President Obama was such a weak candidate that one unalloyed good moment by a weak Republican candidate – the debate of October 3 – almost threw the election to the latter. As a result, I don’t see that the election results presage much about American conservatism. I recall repeatedly lamenting the insipidness of the Republican primary field throughout the summer and fall of 2011. In serial fashion, Republican primaries sequentially propelled different, fatally flawed candidates ahead of the ultimate winner.
Romney then capped his primary performance with a dismal summer, a merely adequate convention, and a dismal September. To be sure, the October 3 debate provided Romney with a tenuous lead in national polls. His strategy was promptly to sit on that lead, and it slowly eroded. I don’t think that Sandy was the cause of Romney’s defeat as much as it was the exclamation point at the end of the decay of the one-time effect of Romney’s October 3 performance. That one good moment almost resulted in the defeat of a sitting president underscored the president’s electoral weakness. But that Romney could generate only one good moment of unalloyed electoral quality underscored his problems as a candidate.
There are important issues that divide the nation. But this election was not about those issues, especially for the small set of voters in the middle over whom Romney and Obama contested.
This is not to say that I’m satisfied with the current state of conservatism or with the role of Christians in modern American politics. Both have reduced themselves to movements of sterile reaction. So I continue to think that there is a lot for both conservatives and Christians to muse over. But Romney’s defeat is a side-show in this bigger, and more important, story.
November 8th, 2012 | 11:21 am
Why is “reaction” a bad word? Unless you are willing to answer that you are letting leftists control language and determine good categories and bad ones.
November 8th, 2012 | 11:34 am
I was thinking the same thing. Incumbents generally have an advantage. Obama ended up getting 50% of the popular vote versus 48% for Romney. If that were a poll, it would probably be a statistically insignificant difference. Obama did win, but it was still very close. Obama won because people at least knew what they were getting with him, and because Romney was uninspiring, not because of any great admiration for Obama.
November 8th, 2012 | 11:42 am
Yes, Romney was weak, but Obama was an utter failure both from an economic policy standpoint and a social policy standpoint. The fact that the Catholic vote supported Obama by a couple of percent is shameful. We have a lot of work to do in catechizing our fellow Catholics and it can’t be done in the last few months of 2016. It has to start now.
http://bit.ly/SSYg9r
November 8th, 2012 | 12:41 pm
The professionals, those who organize and run campaigns, state that the Obama campaign had and has a better “ground game.” Money and effort was put into setting up and running campaign offices on, in many cases, a county basis.
November 8th, 2012 | 12:46 pm
This is as sensible and concise an analysis as I’ve read.
November 9th, 2012 | 11:53 am
At the Al Smith dinner, one of Romney’s best laugh lines was his quip on his job and the job of the media. (Not a quote): “My job is to present a vision of a prosperous and flourishing America to the American people. The media’s job is to ensure that no one hears about it!”
Funny, but not so funny. In fact, the media saw their job as going beyond that–to promote a false caricature of what Romney is, and what he stands for, so as to positively assist Obama in his mendacious attacks on this good, decent, and well-qualified man.
Romney was not a weak candidate, but he appeared so through the lens of the media, and that of Obama, who is not worthy to loose the sandals of the one who should be succeeding him.
In the end, I fear, the country gets the president it deserves. The Culture of Death has ordained one of its foremost proponents to sit in the Oval Office for another term.
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