It Wasn't About Conservatism

Submitted by Gene Taglia (United States), Jan 3, 2013 at 12:25

The Republicans, in general, Romney, in particular, ran a horrible campaign; very little conservatism was displayed. A winning campaign consists of differentiating your candidates from the opposition by portraying your opponents as stupid, dangerous, incompetent and/or untrustworthy and their policies as destructive to liberty, prosperity and the country's basic principles and culture. Then you present your candidates and policies as the opposite, giving voters a clear and distinct choice, both something to vote for and something to vote against.

With Obama and today's crop of Democrats it should have been easy, nearly anything derogatory that could be said about them would be accurate. But, Romney didn't do it; he allowed that Obama was generally a good guy, at least mostly competent, but wrong on some things and Romney could do better. This lack of presenting any compelling reasons to vote for Romney, or against Obama, caused many voters to stay home and lost the election, not only for Romney, but for many good candidates, who would have won with a higher Republican turnout. Conservatism could have won, if it had been tried; it won in 2010, but wasn't much in evidence this time.

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