WASHINGTON — The Republican Party’s official verdict is in: Mitt Romney’s campaign lacked the right message, his preparation was weak, his campaign structure and tactics were flawed, and his use of technology was behind the times.
The Republican National Committee report released Monday explains how the party’s nominee squandered an opportunity to seize the White House from a Democratic incumbent weakened by a tepid economy and stubborn voter discontent.
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Apparently being highly effective at stripping companies of their assets and borrowing them into bankruptcy is not helpful when running a national political campaign. But Governor Romney did raise a lot of money.
I thought that Ronmey's biggest blunders was talking to any of the pro-Obama news media and having primary and presidential debates with the news media as moderators.
That could be a problem. I would assume your definition of pro-Obama media would be the three traditional national television networks, CNN, NPR, and the major newspapers in Boston, Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. As well as many others. Heavily repeated appearances on Fox and with Rush still only go so far, though.
On the other hand, the "47%", "corporations are people", "Etch-a-Sketch", and many of the other memorable moments of the campaign could simply have been avoided by Romney's not talking so much at all.
According to the column, the GOP agrees with you. They feel less campaign time works to their advantage.The less people know abouit them the better.
The biggest problem with Romeny was his message. An idiot could see his ideas wouldnt work.
Dewitt, I would agree with you, his message was not in sync with the reality most folks are dealing with in 2012/12013 and all that nonsense talk about "job creators" not creating jobs if taxes were raised a bit. I think President Obama landed right on the money on the first round of the tax increases, raising the tax rates above $400,000 in income. The rates should go up even higher for the few who are at Alex Rodriguez salary levels. Romney was never going to raise taxes on the uber rich. I didn't vote for Romney when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, but whether you like him or not, he brought a lot of talented people into his Adminstration and they addressed and solved a lot of issues, and brought our state the first in the nation almost universal health insurance. I agree with many of the things President Obama believes in, he cares about people who are struggling, but come on everybody, be real, he's blown a lot tax payer money on his own "millionaire and billionaire" solar panel, green energy company friends. "Renewable energy" sounds good and feels good, but it in no way delivers as advertised, that's a fact. They are having all kinds of problems in Germany and looming problems are on the horizon in California with the electric grid becoming unstable as they rely more and more on "renewable energy" which is not "reliable energy" that's just a technical fact, you can look it up. Romney, whether you like him or not would have shown leadership in trying to mine the waste out of our Federal Government, not any easy job, a lot of powerful interest in Washington, D.C. Romney had a much more sensible energy policy that would have advanced a national energy policy that moved us faster towards energy independence which is on our horizon and will change everything for us. I am not going to pass judgment on President Obama yet, he had to face a lot of challenges when he was elected. We'll see where he lands on a host of issues as he moves through his second term. He's done a lot of good things. Whether or not the Federal Government manages the new Healthcare Law well is yet to be seen, something new had to be done, costs are out of control, the free market didn't solve them. They certainly have all kinds of new technogical/software tools to help them do the job of reigning in some costs. I don't expect President Obama to be perfect only fairminded, realistic and sensible. We should all hope they all work to find common ground on solving issues such as realistic immigration reform, which Romney was just, (you choose your own adjective) on, sensible, means tested based entitlement reform and a simplication of the corporate tax code which will further help stimulate economic certainty and growth here, not in China. We need economic growth and will achieve it if we use common sense. We have a lot of great people, innate assets and natural resources here in the United States.
"Detached from pop culture?" How about "detached from the United States of America in the 21st Century."
I understood the Republican message perfectly: block the vote; tell the poor and old to go blank themselves; send Hispanics back to Hispania - or wherever it is they think Hispanics come from; keep blacks and women in their respective places...and drum roll - give tax cuts to Paris Hilton! That about covers it!
You left off, try to convert the US to a theocracy, tell everyone the globe is not getting warmer assure us that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
he was such a bad candidate-out of touch richie rich guy with off shore caymen isle accounts, no clue. no empathy
Then prancing Previs said the Party had to reach out to minorities. Too funny Mr. voter ID reaching out. He also said the Party had to reach out to women. Uh-huh more restrictions on choice. That will fly. We need to reach out to Latino's and Donald Trump gives a speech at the CPAC that I watched in which he said, "We need more immigrants from Europe." Reach out, they keep reaching out to us with 1950. I don't want to live in 1950. They can't seem to figure out the public doesn't like their stuff. Oh, wait the Prancer said his "focus groups" didn't like the Party. Hey we just need better PR. Brother what a moron.
Preibus appears to think that his party's bad marketing was behind their losses. After all, their marketing program worked in 2010.
Even a great marketer can't sell a bad product twice.
