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I'm not from or in the US but can I ask a slightly off-topic question? Is Romney really the best the Republican's can offer? It seemed from here (UK) that he

I'm not from or in the US but can I ask a slightly off-topic question? Is Romney really the best the Republican's can offer? It seemed from here (UK) that he was not a compelling candidate from the start but most the others in the nomination process were massively flawed in some way or other and/or their political views were just too far from the mainstream to really fly. Romney might still have won if Obama had made a mess of something in the last days before the election as a couple of percent swing would have changed everything but it just seems like the Republicans should be able to do better. Two questions: 1) Do the Republicans have people who would make compelling candidates in the Presidential election? (Who?) 2) If not is there a structural problem in the Republican party that means extreme views (or massive personal cash) is required to reach the position to become a candidate and it somehow weeds out the compelling candidates?

andrewcooke 14y ago
[not american] my impression is that it is the latter - that it is hard to appeal consistently to both the party (to become the chosen candidate) and to the nation. hence the accusations of flip-flopping and the arguments from "reasonable republicans" that romney would actually have been quite good even though he had to say various odd things. i wonder if they will attempt to change how candidates are selected. [above i have tried to be impartial; a more personal take is that the republican party has become accustomed to lying to its supporters and is now trapped with the results. to have to rely on people trusting that their candidate is "bluffing" does not seem healthy.] --- more on topic: the results reporting really disappointed me. the take-away from silver's work is not that this is very complex. it's that the electoral college system plus most people voting the same way over time means that only a few results are uncertain. so focussing on those places allows you to predict the election. similarly, reporting all the other (known) data is irrelevant. it's not news, and it's not exciting. yet on election night we saw every result being treated equally. there was no acknowledgement of the reality. it looked exactly like an entertainment show. was there any presentation of the results, anywhere, that ignored most of the data and focussed only on the swing states? that spent the rest of the time analyzing what had happened in the light of the clearly expected, accurately predicted result?
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  I watched PBS's coverage and I would say they did. They showed every state very briefly but talked about nothing but the battlegrounds.
  - andrewcooke 14y ago
    thanks. i admit i didn't look there (on the web; can't get direct tv).
hindsightbias 14y ago
1) No. Just look at the first RNC primary debate videos. These are the Republicans rocket scientists. 2) Right pundits are already arguing that Romney wasn't extreme enough. This is not a condition they can get out of. All future candidates will have to meet socialcon and Koch requirements before even thinking about swing or blue states.
richardwhiuk 14y ago
Better candidates may have decided to wait out this time - battling against a incumbent is always harder.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  Plus whoever won would still have to continue cleaning up Bush's mess while not ticking off the Teabaggers too much - an impossible task. There are a couple of halfway non-insane Republicans who are sharpening their blades for 2106 - I'd say Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie are likely contenders who have some credibility. Well, Daniels doesn't much with me - I'm from Indiana and I can't say he's been a stellar governor. My opinion from the start is that the saner Republicans wisely decided to sit this one out and let the crazies blow off some steam. Even Palin sat it out - she's morally atrocious but, I think, no dummy. We'll see her in 2016 for sure.
  - deelowe 14y ago
    Can we just stop with the terms libtards and teabaggers? It's childish and disrepectful.
    - Vivtek 14y ago
      Dude, I'm from Indiana and it's what they call themselves. I know what the term means to you people from cities, but come on, is that even real? Why?
      - deelowe 14y ago
        I think within recent context, this is no longer the case. I'm not a member of the tea party movement, but I'm pretty sure it's seen as a derogatory term these days.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      I don't much care for the term teabagger, but it is their own coinage. see here: http://theweek.com/article/index/202620/the-evolution-of-the-word-tea-bagger http://theweek.com/article/index/202620/the-evolution-of-the... and think back to the many pictures of people suspending tea bags from hats etc., until they became aware of the slang meaning of the term. While they've tried to drop it and call themselves Tea Partiers, they've shown little inclination to temper their criticisms of others with civility or moderation, so far. Perhaps this electoral defeat will prompt some soul-searching.
nl 14y ago
