Following up on Bernard’s post about Romney’s weak-ass excuse making for losing a winnable election, here’s Ryan’s excuse (via):
Now, post-election, the Wisconsin congressman is blaming his Republican ticket loss with presidential contender Mitt Romney on a huge turnout of urban voters for President Obama.
With old Blue Eyes Lyin’ in the Rain, there’s always a “yes, but”, and here it is:
One flaw in that analysis may be that election results indicate the Romney-Ryan ticket didn’t exactly connect with the voters back in Janesville, either.
A struggling blue-collar manufacturing town of 63,575, Janesville lies on the eastern edge of Rock County, Wis., and unofficial election tabulations from the county clerk there show that only 37% of Ryan’s hometown neighbors voted for him and his running mate. Meanwhile, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got 62% of the Janesville vote.
That’s right, P90X lost his own home town, which isn’t “urban” or blah or ni-clang or whatever other dog whistle he wants to use.
Also, too: his candidate for House conference chair, Tom Price, lost yesterday, probably because “urban” members of the House Republican caucus chose Cathy McMorris Rogers.
Scott S.
So Romney and Ryan really were the perfect choices for the Modern GOP — complete and unapologetic douchebags.
fuddmain
Is there any way we can keep these two bobbleheads front and center running their mouths between now and 2014?
the Conster
This is why the GOP is going to go off the electoral cliff – their “leaders” believe their own bullshit. They have no ability to self-correct, because if they did, they wouldn’t be Republicans. Keep fornicating with those fowls, conservatives.
c u n d gulag
Oh, Janesville, why hast thou forsaken thy favorite blue-eyed son?
What?
Yes, we know he’s an @$$hole – but did he really “do it” with his mother?
Earl
Love that title…
aimai
Every day, and every way, I’m feeling better and better.
Someone posted Ryan’s actual statement on how things worked out for him once his own hometowners finally figured out that he was a Republican. It was the most unconciously funny thing you will read about this election. Using words a third grader might choose he stumbled through saying, but not saying, that when your good country friends realize you are a Republican, because you ran on the Republican ticket and you couldn’t hide it anymore, they hate your guts.
How long can he hold that seat now that the secret is out?
aimai
El Cid
__
Baud
I had a wet blanket thought this morning. All that shellshock, unskewed polls stuff probably saved the House for the GOP. I don’t think Republicans turn out if they understood reality.
Oh well.
Thanks to Romney/Ryan for giving us a reason to continue to thank FSM for Obama’s reelection.
mai naem
Apparently Lyin’ Ryan got a bunch of cheering when he came into the Repub Caucus. He’s still considered the “Policy Wonk”, The “Ideas Man” in GOP Houseworld. They create their own reality. Dumbasses.
Ash Can
So Romney and Ryan are saying they lost because too many blacks voted, and the rest of the GOP is saying they lost because they ran a shitty campaign. Fine. Let’s see if they ever figure out on their own that they lost because THEIR POLICIES SUCK.
Bernard Finel
What gets me about the “urban” vote comment is that implicit idea that “urban” vote is somehow illegitimate. That, you know, the “urban” vote should count for less. That it should count, I dunno, maybe as 3/5 of a “real” vote perhaps.
But maybe I’m just reading too much into what Representative Ryan is saying.
debbie
Listening to a report about the Republican Governor’s meeting, no one seems to have learned any lessons from the election, other than they need to do the same things they were doing before.
russell
the white man can never be wrong, he can only be wronged.
everybody loves a sore loser.
mai naem
Ooooh, Soledad Obrien is having her way with some wingnut Congressman from Nevade -Joe Heck. Obrien just compared Condi to Susan with WMD lies and Libya. Forget Mornin’ Ho. Soledad is so much better.
dr. bloor
In other words, more people voted for the other guys.
I’m surprised the smarmy little shitstain doesn’t just come out and say he got beaten by a bunch of darkies.
dr. bloor
@Baud:
Nothing to do with it. Right now, the House districts are so tightly gerrymandered that it wil take an act of FSM or well-placed tactical nukes to dislodge the Republicans in most of them.
arguingwithsignposts
OT, but the IDF has been live tweeting their attacks on Hamas. Figure that might warrant some FP attention at some point.
Schlemizel
@Baud:
Sorry but no. What saved the House for the goopers was 2010. So many State Houses redistrcited in ways that assured GOP holding seats that it would have been a miracle to take the house.
