It was an outcome well deserved. And by that, I’m not so much talking about Barack Obama earning a second term. He did earn it. The campaign strategy that combined 20th century door-to-door hoofing with 21st century cyber/census data mining delivered an impressive turnout in key counties of key states.
Republicans believed they would over-perform from what the polls were showing. They usually do get a small bump not picked up by pollsters. Anecdotally, it was my experience that Republican voters were less inclined to talk openly about their views to a news reporter. Perhaps they were reticent with pollsters too, maybe not wanting to look “anti-Obama.” And in the end, Mitt Romney and Republicans may have got that election day boost they counted on.
What they had not counted on was the Obama machine turning out stunning numbers of voters in targeted districts. Team Obama ushered supporters to the polls in early voting and just kept the wave rolling through election day. In Virginia, some polling stations stayed open more than three hours late to accommodate the long lines of what were believed to be mostly Democrats. The Romney team must have been stunned as they watched the numbers come in from every one of the battleground states the Democrats targeted. Obama won them all (Florida still not final) with the exception of North Carolina which reverted to its deep south voting pattern.
So from a purely organizational standpoint, Obama’s win is well deserved. It’s more of a mixed bag when it comes to his performance and policies in his first term. Certainly as a Canadian, it comes as second nature to see the good in a policy of universal health care. Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act did nothing if not try to offer millions more Americans basic health coverage. Is it perfect? Far from it. And a lot of Obama’s first term was far from perfect. He and his experts badly miscalculated how long the country’s economy would be like a car spinning its wheels on ice — just unable to get traction. With a jobless rate around eight per cent, it’s easy to see why many Americans would have considered turfing Obama and giving his opponent a crack at governing.
So why is the election outcome well deserved? Mitt Romney and the Republicans deserved this outcome more than Obama did.
U.S. President Barack Obama addresses his supporters on the late election night of November 6 in Chicago. Photo by Barry Acton, Global News.
First, GOP leaders made clear long ago their priority was to stop Obama. The priority wasn’t to compromise to do what was best, it was to stop Obama. This scorched-earth approach to everything that involved the president’s policies was a disservice to the very idea of public service. I get it, that they sincerely believed in policies different from Obama’s. And while both sides dug in, the intransigence was greater on the Republican Congressional side, I think, because they calculated that any compromise agreements would be a huge boost for the president’s re-election. So compromise flew in the face of the prime directive: take down Obama. They chose not to cooperate hoping to hurt Obama, while knowing that as members of Congress, even at record low levels of public approval, they are almost certain to get re-elected in their own districts, however little is accomplished in Washington. That’s one reason Republicans deserved this outcome.
The Tea Party wing is the driving force in the GOP now, especially after great success winning control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections of 2010. They now had the ‘destroy Obama’ part of the agenda well underway, and could move on to the second priority — choosing an alternative to Obama to be the next president. But they were blinded by their success in 2010.
Tea Party-ers views on everything from abortion to gay rights to immigration to zero tax increases even on multi-billionaires played well to the most rabid anti-Obama elements in the party. But it did not reflect the more moderate view across the country. No wonder so many moderate Republicans took a pass on running for president. And no wonder so many ultra-conservatives took a shot at it. Most, though, were clearly unelectable in a general election, and so the least conservative among them, Mitt Romney, emerged from the bunch, trying as hard as he could to prove to the party’s base that he was, as he said, “severely conservative.” Many in the party never really warmed up to him, or thought he could lead them to victory. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter bluntly remarked at a conservative conference last year that “If you don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose.” One liberal cable news host, Lawrence O’Donnell, delighted in playing that soundbite over and over again for months. (Wednesday night, O’Donnell giddily declared “Ann Coulter was right!”)
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To try to win over skeptical conservatives, Romney adopted very conservative positions on restricting abortion rights, deporting immigrants, and of course, not a penny of tax more, even for people as wealthy as he. He did everything he could not to offend conservatives. A defining moment, I thought, was when talk-radio behemoth Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke ‘a slut.’ She was the woman who advocated for health coverage for contraceptives. Romney’s stern rebuke of Limbaugh: “It was not language I would have used.” It was such a terribly weak response that not only failed to call out Limbaugh, who’s a leading conservative voice in America, but I thought it was beginning to make Romney himself as unelectable as his primary opponents.
Romney finally began to shift his views. A top aide famously suggested resetting Romney’s general election campaign could be done like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch. The idea that he could start over, and become Moderate Mitt. But it was hard to detect sincerity as he flipped and flopped his positions. The 47 per cent tape was devastating evidence of a man who was now taking popular mainstream positions publicly, while holding a disdainful view of average Americans privately.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney arrives to his election night rally on the very early morning of November 7 in Boston. Photo by David Goldman, The Associated Press.
Romney’s strong debate performance gave him and his party a burst of energy, but the question remained: “Who was this man? This man who was in lockstep with hardline Republicans, and who was bankrolled by wealthy backers who pumped millions of dollars into his campaign to protect their corporate interests.”
On balance, it was for many, not an attractive alternative to Barack Obama — which is remarkable considering how many Americans were willing, under the economic circumstances, to give the Republican challenger a very close look. Romney was competent and I think he genuinely wants the best for this country. But he aligned himself with a shrinking group of voters, mostly white, male and often angry.
It was clear to me at the Republican convention in Tampa that the GOP united behind Romney, motivated not by his vision and not by Romney himself — but by the deep, personal dislike of President Obama.
Perhaps Republicans will now do some soul searching to broaden their party’s appeal to an increasingly diverse America. And they might consider that their thumping at the polls was well deserved.
Eric is Global National’s Washington Bureau Chief. Follow him on Twitter: @ericsorensendc.
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