Do the Republicans have people who would make compelling candidates in the Presidential election? (Who?) Yes. In this election John Huntsman would have had a good chance of winning the election by carrying the moderates and picking up a few Democrat voters (although he probably would never have got enough Republican voters). In many ways Rick Perry was a better candidate than Romney (in terms of who could win the election), but he screwed up in the debate and I think the US is a little wary of another Texas Republican. If not is there a structural problem in the Republican party that means extreme views (or massive personal cash) is required to reach the position to become a candidate and it somehow weeds out the compelling candidates? Sort of. To win the primary you need to carry either the Christian conservatives or the business wing of the Republican party. In this election the Christian conservatives vote was split many ways which left Romney. Romney's big problem was that he didn't appeal to Republicans enough for them to vote for him. He was sort of a Republican version of John Kerry - someone they thought moderates could vote for (which was kind of, somewhat true - he wasn't 100% insane anyway), but he didn't really appeal to his own party that much.
- Zimahl 14y ago
  I'll agree on Huntsman nationally, but he never stood a chance in the Republican party. He's too close to center (like pre-2008 McCain) and he didn't satisfy the minority, but influential, extreme right. There are plenty of good Republican, slightly-right leaning legislators - senators, representatives, governors - but the party has been hijacked by the extreme right. As much as they like to talk about being the party of Reagan, Reagan would be chastised now for working with a Democrat Congress. Reagan was good friends with Tip O'Neil (Speaker of the House, from Massachusetts, liberal) and nowadays that wouldn't sit well with the party. My father, my father-in-law, and my mother-in-law were all Republicans. After Bush II they all voted Democrat. They'd return if there was some sanity.
nollidge 14y ago
As a liberal American, my thesis is that the Republican party is extremely fractured between fiscal conservatives (who are largely centrist or even liberal on social issues) and the straight-up social conservatives. Which means that finding a single individual who can coherently represent all of them is basically impossible. So enter Romney, who seemed willing to be mercurial - literally adopting different positions in front of different audiences and scoffing whenever anybody pointed it out. But that cynical strategy was necessary to have any viability whatsoever in such a diverse party.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  >"Which means that finding a single individual who can coherently represent all of them is basically impossible." And by the time the Republican nomination was over, the strength of the social conservatives had dragged the rhetoric so far right that it was difficult for Romney to get back to the centre for the election.
  - zer01 14y ago
    These two comments very completely and eloquently sum up the problem. The divide between social and fiscal conservatism is something that gives the republican party the biggest disadvantage.
    - nollidge 14y ago
      I should also mention that the big-L Libertarians, as instantiated in the U.S., are not the fiscally-conservative socially-liberal party that centrists would even entertain. They're far too radical to be at all politically viable (abolish Fed and Education, open borders, legalize drugs, etc.).
pdog 14y ago
I thought Romney was an excellent candidate, but his campaign was rather hamstrung by the Republican party.
- josephlord 14y ago
  Based on media and social media I have seen (a very distorting view I know) there has been little sign of enthusiasm such as yours except at his campaign rallies. From the Republican supporters there seemed to be much more negativity about Obama than positivity for Romney. Do you think your view is widely shared? Can you say what you like about him?
stcredzero 14y ago
> 1) Do the Republicans have people who would make compelling candidates in the Presidential election? (Who?) Lots. Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie was often mentioned. The candidates who stepped in the ring for the Republican party were second stringers who saw their chance. The A Players were either not available or too smart to step in the ring. (The economy was wrecked under the Republican watch and Obama was in the process of fixing it.)
greedo 14y ago
The GOP fielded a horrible panel of candidates; all were very flawed and Romney was the most likely out of any of them to win against the President. They also hamstrung each other during the primary campaign in ways too numerous to list. This gave the Democratic Party a huge advantage since the President didn't have to undergo much scrutiny during this period. Incumbency is really hard to overcome. 1. There are numerous candidates who might prove compelling in 2016. I don't think Christie belongs in that group since he's being viewed as a pariah after the tropical storm. Rubio would satisfy the more conservative elements plus potentially bring in the Latino vote. 2. I don't think the GOP has huge structural issues, but I'll grant that the Democratic Party is much more unified. The GOP also has the nickname as the stupid party. Things like Todd Akin's comments (and Mourdock's) tainted the entire party. Had they repudiated both immediately and stuck with it even in the face of losing those two Senate seats (which they lost anyways) they would have done better in attracting women voters. Instead, the comments reinforced the Democratic meme that the GOP hated women.