Dem candidates for the House had a huge voter lead over GOP candidates. Had the 2008 districts still stood the Dems would have taken 40 seats. We have to look at a GOP built in advantage there for a decade yet. the Dems either peel a lot more voters way from the goopers or just find ways around the GOP Congress.
EDIT:@dr. bloor: I have to say I am intruged by your idea of nukes to peel away goopers – do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to? 8-{D
Punchy
McCain is on the Today show and just caused me to drop 3 f-bombs in front of the kid. Goddamn is he such a human shitbag, classless and full of shit
Schlemizel
@Punchy:
But I am sure Matt Lousyer corrected him and made him defend his BS
Jay in Oregon
@Bernard Finel:
Overheard on Twitter: “It’s really sad when the majority of Americans voted for Romney, if by Americans you mean ‘acres'”.
Mark S.
Oh well uh you might think I’m crazy
I’m bracing myself to start hearing Delphi from the wingnuts in my life like I used to hear Alinsky.
Soonergrunt
@aimai: yup. Here it is:
Baud
@Schlemizel:
I get that gerrymandering played a larger role. But even in a gerrymandered district you still need your voters to come out.
slightly_peeved
@Mark S.:
Good luck to Obama, trying to find a mind to control in a Georgia Republican meeting.
Feudalism Now!
Enjoyed hearing the new talking points from the right wing realm in the teacher’s lounge yesterday. Surprise, surprise the Electoral College prevented Romney from winning. If EV’s were allocated by congressional district, the GooP would have won the Whiteman’s House. Also, too, 42 states have filed petitions to secede.
Counterpoints of gerrymandering, popular vote, voter suppression, and UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH were all hand waved away. Only their magical thinking is allowed. The end of the discussion came when their argument was summed up as if the way elections are resolved were completely different and different people showed up to vote the result would have been different. Conversation moved to weather which is a much more contested topic.
Also:
Is Bibi hoping the Obama Slamma is going to ignore his mid-east tantrum?
Soonergrunt
@Bernard Finel:
“But maybe I’m just reading too much into what Representative Ryan is saying.”
No. You aren’t.
gene108
@Schlemizel:
What goes unreported in most quarters is the Republican response to 2008 was in part to make an aggressive push at down ticket races in 2010.
It wasn’t an accident Republicans had a wave election in 2010.
They worked at it so smoothly no one in the MSM noticed there were big time Republicans pushing money into down ticket races that wasn’t normally spent in those races before.
jibeaux
@Mark S.: Our county commissioners regularly talk about UN Agenda 21, it seems to be in connection with a plan to manage stormwater runoff and other routine environmental management concerns. I even saw a bumper sticker that said “Agenda 21 is Evil” or something. I think 27% of the country has clinically diagnosable paranoid schizophrenia.
Mark S.
Young bucks with their
t-bone steaksvoter id cards.JohnK
@Schlemizel: Do you have any factual basis to backup your assertion on Gerrymanders because otherwise there is this from Jonathan Bernstein that is as contrary to your point.
@Bernard Finel: I am not sure Ryan was being cognitively racist even though the clip sounds like a dog whistle. He appears to be still living in his fact free delusion along with almost half the voting population. The concerning part isn’t the racism, we know racism is wide spread in the USA, it is Ryan’s inability to get the facts right. Whats the word for fact-phobic?
the Conster
@JohnK:
Republican.
Litlebritdifrnt
@JohnK:
I believe the word you are looking for is liar.
redshirt
@Mark S.: LOL. It’s like a genetic marker, or a secret “Spidey Tracker”. As soon as you hear a certain word: “BENGHAZI! SOLYANDRA! SOROS! DELPHI!” you can immediately stop debating the person and instead go directly to mocking, because you can be sure the person you’re talking to has a case of Foxitus.
dmsilev
@Mark S.: Tell the wingnuts that Obama used his Mind Control Ray to force that Georgia state rep to make that speech; it’s just a red herring to cover up the Real Conspiracy.
bjacques
@Mark S.: Be sure to print out this map (suitable for framing) of the seekrit boncentration bamps nearest YOU! Then show up in the teacher’s lounge wearing a FEMA armband and post it on the wall.
