[...] Is it 2012 yet? [Flopping Aces] …and poor strategy of the McCain campaign, the unprecedented amount of campaign money that weighed against us…but at some point you just have… [...]

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[...] Is it 2012 yet? …and poor strategy of the McCain campaign, the unprecedented amount of campaign money that weighed against us…but at some point you just have… [...]

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Don’t listen to liberals on anything … that’s #1.

#2 – The Republican Party needs gutting … big time and I’m tired of our $ going to crooked contractors and Dubia!

And it’s not Palin that needs to go … which is why the party is now turning on her. Listening to Laura Ingraham this morning and the jokes that ran McCain’s campaign are now blaming Palin?

Sorry to be vulgar but WTF? Way to go guys … go back to crawling up Obama’s a**! You are the cowards that let this happen … YOU … not Palin. You were dead before her and made her do what McCain should have been doing. I admire your service Senator … but when you say FIGHT … I think the wind coudl blow you over.

Maybe McCain shouldn’t have neutered himself by foolishly thinking that to win he needed to appease the uber-left.

Many call themselves democrats, but the % of them that are truly left is much smaller. Much. Again … people do what the TV tells them too. Which is why when things started going negative the last week, things tightened. Just like when Palin made her acceptance speech and ripped Obama new one … proper!

Enjoy your 4 years … you’ve woke a sleeping giant.

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It appears my comment #128775 is stuck in permanent “moderation limbo”: http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/11/04/is-it-2012-yet-p/#comment-128775

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Hey Folks;
Wow, I wasn’t expecting this kind of infighting amongst Reps in what’s become a post analysis of, “What went wrong?” If you don’t mind, a little Indy input;

Hard Right. I understand your conviction to unbending “far-right” positions, but a firm hard line in the sand is not going to get you what you need. There needs to be some ability for you guys to compromise to get what you want. Not necessarily in your ideologies and convictions. In today’s world, neither party can be an island unto itself. And neither can pull in 270 electoral points on it’s own merits. You have to garnish some Independent votes to pull us in to help. You can’t afford to ignore us indies. Let me put it this way; The leadership of the Republican Party has strayed from it’s conservative base and swung left. Like it or not it is now a centrist party. And that is what caused many of us to jump ship. Independents are the new conservatives.

I’m not suggesting you should switch parties to Indy. But, Mon Deux! Repubs can’t move anymore to center when they’re already there. They’re infringing on Democrat territories. That’s how you lost us. We view you as both the same. We have to either stay Indy or try to pick the worst of “two evils”. You have to work smarter, not harder to draw us to your side. You have to look at what the Indies want and try to homogenize and co-operate with us. Many of us would much rather help the Reps if the stakes are down. Dubya was certainly not a conservative. He was actually left of center and moved further left after he got in. Palin didn’t only recharge your conservative base. Her positions on anti-corruption and reform also caught the eye of many formerly disenchanted conservative Indies. I would never have joined with you in this fight had it not been for her. As I’ve said before, although I have very high respect for McCain, I didn’t particularly like his positions on the issues.

You see, here’s the problems we Indies had with both parties:

1) Big business: NAFTA, and other Free Trade initiatives pissed us off. Businesses loved the idea because it increase their profit margins. They threw money at candidates on both sides of the aisle. The down-side was it closed up our factories. The Independents screamed for, Made In America” products, but neither of you listened. Under the Constitution, most of our Government funds came through tariffs and import/export taxes. When you took those away, you had to reach into our pockets for it. Even though both candidates support Free Trade, McCain made the mistake of saying we needed even more of it. Obama agreed, but he never came out and said it.

2) Lobbyist money: You have to wean yourselves off of taking money in exchange for favors. It has thoroughly corrupted our politicians and the system.

3) Proposals to change our Constitution: Stop coming up with Amendments to our Constitution. Independents liked our Constitution and Bills of Right exactly as they were thank you very much. Both sides need to quit screwing with it. Every Congress jokers on both sides of the aisle propose a dozen unnecessary changes. It makes us Indies very nervous every time you do this. Example: “All men are created equal” is a blanket statement already referring to all mankind. We didn’t need to change this to include the 13th 15th, 19th or ERA, we only needed to pass laws and legislation to enforce what was already provided for in the Supreme Law of the land. Prohibition and it’s repeal? Were those necessary? The 12th Amendment? Dump it, we don’t need it anymore. The 16th was created to allow for socialist program to get a foothold and create big government bureaucracies. The 23rd? Why did a single city need it’s own reps when our Capitol was in a state that already had them? Should NYC and LA get their own?

