perhaps more mentally healthy as a group…
But it was pretty hard accepting reality watching the monsters Roberts and Alito sit in their witness chairs happily waiting to be confirmed.
Hopefully today’s “conservatives” can be treated to many similar experiences in the coming years….character building, haha.
I suspect the Kubler-Ross model of behavior does not have the elasticity to handle crazy people, and so i would not be holding my breath regarding their successful end-stage arrival.
“Egomaniacal rich guy Donald Trump simply called for a revolution.”
Secession: Why 311,000 Citizens From 33 States Are Asking Obama to Secede From the Union
Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
“From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois’s Project Vote, a voter registration campaign with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain’s Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of “40 under Forty” powers to be.[46]”
For years, the republicans have sneered at President Obama’s background as a community organizer, most noticeably with Palin’s gleeful contempt at the RNC.
Selling their version of Obama as some sort of inexperienced, in over his head, affirmative action, empty suit to their Fox-watching flock was one thing.
But there are no signs that the republican power brokers ever for one moment recognized and studied who and what they were actually up against, and structured a responsive campaign accordingly, either. And that is just fine with me. Carry on, republicans.
I think the words you’re looking for are “Please proceed”. 🙂
Perhaps those Rep who actually do the voting should point their ire at the billionaires, including Romney, who muddied the waters of their Conservative message. Romney, as an ultra rich, spoke through a billionaire’s prism; every issue was a talking point until it came to him escaping taxes and then he fired up.
Those Rep are so well trained that they wouldn’t see that they don’t need to be beholding to the billionaire’s to write their message. The billionaire’s money has destroyed, not made, their Party.