Anyone who doesn’t like it will be put to work in the 150-mpg carburetor factory.
beltane
@dr. bloor: I think Mitt Romney was already quite explicit in blaming the browns and blahs for his ass whooping. Ryan was subtle in comparison.
Cacti
@JohnK:
Republican
JPL
@Punchy: It’s been a long time since someone openly auditioned for the Strom Thurmond award.
JCT
@JohnK: re: Ryan – really, everytime we give these assholes the benefit of the doubt we end up being wrong, see Mittens, 47% – his comments yesterday fully corroborate that video with his donors. You know, sometimes a spade is really a spade.
Re: Delphi and UN resolutions. I’ve heard all of this and much worse at my nearby target range. As a matter of fact, one of the ROs said to me the other day “you know, you can remove your ear protection during a cease fire”. I’ve learned to keep it on so I don’t have to listen to the vile, paranoid shit these guys spew. Hopeless.
JohnK
No racism here, (Kevin Drum,) nope. The battle continues for 2014.
Mark S.
@bjacques:
Four of the camps are in Arizona? McCain sure knows how to bring home the pork.
Feudalism Now!
@bjacques:
Da Comrade. The Glorious Soshulistika Republik of Barack Obama marches FORWARD!
amk
And this is supposedly the brainiac of the goopers’ party and its 2016 prezinential candie.
And this grifter lost 13% support from 2010 to 2012 for the house seat. Dems should pour some money and ground game in taking out this lying bastid once and for all in 2014.
Just One More Canuck
@dr. bloor: But it’s that kind of analysis that makes him a “numbers guy” and a “policy wonk” to the Village.
redshirt
Also, I didn’t think I could hate McCain worse than after the 2008 election, but here we are. What a shmuck.
Dork
@Mark S.: Please dont ever use McCain and pork in the same sentence.
Where’s the eye bleach for that image?
El Cid
Let’s give some credit to Ryan, here.
Yes, it sounds like he’s just blaming (and therefore insulting) black and insufficiently white voters by the term “urban”.
But let’s not forget that he’s also giving the traditional Republican insulting of all them city-folk meddlin’ in their ‘leckshuns.
Real Americans are rural white folk in the South or West and who are conservative and have the requisite cultural traits and preferences.
Republicans who believe they are among that lot or believe that they are in some way connected with that ideal group are Real Americans by association.
It’s just as much an insult to hip-hop listening black primitives as it is to effete, bespectacled, nerdy city-dwellers who love the Toyota Prius and blah blah blah etc.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Feudalism Now!:
Actually, 4chan has file petitions to secede. For the lulz.
Quincy
Jannesville used to be an extremely white town with a reputation for racism. Not sure what the current climate is there, but it’s pretty clear Ryan’s problems go beyond “urban” voters.
Dan
Romney will never run for office again, and he’s never been a particularly loyal Republican party guy, so I can imagine he doesn’t care how stupid and damaging his remarks are to the already disgraced GOP brand. Ryan is just stupid as fuck.
amk
And the idiot troll is here.
MosesZD
I think people over-estimate how “winnable” the election was for Romney. If Obama wasn’t black and had to deal with all the racism bullshit, it’d have been closer to Reagan/Mondale with Romney playing the role of Mondale than the ‘mere trouncing’ he (Romney) suffered at the hands of Obama.
Cassidy
They will never get over having this election stolen from them because the blah people the women
baby factorieshad the audacity to vote.JohnK
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I don’t think the States have done anything about succession. What we have here are some severely cognitively challenged individuals acting out on their delusions filing BS on a well meaning White House web page designed to attract serious feedback. Is this real or is this just another sign of disrespect for the President?
Splitting Image
@Baud:
I think gerrymandering played a role, as others have said, but I also think the Democrats failed to convey the importance of putting Nancy Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair.
Particularly when the Republicans were going nuts with the Blunt Amendment and attacking Sandra Fluke, and then later with the comments about rape. The Democrats should have been pointing out the necessity of putting a woman in charge of the House, but I hardly heard anything about it.
It did look for awhile that the House might flip, but the generic congressional ballot polling moved back to the Republicans after the first debate. That indicates Obama’s bad night hurt the party downticket, but it doesn’t make sense. Why punish Pelosi for Obama’s stumble?
