In response to:
Romney was the most qualified by his business experience to turn around our nation's failing economy. But Romney-bashers STUPIDLY supported less-qualified candidates.
How can so many people be so stupid as to think the likes of Gingrich, Santorum or Perry was an improvement over a man who as governor of the bluest of blue states managed to not only balance the budget, but did so without raising taxes? DUH!
Ron Paul was nothing more than a glorified "armchair quarterback." Romney was the real deal. He DID what Paul SAID. And Paul was a phony, claiming to be a "strict constitutionalist." But almost completely disregarded one of the Constitution's core tenets: DOMESTIC national defense when it came to opposing the illegal alien invasion.
In combing through the results of the 2012 election -- apparently finally complete, nearly two months after the fact -- I continue to find many similarities between 2012 and 2004, and one enormous difference.
Both of the elections involved incumbent presidents with approval ratings hovering around or just under 50 percent facing challengers who were rich men from Massachusetts (though one made his money and the other married it).
In both cases, the challenger and his campaign seemed confident he was going to win -- and had reasonable grounds to believe so.
In both elections, the incumbent started running a barrage...
Romney was talking about fixing the economy and he meant it. My hunch was that people, when polled, were answering the question from their personal perspective. That is, they wanted to know how "fixing the economy" would improve their economic circumstance. Obama spoke directly to this with his class rhetoric language (like it or not, he did speak directly to their individual concerns); Romney's fix the economy rhetoric left voters to connect the dots. They didn't.
Obama like all leftist populists appealed to the class envy gimme mentality, the notion that others have but I don't because The Man maldistributed $$$ & stuff, so it's righteous that Obama's sort should take it at gunpoint from "other people" & give some more to me, regardless of what I do or don't do. They've been encouraged to think the free economy is "unfair" & broken or rigged because it doesn't give them enough stuff, not because they can't/won't do anything in demand, & the labor market was swamped with illegal aliens. They don't WANT to understand how the economy really works, because that means THEY'd have to!
The fact is, we award good campaigners with jobs that often they aren't qualified to hold. And we punish those - like Mitt Romney - who are imminently qualified for office because they don't "sizzle" in their campaigns.
I thought the hatred of Obama would be enough. I didn't reckon that so many "conservatives" would hate Mormons or moderate Republicans so much as to help retain Obama.
It wasn't hatred for Mormons or even for moderate Republicans. Romney won the nomination claiming to be a conservative. Remember? He had no trouble attacking his conservative opponents, but he could not bring himself to attack Obama. He did not show enough contrast to Obama to get conservatives to come out. I was not being ironic. You can't beat the big government candidate by being the not quite as big government candidate.