Grand Old Delusions

On Real Time With Bill Maher, S.E. Cupp noted that blaming the electorate is unwise.

This of course did not give hand wringers any pause.

“The white establishment is now the minority. The voters, many of them, feel this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You’re gonna see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things — and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”
-Bill O’Reilly

The irony here, of course, is this odd assumption that people who voted for Romney did not want things. It ties directly into Romney’s talk about the 47%. There is this interesting perspective that Romney lost because the majority of America wants stuff…they are takers, not givers. Or that people believed the Obama Smear Machine that portrayed Romney as an out of touch rich guy. Or that supporters of Barack Obama are not virtuous. I have seen that one from friends online.

But the truth is, Mitt Romney did not win because he was a bad candidate. Folks…he was terrible. He did not merely have facts wrong…he thought that jokes like “I’m unemployed to!” were good ideas. Because losing your job is just like freely choosing not to work because, well…why on earth would you want to work when you get $20,ooo,ooo a year without lifting a finger. So yeah…they are just alike.
Romney was a bad candidate that everyone from Rush to Ann Coulter feverishly argued against him. The harshest attacks came not from Barack Obama and the left…but The Right Wing Illuminati. Romney was the path to failure and an Obama win, they all said. Of course, they danced around these unbending and authoritative claims when he won the nomination.* He routinely showed himself incapable to connect with the common man. Now, much was made of how he was really generous. We had a lot of examples of how he helped friends and fellow Church members. These are certainly nice things. The hard part with Romney was he constantly seemed to be evolving. Obama evolves on gay marriage and it is a major point of ridicule on the right. Romney evolves his positions on an hourly basis and we are told it is the Obama Smear Machine in action.

So, just why did they hang their hopes on Romney? Well, holy crap…did you see the people he was running against? Obama would have wept the popular vote against any of them.

Sure, you have Steve Schmidt, Ross Douthat, Rod Dreher, Michael Steel and Joe Scarborough who still supported their party while expressing concern about the unwillingness to actually pay attention to changing demographics and values with the country. But much of the conservative world seems to be clinging to the assumption that is was anybody’s fault but theirs or Romney’s.

————–

*It seems so ironic that these guys are incapable of compromise on things that matter when they are more then willing to toss their values aside for what they believe will allow them to win.