4) Reform:

Both Dems & Repubs always screw this up because the “reform” bills they create are naturally corrupted, as they are drawn up by beltway insiders that wouldn’t know reform if it bit them in the butt. Look how good it worked this year with the campaign finance reforms. Just peachy right? The only way to make reform work is to have processes analyzed and examined by study groups and think tanks. Improvement suggestions are then drawn by those with no political affiliation or potential investment gains. It’s like a business hiring an efficiency expert. It’s impossible to get it right when you are part of the problem. Paradigms have to be challenged.

5) Immigration:

By God, enforce our borders and stop letting illegals in and rewarding them with automatic citizenship to buy their votes. Both parties are endangering our national security doing this. They are not taking jobs, “nobody else wants”. They are taking jobs that used to be the entry level jobs of our nation’s teens, poor, and those who were outmoded by technological advance. Our kids are joining gangs or becoming slackers mooching on their parents because they can’t get entry-level job experience. If you drastically cut the taxes on small and medium businesses you could raise minimum wage, improve the economy, and reduce crime.

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You think because the words “tax cuts” dribbed from Obama’s lips, he was “centrist”?

You consider his “cuppa tea” foreign policy “hawkish”??

Blustering and distancying himself from Black Theologists and Marxists ties is “centrist”????

I must be addressing that cute little whippersnapper in the red velvet rhinestone cowboy hat here…

I’m not saying he IS centrist; but that he portrayed himself as a non-radical lefty. I know post-election stats have shown something like 75% of voters think he’ll raise taxes; and the same voters also felt the economy was the number one issue, which seems a contradiction. I think we gained a bit toward the end when his socialist views were exposed by Joe Wurzelbacher, but it was too little too late; and focus by the media was on Joe’s record, taking the spotlight heat off of “The Annointed One”.

Most people I know are fooled by his air of moderation; his crafted image, and not the substance underneath. They’ve been led to believe that talks of his radical ties are smears.

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Word, “da *man*”. My challenges are always extended with the best of intents, you know. However I really must disagree. In this election, conservative… if not dead… was downright non-existant. The closest thing to a traditional conservative was Palin, and the “moderate” right are busy blaming her.

Conservatism, as I know it, is all but dead in the past many elections. The further away from the Reagan era, the further away from conservatism. I don’t know how to say it any other way. You are a young whippersnapper (at least compared to me.._, so perhaps you have a morphed view. But on this, Mr. Mike and I are closer in our views on McCain and conservatism.

In order for Obama to win election, aside from the spell of charisma and glass ceiling breaking he had the country under, Obama also had to move to the right and campaign as a centrist (tax cuts, hawkish foreign policy blustering, distancing from past radical ties and history). He did not win by campaigning as a far left anti-war progressive liberal socialist.

Oye vay….

You think because the words “tax cuts” dribbed from Obama’s lips, he was “centrist”?

You consider his “cuppa tea” foreign policy “hawkish”??

Blustering and distancing himself from Black Theologists and Marxists ties is “centrist”????

I must be addressing that cute little whippersnapper in the red velvet rhinestone cowboy hat here…

For every yin there is a yang. I’m saying this to an “asian-american”??? (as we both so LOVE the hypenated american bit…). When the left says “pro choice”, it’s supposed to be the yang to “pro life”. But ya know, “pro death” doesn’t sound so good, so they make it “pro life” instead.

Such is Obama’s “tax cuts”. So let’s examine the “yang” you miss

1: BHO’s “tax cuts” are tax increases by sunsetting the Bush tax cuts
2: BHO’s “tax cuts” are only for the lower income, who do not pay the bulk of the taxes
3: BHO’s “tax cuts” also include tax credits for those who don’t pay taxes, giving them bucks back on their annual IRS return.

BTW, if I can’t be Treasure Sec’y, I play to be a senior welfare baby if Obama does this. So get to work…. :0)

So much for a “centrist” ‘tude on tax cuts but in “just words” only. It’s actually “tax increases” but “only on the wealthy” (sort of a yang to the DNC tax mantra). But a true conservative cuts taxes for all.. not those that contribute to least to growing the economy.