- jessaustin 14y ago
  The Akin fiasco was modern Republican egotism and political incompetence in a nutshell. To start with the primary: Steelman is a serial officeholder too scared to challenge the incumbent Democrat Nixon for governor, who ran basically because she thought it was her turn in the Senate. Brunner is a rich dude who enjoys buying things. Akin is an "evangelical" Christian who visits lots of different churches. Also there were various cranks. If there were a core group of republican leaders in this state (rather than just a bunch of tired old emeriti angling for lobbyist gigs), they would have recognized that the evangelical vote was going to Akin. It's not as though he's an unknown quantity; he's been representing the same dozy safely-gerrymandered suburbs of St. Louis for decades. So they would know what a tool he is, and they would have known they had to get all the moderates voting for the same candidate in order not to be saddled with Akin in the general election. Which, since they have no way of influencing Brunner, would mean that Steelman would have been urged to step aside. She could have stepped into some committee appointment, or kept lobbying, or whatever, but she would have been taken care of by the establishment. Next time around, it could have been her "turn" again. Nothing like that occurred of course. Perhaps they thought McCaskill could have been beaten by anyone, and they wanted to prove it by nominating the dumbest guy they could find. If so they've been listening to Rush too much. McCaskill is not the pwog extremist they'd like to paint her as. As she bragged in her ads, she got the perfectly moderate score of "50" among Senators. If she had been running in 2010, Akin might have had a chance even with his rude comments, but in the quadrennial general election you can't just take the piss. Obama has coattails in St. Louis and Kansas City. McCaskill isn't as dumb as we all thought either. She actually ran ads during the Republican primary supporting Akin as the "True Conservative Choice". She did so openly, and all the Bible-thumpers thought she was trying to trick them with reverse psychology. I guess her checkerboard has more dimensions than theirs. And then within a week after the primary Akin spouted all that voodoo-illiterate-snake-handler let-me-tell-you-about-legitimate-rape nonsense. Why on earth is any Republican candidate ever allowed to answer a question about rape? Why do they ever utter anything besides "rape is terrible, and I'm against it 100%"? There are no upsides to answering that question! At that point the national Republican machine noticed what a hash of things their chums in Missouri had made. I'm sure they tried to buy off Akin, much as the state folks should have tried to buy off Steelman earlier. In Akin's case, the offer would have had to have been much sweeter, not least because he's much less rational: a national post in a potential Romney administration plus the promise of really sweet lobby dollars for him (they could have hit up Brunner for some of this) while he stayed in the House and an office on K Street after he left it. I'm not sure if they didn't offer a big enough bribe, or if Akin was too dumb and prideful (pride is ever the evangelicals' favorite deadly sin) not to take it, but the deal didn't get done. It didn't help that all the local Republican bigwigs, even those not up for reelection, immediately jumped on the airwaves to deplore Akin as soon as they possibly could. You can trick, buy, or even (rarely) reason with an evangelical, but you can't bully one. As soon as the rustics in the Ozarks heard that fancypants Danforth was trying to overrule the voters' choice for nominee, the phones in every political office in the state lit up. At that point it was too easy for Akin to fool himself. After all, he's a believer. So, this is the Republican Party. I still vote for them occasionally, and if I lived in a Blue state I probably would do so more often. Mostly I'm really bummed Johnson only got 1% this time around.
chc 14y ago
In the last election, the Republicans ran John McCain†, who is actually pretty much dead center in the context of US politics. It seems to me they ran Romney this time because 1) Romney has pretty strong economic credentials and Obama hasn't been outstanding in that department, and 2) going centrist didn't help last time. Also, like others said, the best candidates are probably waiting until next time, because Obama hasn't messed up badly enough for his supporters to turn on him en masse, so this year's candidate was likely to be a sacrificial lamb. † McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was nutjob who seemed to be there purely to appeal to the demographics he didn't, but the man himself has historically been pretty even-handed.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  I, in general, like McCain, but even though I am slightly right of center, I was disgusted by the things he had to do and say to get the nomination. During primary season he played the part of far right fairly well.