Answer: because the importance of electing Pelosi was not being pushed as hard as the importance of electing Obama.
amk
@MosesZD: Yup. The rabid racist ‘base’ turned out in full (at least as close to 2008) and yet the kkklowns couldn’t win it for the #VultureVoucher2012 ticket. Thusly all the butthurt.
beltane
@MosesZD: Yes, if Obama looked and sounded like Bill Clinton Romney would have been left with only Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Cassidy
@Bernard Finel: I think you nailed it. You give too much by assuming 3/5 though.
DBaker
All this urban stuff is dogwhistles. Talk show radio, Newsmax and all the other usual under the radar subjects are pushing stories that more than 100 percent of the vote in Cuyahoga county. See here for google search alone:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Ohio+more+than+100+percent+voting+Obama&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Someone here already hit the nail on the head, GOP policies do suck, but a lot of the grifters who work with and or Fox News and other right wing media understand how to fleece their masters by telling them what they want to hear.
The most dangerous people on the right are Scarborough and Frum because they do appear to get it and because they are considered “tolerable” because they appear on MSNBC. Mind you Scar and Frum are still wrong and dunderheads, but they at least understand how the grifters like Rove and Limbaugh have the GOP money guys all fooled.
Me – I try and watch Current as much as possible except for that awful Joy Behar stupidity.
EconWatcher
@beltane:
Not sure I agree.
No doubt racism cost a lot of votes (I could see a candidate who is the same as Obama but white doing a whole lot better in, say, West Virginia).
But will the AA vote continue in these numbers, without Obama? Also, did all the racist dogwhistles increase the AA vote? And did that gain as many votes as were lost to racism?
I guess we’ll probably find out in 2016.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@JohnK:
That was my point. The internet crazies at 4chan decided it would be hilarious to submit petitions for secession for every state in the union. The number of petitions means less than nothing.
ericblair
@JohnK:
The recognized problem with this study is that it assumes that districts weren’t already gerrymandered before the 2010 redistricting. They were, and 2010 just made it worse in several states.
The argument then becomes that Democratic voters tend to “self-gerrymander” since a lot of urban areas have a very high concentration of Dem voters. You could solve this with spoke-like districts that spread out Dem voters somewhat.
The whole thing about gerrymandering is that, for a fixed population in each district, you can either have very safe seats for your party or a lot of seats for your party but not both. It’s like financial leverage, and like financial leverage, if the numbers change in a slightly unexpected way you can be pretty badly fucked. In the long term, it’s not the House that’s going to be a problem; it’s the Senate, which has large gooper advantages baked in for good.
NotMax
@Feudalism Now!
This from teachers? How the bloody hell do they think EV allocation is determined? By picking numbered chits out of a fishbowl?
2 EVs per state for Senate representation (plus 2 for D.C. as granted in the 23rd Amendment*), and the remaining 436 are one per Congressional district (plus one for D.C.).
Amazing that these teachers can find their way to the school.
*Interesting tidbit is that D.C.’s population is already greater than Wyoming’s – if the population differential grows, it will be in the position of having less representation in the Electoral College than it would be entitled to if a state. From Amendment XXIII (emphasis added)
GregB
The outgoing loser chairman of the Maine GOP says that some small rural towns in Maine saw ‘hundreds of black people’ voting on election day. Yet no one in town knows any black people!
I assume they were bused in from that bastion of diversity NH.
Just One More Canuck
@Quincy: apparently the KKK had a significant presence in Janesville, including some rallies in the 1990’s
Emma
@jibeaux: Nice polite way to say they’re gone nucking futs.
Sterling
The whining from Romney and Ryan is just too satisfying. They seem genuinely surprised that spending a campaign shitting on minorities, women, union labor, environmentalists, and the poor, could have lost them an election.
Tone in DC
@slightly_peeved:
Good one.
redbeardjim
@NotMax:
They’re not talking about where the number of EVs come from, they’re talking about allocating EVs to the candidates based on who wins the vote in each Congressional district, or proportionally based on the number of “D” or “R” congressional districts per state, or something similar — what Husted was proposing right after the election last week. In essence, whichever party has a majority in the House would pretty much automatically win the Presidency.
Cacti
@NotMax:
Wyoming is also the foremost example of how the electoral college overrepresents the small states. Each EV in Wyoming represents approximately 189,386 people.
Compare that to California, where despite having 55 EV, each one represents about 685,307 people.
