Congratulations must go to President Obama, his family, team and all of his supporters for securing a second term as President of the greatest country in the World. If you were looking at this election from afar or did not care who would win, you would have to say the President ran one of the best elections ever. Instead of America discussing big issues of the day including jobs, economy, gas prices, the President made his campaign about social issues such as condoms, the Lilly Ledbetter Act and Big Bird. However to quote the Vice President, “You got to have skin in the game”, and Conservatives had plenty of skin in this game.
You can easily identify plenty of reasons why Mitt Romney lost. They range from he was the wrong person to run, the Tea Party dragged him to far right, he was to moderate, has flip flopped too much, he did not clearly break down his economic plan, his failure to beat Obama in the third debate and he pandered to much. However one thing is clear by this result, when the economy and jobs should have been the issue, Mitt Romney could not close the sale to America.
The review of this election needs to happen and happen quickly so problems can be resolved and reorganize groups for the next battle. However I do have a couple of fears:
- Firstly I fear everyone in the media and the Republican Party will focus entirely on the election loss and forget about current and future issues.
- Secondly the line of “Blame the Conservatives” is coming and coming most forcefully by Republicans.
- Thirdly and this line is already starting to be spun (started about 5 minutes after election loss by Governor Huckabee), the Republicans need to start reaching out more to single women under 30 and minorities. Conservatives need to watch this space very carefully and monitor what exactly the Republican Party plans and does.
So where do Conservatives go from here? They need to hold steadfast and they need to continue the journey that VP Paul Ryan spoke of in the campaign “We will not replace our Founding Principles, We will reapply them” and remember the words of Thomas Paine “Tyranny like Hell, is not easily defeated”. There can be no doubt that last night was an incredible defeat to the Republican Party, but Conservative Principles such as life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are still alive today and need to be fought for.
* Originally published at Gen Fringe