andrewcooke 14y ago

[not american] my impression is that it is the latter - that it is hard to appeal consistently to both the party (to become the chosen candidate) and to the nation. hence the accusations of flip-flopping and the arguments from "reasonable republicans" that romney would actually have been quite good even though he had to say various odd things. i wonder if they will attempt to change how candidates are selected. [above i have tried to be impartial; a more personal take is that the republican party has become accustomed to lying to its supporters and is now trapped with the results. to have to rely on people trusting that their candidate is "bluffing" does not seem healthy.] --- more on topic: the results reporting really disappointed me. the take-away from silver's work is not that this is very complex. it's that the electoral college system plus most people voting the same way over time means that only a few results are uncertain. so focussing on those places allows you to predict the election. similarly, reporting all the other (known) data is irrelevant. it's not news, and it's not exciting. yet on election night we saw every result being treated equally. there was no acknowledgement of the reality. it looked exactly like an entertainment show. was there any presentation of the results, anywhere, that ignored most of the data and focussed only on the swing states? that spent the rest of the time analyzing what had happened in the light of the clearly expected, accurately predicted result?

jeremyjh 14y ago
I watched PBS's coverage and I would say they did. They showed every state very briefly but talked about nothing but the battlegrounds.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  thanks. i admit i didn't look there (on the web; can't get direct tv).

hindsightbias 14y ago

1) No. Just look at the first RNC primary debate videos. These are the Republicans rocket scientists. 2) Right pundits are already arguing that Romney wasn't extreme enough. This is not a condition they can get out of. All future candidates will have to meet socialcon and Koch requirements before even thinking about swing or blue states.

richardwhiuk 14y ago

Better candidates may have decided to wait out this time - battling against a incumbent is always harder.

Vivtek 14y ago
Plus whoever won would still have to continue cleaning up Bush's mess while not ticking off the Teabaggers too much - an impossible task. There are a couple of halfway non-insane Republicans who are sharpening their blades for 2106 - I'd say Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie are likely contenders who have some credibility. Well, Daniels doesn't much with me - I'm from Indiana and I can't say he's been a stellar governor. My opinion from the start is that the saner Republicans wisely decided to sit this one out and let the crazies blow off some steam. Even Palin sat it out - she's morally atrocious but, I think, no dummy. We'll see her in 2016 for sure.
- deelowe 14y ago
  Can we just stop with the terms libtards and teabaggers? It's childish and disrepectful.
  - Vivtek 14y ago
    Dude, I'm from Indiana and it's what they call themselves. I know what the term means to you people from cities, but come on, is that even real? Why?
    - deelowe 14y ago
      I think within recent context, this is no longer the case. I'm not a member of the tea party movement, but I'm pretty sure it's seen as a derogatory term these days.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    I don't much care for the term teabagger, but it is their own coinage. see here: http://theweek.com/article/index/202620/the-evolution-of-the-word-tea-bagger http://theweek.com/article/index/202620/the-evolution-of-the... and think back to the many pictures of people suspending tea bags from hats etc., until they became aware of the slang meaning of the term. While they've tried to drop it and call themselves Tea Partiers, they've shown little inclination to temper their criticisms of others with civility or moderation, so far. Perhaps this electoral defeat will prompt some soul-searching.

nl 14y ago

Do the Republicans have people who would make compelling candidates in the Presidential election? (Who?) Yes. In this election John Huntsman would have had a good chance of winning the election by carrying the moderates and picking up a few Democrat voters (although he probably would never have got enough Republican voters). In many ways Rick Perry was a better candidate than Romney (in terms of who could win the election), but he screwed up in the debate and I think the US is a little wary of another Texas Republican. If not is there a structural problem in the Republican party that means extreme views (or massive personal cash) is required to reach the position to become a candidate and it somehow weeds out the compelling candidates? Sort of. To win the primary you need to carry either the Christian conservatives or the business wing of the Republican party. In this election the Christian conservatives vote was split many ways which left Romney. Romney's big problem was that he didn't appeal to Republicans enough for them to vote for him. He was sort of a Republican version of John Kerry - someone they thought moderates could vote for (which was kind of, somewhat true - he wasn't 100% insane anyway), but he didn't really appeal to his own party that much.

