HUGH HEWITT: Advice to Grieving Conservatives.
Ann Coulter: Don’t Blame Romney.
Investor’s Business Daily: Conservatives Don’t Panic: U.S. Is Still Center-Right. “In fact, the share of voters who say the government is doing too much climbed from 43% in 2008 to 51% in 2012, back to where it was in 1996, just before Bill Clinton declared the era of big government was over.” I predict those sentiments will grow more pronounced. Time to gear up for the midterms and take the Senate.
Also: They kicked our butts in the ground game.
Finally: I keep hearing demographic deepthink about population shifts and how if Romney had gotten as many Latinos as George W. Bush he’d have won. Maybe so. But if Romney had gotten as many Republicans as John McCain he’d have won, too. I kept going on and on about the importance of showing up, and that seems to have been what mattered. Why didn’t people show up? Good question. Was it undercover anti-Mormonism? Or was it simply that Romney — who campaigned for independents and deliberately distanced himself from the Tea Party — didn’t pay enough attention to the base? Maybe the numbers will answer this, but obviously the Obama people thought this was a base-turnout election and Romney’s people didn’t. Obama’s people were right.
UPDATE: Prof. Jacobson warns: Beware of Operation Demoralize. Absolutely. Infighting and demoralization is what they want.
Related: Evangelicals turned out for Romney: “Evangelicals turned out in record numbers and voted as heavily for Mitt Romney yesterday as they did for George W. Bush in 2004. That is an astonishing outcome that few would have predicted even a few months ago. But Romney underperformed with younger voters and minorities and that in the end made the difference for Obama.”
Meanwhile, reader Richard Allen comments: “I will note than in 2008 it wasn’t so much John McCain that fired up the base as Sarah Palin. Yet the Romney campaign went out of its way to dis her. Same thing with Ron Paul who generated much of the actual enthusiasm this time.” I don’t think Ron Paul could have pulled a Palin-sized crowd. But he might have been a good surrogate on campuses, if that could have been worked out. I don’t know if he would have done it or not, but I’d be surprised if he were asked.
More thoughts from Bob Krumm.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Hey, maybe Ron Paul would have done it.
Also: Disquieting Thought: “Maybe we should have just run McCain/Palin again.”