Great thoughts and other words of wisdom from after the election.
"I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."
-- Romney campaign senior adviser on losing the election.
Oooo, just what you want in a Commander-in-Chief. No one on the Romney team saw this coming?? Not one person? Y'know, it was in all the papers. Pretty much every single national poll said that Barack Obama was leading and would likely get at least 306 electoral votes. You missed that?? What were you reading -- the Drudge Report? Highlights for Children? It's sort of like a nightmare Blast from the Past with the last Republican president, when George Bush was surprised by the 9/11 attacks despite a Daily Briefing that warned, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." that even said, specifically, he'd be using airplanes. How in the world could not one person in the crack, hand-picked Romney organization not see this coming? Imagine his cabinet. I do believe that America got lucky here.
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"The Romney campaign to the hispanic community was atrocious. Frankly, the fastest-growing demographic in America isn't going to vote for a party that sounds like that party hates brown people."
-- Erick Erickson, founder of the conservative blog, RedState.com .
You are what you eat. Honestly, does anyone think that Mitt Romney would have gotten the Republican Party nomination if he hadn't sounded like he hated brown people? To be fair to Mr. Romney, he was coming into the race with an unfortunate disadvantage: representing a party that was trying to build a literal wall on the U.S. border to keep out brown people. He was representing a party that was fighting to block the Dream Act. He was representing a party which supported the anti-immigrant "papers, please" law in Arizona that targeted brown people. The problem wasn't that the Romney campaign was atrocious on this subject, it's that the Republican Party is. The Romney campaign just piled on. Further, the problem isn't that the fastest-growing demographic isn't going to vote for a party that "sounds" like they hates brown people" -- it's that they won't vote for a party that regularly is on record actually hating brown people. I know it might be a difficult breach to mend, but here's a good starting point. If you want to show you respect brown people, you might want to start by spelling their name correctly. It's Hispanic, with a capital "H."
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"I just cannot believe that the majority of Americans believe that it's OK to ignore the Constitution and not have a budget."
-- Sarah Palin (R-Wasilla), former half-governor of Alaska.
I actually have finally found something I agree with Ms. Palin about. I too cannot believe that the majority of Americans believe it's okay to ignore the Constitution and not have a budget. Perhaps she's come across one of those crank Drudge Report polls that remarkably shows otherwise. Or maybe she read it in The Onion. ("54 percent of Americans Say OK to Ignore Constitution, Not Have a Budget and Drive on the Wrong Side of the Road.")
Unfortunately, it's a bit hard, though, to tell precisely what in the world she's talking about, or who, Democrat or Republican. I mean we do actually have a budget. And it was the Republican George Bush who nearly doubled the national debt to $11 trillion. And I totally don't have a clue what she's getting at with ignoring the Constitution. Unless she's again referring to Mr. Bush and him knowingly lying the country into war. In fairness to Ms. Palin, though, she did also add, "It's a perplexing time for many of us right now." Clearly. Though I have a feeling that by "time" she might mean "eternity."
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"Even though Mitt Romney came right out and said [about Todd Akin], 'This is not right, we disagree with this,'" the GOP got hurt. "The party leadership did the same thing. No one embraced Todd Akin after he said those things, including the Republican campaign committees, but it was used in the political sense against us and it was, I think, the feeling that Republicans don't get it."
-- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. (R-Texas)
The Senator is quite right that "Republicans don't get it." Including herself. Mitt Romney did not "come right out" and say Todd Akin was wrong. It took him two full days to say that. Worse, the day before, he simply said he "disagrees with Mr. Akin's statement." Worse still, he didn't even say it -- a spokesman did. And worse further, that was just Todd Akin; Mr. Romney didn't say a thing about Richard Mourdock's statement about God's intent. Nor did "party leadership." But worse most of all, Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan his vice presidential nominee, a man who co-sponsored numerous similar bills with Todd Akin. If the GOP got hurt by all this, it was a self-inflicted wound.
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"We are in a war. We're in a war to save this nation."
-- Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action, a wing of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
No, we're really not. We're in a war in Afghanistan. That's a war. What we're in here is a debate and the political process.
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"The billionaire donors I hear are livid. There is some holy hell to pay. Karl Rove has a lot of explaining to do ... I don't know how you tell your donors that we spent $390 million and got nothing."
-- Republican operative to The Huffington Post.
This hand-wringing over Karl Rove wasting $390 million from donors is crocodile tears, though certainly entertaining to see directed at "Bush's Brain." I mean, yeah, the heart bleeds, but overlooked in all this whining is that the Mitt Romney campaign raised $1.2 billion. And got nothing.
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"Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money."
-- tweet from Donald Trump (R-NBC).
Hey, the good news is that at least this tweet he didn't delete.
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"We need to think creatively about big issues, philosophy, and how we can relate conservative values to the needs of a wider range of voters."
-- Ed Morrissey, HotAir.com.
Yeah, that's what this election showed, that American voters wanted Republicans to be even more conservative. Of course, if you really want to reach a wider range of voters, you might want to start by not demeaning 47 percent of the country, demonizing Hispanics, making clear you don't like a Black man in the White House, justifying non-legitimate rape, and making it difficult for people to, well... vote.
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"If you aren't properly informed, if you don't understand the problems facing this nation, you are that much more prone to falling prey to demagoguing solutions. And the problem with demagoguing solutions is they don't work. I am concerned about people who don't fully understand the very ugly math we are facing in this country."
-- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).
So, let's see, the party that has railed against the science of climate change, the science of evolution, the science of stem cell research, never funded "No Child Left Behind," wants to cut teachers' job, and fought against making student loans easier -- for starters -- is now concerned about Americans not being properly informed and not understanding math? Of course, when it comes to not fully understanding that very ugly math of the debt, you might want to begin with Mitt Romney who called for a $5 trillion tax cut -- at least when he wasn't denying it. Then again, the entire Romney campaign was 100 percent sure they were going to win, so I wouldn't make too big a deal on that whole, not being "properly informed" complaint.
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"It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer. Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?"
-- William Kristol, conservative guru.
While I know many people are applauding such a notable conservative as Mr. Kristol for saying this, and many are equally wondering, gee, why didn't he say this before the election -- or any time during the past, oh, year -- I had a different reaction. Half of all millionaires in America live in Hollywood??!! Boy, am I hanging out with the wrong crowd here...
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"He was shell-shocked."
-- Romney campaign adviser on the candidate's reaction losing the election.
So, Mitt Romney lost an election, and he was..."shell-shocked? Shell-shocked??! Imagine if he had an actual crisis to deal with. Then again, imagine if he simply had a problem that required doing anything. Does any know if he had a copy of My Pet Goat handy? I do believe that America got lucky here.