"There’s no one reason we lost,” Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican Party, said at the National Press Club as he unveiled a 100-page autopsy of the election. “Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement.” I agree there is no one reason. In each of 5 listed reasons ( and many more could be included ) the intent was purposeful. The weak message was all too clear, "We're not going to let fact checkers get in our way." Other than "No" on Healthcare, there was no alternative plan. Keep in mind that most talk radio across the country is decidedly conservative, Fox News is national in scope. The Republicans have no beef with "national media." They received an enormous amount of positive news media throughout the campaign. They're fooling themselves with that canard. Ground game was deemed unnecessary, thinking political ads would equal the difference. Not being inclusive was a theme applied for decades by most Republican operatives and candidates. The latest being the schemes to block large blocks of minority citizens from voting. Their data was flawed by slanted polling companies in their corner not the the other side. The digital end I do give the edge to the Obama side. Why? Ask them. The debate process for the Republican primaries was of their own design. Good luck to the moderates led by Karl Rove et al, vs. Paul Rand and Ted Cruz. That's going to be a season or two, long political WWWF Contest.
Among other reasons he lost was the fact that the American people aren't stupid. How can you take seriously a guy who wouldn't agree to a budget cut to tax increase ratio of 10:1? How can we not question the credibility of someone whose answer to illegal immigration is "self-deportation"? And how could you trust a guy who explained his opponant's strength with his 47% statement? Mitt Romney lost because he is a fraud, a complete fraud, who stood for nothing and would say anything to sell you something.
Actually if you folllowed the Obama campaign ads, you would come to the conclusion that the campaign made the assumption that for every smart American voter, there were 2 that WERE stupid. (Also called the "Low information voter") I.e. they would accept anything being by the Obama campaign (and it's very helpful media allies) as undisputed fact. Also ther public was not aware of what news was being left out by the news media.
Miker6--Boston Herald is where the low information voters get their "news"----from Howie Carr. They are all republicans who do not believe in changing anything except getting rid of liberlas, democrats and especially Obama. Nothing is going to change with the GOP.
Can we please get to the point, after 3 months of lame analysis: Mitt Romney was an awful candidate-- nice guy, boy scout to be sure, but a stiff and a terrible candidate. Rich Republican. Didn't know what he didn't know. Nuf said. (And I voted for the guy, but look at the alternative.)
Thanks for a really honest statement. The reality is that most everyone is voting against someone rather than for someone. Yes Obama has problems. But look at the alternative.
One subtle point which this and other GOP post-mortems have left me with is that Republicans may yet still have limits as to how "inclusive" they plan to be. Specifically, the GOP seems intent on wooing Hispanics now. However, other large "minority" blocks (e.g., blacks) are rarely mentioned. In contrast, Democrats seem to assume they have free run of the whole demographic spectrum when soliciting votes. As such, one has to wonder if Republicans are still putting themselves behind the political "eight ball" by writing off whole blocks.
Not JUST writing off whole blocks of voters, but actually trying to keep entire bocks of people from voting at all! Scary and rather pathetic. More scary, really.
As usual, the answer is right in front of them, totally ignored. Voters couldn't relate to this candidate any more than they could a John Kerry. As both parties have proven, you can ignore 99% of the population in policy and politics except during an election, when each of the 99% has a vote. For now, anyway.
GOP needs to appeal to the middle-class and a broader range of demographic groups. --------------How many Einsteins did it take to figure this out. They figured they wrapped up the plutocrat vote, no need for anything else. Essentially, the middle class for them is a horde of leeches preventing them from amassing more superfluous wealth. There used to be such a thing as ethical conservatives. No more.
Lousy candidate (and incredibly, the best of the lot!). Lousy message. Lousy party. What I find vastly amusing is their intention to grab the Latino vote. The Republicans think if they trot out pretty little Marco Rubio the Hispanics will swarm into their party. Wrong. And the party's clearly stated intent to keep the poor, black, female and Hispanics from voting was not lost on the electorate. This party is limping to an end, with a whimper, not a bang.
It's all about Texas. With projected demographics, if voting patterns continue, the GOP will lose Texas, possibly by 2016, almost certainly by 2020. And without Texas's 34 Electoral Votes, there is no way a Republican could be elected President. The GOP doesn't have to win the majority of the Latino vote in Texas, they just need to peel off enough to prevent a Democratic win.
Hey, you have to give Romney some credit. He had a file full of women!
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Is this report available online? I would like to read it for myself. Of course I'll go look it up, but a link would have been convenient.
Meanwhile, in OTHER news, the stock markets have been dropping on major news about possible TAX on Cyprus bank deposits. Vote later today...But as per custom, Globe only reports stock market GAINS on the front page, then gives credit to Obama..But if stock market LOSSES, Globe finds time to rehash about Mitt instead, or sports stories. Anything to get the bad news off the front page.
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The new Repulican strategy should be not to say what they're actually thinking.
The biggest problems with the Romney campaign were the lies and distortions by the Obama campaign and also for the Republican Party not rallying around the Republican nominee Romney. The voters were very disappointing buying in to the Obama rhetoric. Obama's agenda is the illegal aliens and gun control instead of jobs and the economy.
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