“Hawkish foreign policy”???? There’s no where to go there. Not sure what you think is “hawkish”. Unless, of couse, you want to include escalating Afghanistan and assailing Pakistan without their approval. But since both of those have been done under the Bush admin, and McCain would continue to do both as the situations warranted, I’m hard pressed to call Obama dutifully following the logical path “hawkish”.

And I don’t know what you would call centrist about throwing long term friends and associates under the bus (at least temporarily and half-heartedly). You can’t go from radical friends to centrist just by saying “that’s not the guy I knew”. That’s just plain politically expedient, and obvious to boot…. at least to 48% of us anyway.

I’m going to repeat this, and ask you to reconsider your response. Because this is actually important. In every previous election, most candidates disguised themselves and ran to the center. This election is very different. BECAUSE Obama did not run to the center.

Obama campaigned on “spread the wealth” before Joe the plumber made him say those three little words.

Obama campaigned on “social and economic justice” education before anyone knew about William Ayers.

Obama campaigned on taxpayer funded health care… and education.. and work training programs… and enery… all socialist govt programs, not private industry.

In short, Obama honestly campaigned as a far left fringe socialist from the beginning. The only difference is people didn’t start putting the “just words” together with the person until the end of the campaign. Perhaps he used too big of words? Dunno… but it was there from the start. And remained there to the end.

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STIX,

I think I know who Fred Thompson is now…. wasn’t he the guy on a video in the top right column of this site a week or two ago? Yes… I think it was him. For what I remember, he seemed t be a great guy. I guess I would have liked him.

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Great op-ed by Shelby Steele in today’s LATimes:

Obama’s post-racial promise
Barack Obama seduced whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation.
By Shelby Steele

November 5, 2008

For the first time in human history, a largely white nation has elected a black man to be its paramount leader. And the cultural meaning of this unprecedented convergence of dark skin and ultimate power will likely become — at least for a time — a national obsession. In fact, the Obama presidency will always be read as an allegory. Already we are as curious about the cultural significance of his victory as we are about its political significance.

Does his victory mean that America is now officially beyond racism? Does it finally complete the work of the civil rights movement so that racism is at last dismissible as an explanation of black difficulty? Can the good Revs. Jackson and Sharpton now safely retire to the seashore? Will the Obama victory dispel the twin stigmas that have tormented black and white Americans for so long — that blacks are inherently inferior and whites inherently racist? Doesn’t a black in the Oval Office put the lie to both black inferiority and white racism? Doesn’t it imply a “post-racial” America? And shouldn’t those of us — white and black — who did not vote for Mr. Obama take pride in what his victory says about our culture even as we mourn our political loss?

Answering no to such questions is like saying no to any idealism; it seems callow. How could a decent person not hope for all these possibilities, or not give America credit for electing its first black president? And yet an element of Barack Obama’s success was always his use of the idealism implied in these questions as political muscle. His talent was to project an idealized vision of a post-racial America — and then to have that vision define political decency. Thus, a failure to support Obama politically implied a failure of decency.

Obama’s special charisma — since his famous 2004 convention speech — always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas. In fact, this was his only true political originality. On the level of public policy, he was quite unremarkable. His economics were the redistributive axioms of old-fashioned Keynesianism; his social thought was recycled Great Society. But all this policy boilerplate was freshened up — given an air of “change” — by the dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch he dressed it in.

This worked politically for Obama because it tapped into a deep longing in American life — the longing on the part of whites to escape the stigma of racism. In running for the presidency — and presenting himself to a majority white nation — Obama knew intuitively that he was dealing with a stigmatized people. He knew whites were stigmatized as being prejudiced, and that they hated this situation and literally longed for ways to disprove the stigma.

Obama is what I have called a “bargainer” — a black who says to whites, “I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me.” Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer. Bargainers relieve their anxiety about being white and, for this gift of trust, bargainers are often rewarded with a kind of halo.

Obama’s post-racial idealism told whites the one thing they most wanted to hear: America had essentially contained the evil of racism to the point at which it was no longer a serious barrier to black advancement. Thus, whites became enchanted enough with Obama to become his political base. It was Iowa — 95% white — that made him a contender. Blacks came his way only after he won enough white voters to be a plausible candidate.

Of course, it is true that white America has made great progress in curbing racism over the last 40 years. I believe, for example, that Colin Powell might well have been elected president in 1996 had he run against a then rather weak Bill Clinton. It is exactly because America has made such dramatic racial progress that whites today chafe so under the racist stigma. So I don’t think whites really want change from Obama as much as they want documentation of change that has already occurred. They want him in the White House first of all as evidence, certification and recognition.