Zimahl 14y ago
I'll agree on Huntsman nationally, but he never stood a chance in the Republican party. He's too close to center (like pre-2008 McCain) and he didn't satisfy the minority, but influential, extreme right. There are plenty of good Republican, slightly-right leaning legislators - senators, representatives, governors - but the party has been hijacked by the extreme right. As much as they like to talk about being the party of Reagan, Reagan would be chastised now for working with a Democrat Congress. Reagan was good friends with Tip O'Neil (Speaker of the House, from Massachusetts, liberal) and nowadays that wouldn't sit well with the party. My father, my father-in-law, and my mother-in-law were all Republicans. After Bush II they all voted Democrat. They'd return if there was some sanity.

nollidge 14y ago

As a liberal American, my thesis is that the Republican party is extremely fractured between fiscal conservatives (who are largely centrist or even liberal on social issues) and the straight-up social conservatives. Which means that finding a single individual who can coherently represent all of them is basically impossible. So enter Romney, who seemed willing to be mercurial - literally adopting different positions in front of different audiences and scoffing whenever anybody pointed it out. But that cynical strategy was necessary to have any viability whatsoever in such a diverse party.

tatsuke95 14y ago
>"Which means that finding a single individual who can coherently represent all of them is basically impossible." And by the time the Republican nomination was over, the strength of the social conservatives had dragged the rhetoric so far right that it was difficult for Romney to get back to the centre for the election.
- zer01 14y ago
  These two comments very completely and eloquently sum up the problem. The divide between social and fiscal conservatism is something that gives the republican party the biggest disadvantage.
  - nollidge 14y ago
    I should also mention that the big-L Libertarians, as instantiated in the U.S., are not the fiscally-conservative socially-liberal party that centrists would even entertain. They're far too radical to be at all politically viable (abolish Fed and Education, open borders, legalize drugs, etc.).

pdog 14y ago

I thought Romney was an excellent candidate, but his campaign was rather hamstrung by the Republican party.

josephlord 14y ago
Based on media and social media I have seen (a very distorting view I know) there has been little sign of enthusiasm such as yours except at his campaign rallies. From the Republican supporters there seemed to be much more negativity about Obama than positivity for Romney. Do you think your view is widely shared? Can you say what you like about him?

stcredzero 14y ago

> 1) Do the Republicans have people who would make compelling candidates in the Presidential election? (Who?) Lots. Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie was often mentioned. The candidates who stepped in the ring for the Republican party were second stringers who saw their chance. The A Players were either not available or too smart to step in the ring. (The economy was wrecked under the Republican watch and Obama was in the process of fixing it.)

greedo 14y ago

The GOP fielded a horrible panel of candidates; all were very flawed and Romney was the most likely out of any of them to win against the President. They also hamstrung each other during the primary campaign in ways too numerous to list. This gave the Democratic Party a huge advantage since the President didn't have to undergo much scrutiny during this period. Incumbency is really hard to overcome. 1. There are numerous candidates who might prove compelling in 2016. I don't think Christie belongs in that group since he's being viewed as a pariah after the tropical storm. Rubio would satisfy the more conservative elements plus potentially bring in the Latino vote. 2. I don't think the GOP has huge structural issues, but I'll grant that the Democratic Party is much more unified. The GOP also has the nickname as the stupid party. Things like Todd Akin's comments (and Mourdock's) tainted the entire party. Had they repudiated both immediately and stuck with it even in the face of losing those two Senate seats (which they lost anyways) they would have done better in attracting women voters. Instead, the comments reinforced the Democratic meme that the GOP hated women.

jessaustin 14y ago
The Akin fiasco was modern Republican egotism and political incompetence in a nutshell. To start with the primary: Steelman is a serial officeholder too scared to challenge the incumbent Democrat Nixon for governor, who ran basically because she thought it was her turn in the Senate. Brunner is a rich dude who enjoys buying things. Akin is an "evangelical" Christian who visits lots of different churches. Also there were various cranks. If there were a core group of republican leaders in this state (rather than just a bunch of tired old emeriti angling for lobbyist gigs), they would have recognized that the evangelical vote was going to Akin. It's not as though he's an unknown quantity; he's been representing the same dozy safely-gerrymandered suburbs of St. Louis for decades. So they would know what a tool he is, and they would have known they had to get all the moderates voting for the same candidate in order not to be saddled with Akin in the general election. Which, since they have no way of influencing Brunner, would mean that Steelman would have been urged to step aside. She could have stepped into some committee appointment, or kept lobbying, or whatever, but she would have been taken care of by the establishment. Next time around, it could have been her "turn" again. Nothing like that occurred of course. Perhaps they thought McCaskill could have been beaten by anyone, and they wanted to prove it by nominating the dumbest guy they could find. If so they've been listening to Rush too much. McCaskill is not the pwog extremist they'd like to paint her as. As she bragged in her ads, she got the perfectly moderate score of "50" among Senators. If she had been running in 2010, Akin might have had a chance even with his rude comments, but in the quadrennial general election you can't just take the piss. Obama has coattails in St. Louis and Kansas City. McCaskill isn't as dumb as we all thought either. She actually ran ads during the Republican primary supporting Akin as the "True Conservative Choice". She did so openly, and all the Bible-thumpers thought she was trying to trick them with reverse psychology. I guess her checkerboard has more dimensions than theirs. And then within a week after the primary Akin spouted all that voodoo-illiterate-snake-handler let-me-tell-you-about-legitimate-rape nonsense. Why on earth is any Republican candidate ever allowed to answer a question about rape? Why do they ever utter anything besides "rape is terrible, and I'm against it 100%"? There are no upsides to answering that question! At that point the national Republican machine noticed what a hash of things their chums in Missouri had made. I'm sure they tried to buy off Akin, much as the state folks should have tried to buy off Steelman earlier. In Akin's case, the offer would have had to have been much sweeter, not least because he's much less rational: a national post in a potential Romney administration plus the promise of really sweet lobby dollars for him (they could have hit up Brunner for some of this) while he stayed in the House and an office on K Street after he left it. I'm not sure if they didn't offer a big enough bribe, or if Akin was too dumb and prideful (pride is ever the evangelicals' favorite deadly sin) not to take it, but the deal didn't get done. It didn't help that all the local Republican bigwigs, even those not up for reelection, immediately jumped on the airwaves to deplore Akin as soon as they possibly could. You can trick, buy, or even (rarely) reason with an evangelical, but you can't bully one. As soon as the rustics in the Ozarks heard that fancypants Danforth was trying to overrule the voters' choice for nominee, the phones in every political office in the state lit up. At that point it was too easy for Akin to fool himself. After all, he's a believer. So, this is the Republican Party. I still vote for them occasionally, and if I lived in a Blue state I probably would do so more often. Mostly I'm really bummed Johnson only got 1% this time around.

chc 14y ago

In the last election, the Republicans ran John McCain†, who is actually pretty much dead center in the context of US politics. It seems to me they ran Romney this time because 1) Romney has pretty strong economic credentials and Obama hasn't been outstanding in that department, and 2) going centrist didn't help last time. Also, like others said, the best candidates are probably waiting until next time, because Obama hasn't messed up badly enough for his supporters to turn on him en masse, so this year's candidate was likely to be a sacrificial lamb. † McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was nutjob who seemed to be there purely to appeal to the demographics he didn't, but the man himself has historically been pretty even-handed.

aidenn0 14y ago
I, in general, like McCain, but even though I am slightly right of center, I was disgusted by the things he had to do and say to get the nomination. During primary season he played the part of far right fairly well.