But there is an inherent contradiction in all this. When whites — especially today’s younger generation — proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer’s ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.

Certainly things other than bargaining account for Obama’s victory. He was a talented campaigner. He was reassuringly articulate on many issues — a quality that Americans now long for in a president. And, in these last weeks, he was clearly pushed over the top by the economic terrors that beset the nation. But it was the peculiar cultural manipulation of racial bargaining that brought him to the political dance. It inflated him as a candidate, and it may well inflate him as a president.

There is nothing to suggest that Obama will lead America into true post-racialism. His campaign style revealed a tweaker of the status quo, not a revolutionary. Culturally and racially, he is likely to leave America pretty much where he found her.

But what about black Americans? Won’t an Obama presidency at last lead us across a centuries-old gulf of alienation into the recognition that America really is our country? Might this milestone not infuse black America with a new American nationalism? And wouldn’t this be revolutionary in itself? Like most Americans, I would love to see an Obama presidency nudge things in this direction. But the larger reality is the profound disparity between black and white Americans that will persist even under the glow of an Obama presidency. The black illegitimacy rate remains at 70%. Blacks did worse on the SAT in 2000 than in 1990. Fifty-five percent of all federal prisoners are black, though we are only 13% of the population. The academic achievement gap between blacks and whites persists even for the black middle class. All this disparity will continue to accuse blacks of inferiority and whites of racism — thus refueling our racial politics — despite the level of melanin in the president’s skin.

The torture of racial conflict in America periodically spits up a new faith that idealism can help us “overcome” — America’s favorite racial word. If we can just have the right inspiration, a heroic role model, a symbolism of hope, a new sense of possibility. It is an American cultural habit to endure our racial tensions by periodically alighting on little islands of fresh hope and idealism. But true reform, like the civil rights victories of the ’60s, never happens until people become exhausted with their suffering. Then they don’t care who the president is.

Presidents follow the culture; they don’t lead it. I hope for a competent president.

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@MataHarley:

Word… INRE your post comment:

I know our passions ran deep, and this election hurt deep. But it’s not the death of conservative ideology or the Republican Party.

I’m sorry… but other than Palin, was there a “conservative” on the ballot? I preferred McCain, but it’s pushing it to put him in the “conservative” category – as most of us view conservatism.

I don’t know how your challenge to me is related to what you cited.

What I wrote:

But it’s not the death of conservative ideology or the Republican Party. It wasn’t a landslide victory, and Senator McCain finished respectably. Nor did the Democrats gain their filibuster-proof majority seats.

My point being, some people out there consider our election loss to be a rejection of conservative ideology. It was not. Passage of Prop 8 in California is just one example of that.

In order for Obama to win election, aside from the spell of charisma and glass ceiling breaking he had the country under, Obama also had to move to the right and campaign as a centrist (tax cuts, hawkish foreign policy blustering, distancing from past radical ties and history). He did not win by campaigning as a far left anti-war progressive liberal socialist.

As far as McCain, I stand by the series of posts I made late in the primaries, defending his conservative record as being more conservative than angry conservatives will give him credit for.

But that’s beside the point.

Did McCain run a lousy campaign? Sure. But there are a combination of factors that went into this election to become ours to lose. I’m not going to throw McCain under the straight talk express bus and blame-hand him as the reason we lost.

We had a lot going against us this year.

Traditional election strategy has candidates running to the center. This election has been different. We have Obama running to the fringe left, and McCain holding down center. His support in the base was sketchy… *until* Palin arrived. Adding her more conservative credentials to the ticket increased the base enthusiam. But she was… in fact… still #2 on the ticket.

Obama appealed to his base, plus the majority independent votes. He campaigned to the center, not the “fringe left”. Palin energized the base, but she also drove away voters, whether through legitimate concerns or media-induced scare regarding her ability to lead, at this time.

But I have to wonder what the turnout would have been had we had a genuine conservative as a candidate.

Like who? This was our election to lose, no matter who we put out there, imo. I think we had a chance, and I think McCain was actually our best shot (he was not my first, second, or third choice) at winning, but his campaign made some mistakes. In the end, it really was Obama’s election to win. The media momentum and hype was overwhelming.

I truly don’t think Fred Thompson would have pulled this off, although he would have made conservatives happy.

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