JohnK
@ericblair: Yes that is interesting but I think Sam Wang via Kevin Drum question just how large the gerrymander affect was. According to Drum, Sam Wang comes up with the same result as Eric McGhee.
beltane
@EconWatcher: The racism helped tremendously with the Latino vote for sure. The fact that the Republicans are doubling down on this just shows us how deep in denial they are.
Teresa
It would never occur to Ryan nor Romney that they lost because they are ignorant and piss performers. With a huge dose of homicidal asshole too.
NotMax
@redbeardjim
Then they are bigger clods than I surmised above.
That’s not much further afield than proposing the 4 years of a presidential term be divided and the number of days in office be proportionally allocated on the basis of EVs.
quannlace
The only take-away they seem to have is that they have to do something,,something to attract Hispanic voters. What that something is, is a mystery.
Cassidy
@quannlace: They’re going to hand out free tacos…because all hispanic people eat tacos right?
So, now that I’m joking, who will be the first Republican to hand out free Mexican food (probably tacos) at a latino outreach event?
Schlemizel
@JohnK:
None. I was going entirely on the word of guys like Barny Frank and stuff I was told by party people. That sort of bean counting is beyond my interest level as I’d have to have a lot of detail about specific precincts, how the voted last week and where they were in 08. Thats a hell of a lot of work.
I guess I’ll have to do some more looking into it
Schlemizel
@Cassidy:
Ballpark nachos – now there some real meksin eatin!
NotMax
@quannlace
Also too, who is then designated the ‘other,’ the threat.
One constant of the modern and post-modern G.O.P. is its bedrock reliance on spotlighting an enemy against whom to rail.
Amir Khalid
@redbeardjim:
That sounds like they want a Prime Minister of the US, rather than a President.
J R in WV
So, the whiners are so sad that the Democratic candidates won because people who favor Democratic policies came out to vote for the Democratic candidates! At the same time, Republican candidates got votes from people who favor Republican policies, or who are fooled into thinking that Republican policies will favor them.
Funny, I thought that was how democracy was supposed to work. Keep that chicken thing going, guys, it’s bound to start working soon!!
g
Heard a clip on NPR this morning of Haley Barbour at a Republicans governors conference saying that the only reason Romney lost was because Obama ran ads portraying Romney as an out-of-touch rich guy.
Yes. Their clever scheme would have totally succeeded, if only it hadn’t been for that meddling Obama, actually <b<campaigning against Romney.
Feudalism Now!
Whether 4chan submitted them or not, the dead Enders are using the petitions as solace. I am sure you could find 25k idiots in each state to sign a petition to change the American flag to a picture of an empty chair hanging from a tree, stupidity knows no geographical bias.
There is no fact or fiction that the republicans will not cling to, to console themselves that history is not passing them by. There will be no realization, no modification or mollification of the ‘base’ or basest of their natures, there will be no change. This is the Republican Party until they have a permanent minority.
mamayaga
The problem with defending against the EVs-apportioned-by-Congressional-District idea is that a couple states — Nebraska and Maine I think — already do it. There’s no Constitutional barrier to it. If Ohio’s EVs had been apportioned that way this year, Romney would have gotten the lion’s share of the state’s votes.
japa21
I always find it amusing when the party of individual responsibility refuses to accept any responsibility for its loss.
ショーン
Even putting any racist dogwhistles aside, I think Ryan’s comments are actually offensive towards the idea of democracy and the Dems should make the Repubs wear them for the next 4 years while pushing election reform.
He didn’t say the R’s lost because not enough of their base voted. He didn’t say the R’s lost because they couldn’t convince enough Urban voters to support them instead of the Dems (because honestly they never even tried).
He said the R’s lost because too many Urban voters voted. That’s just pure disdain for democracy and should make it obvious to anyone that the Republican Party’s entire election strategy is to prevent enough of the ‘wrong’ people from exercising their right to vote not to earn their votes.
Trakker
When honest, principled politicians lose, they start their explanations of why they lost with the words “we didn’t…”. Arrogant ideological politicians begin their explanations with “they…”
The GOP can never be wrong, they can never lose unless the other side doesn’t do what they’re supposed to (in this case, stay home because they don’t think they have proper ID).
Raven
Tried to watch the Benghazi hearing but when Rohrback came on that was it.
Just One More Canuck
@g: So the Republicans have become the villains from Scooby-Doo?
Yutsano
@Schlemizel: Ignacio Anaya weeps.
gene108
@Splitting Image:
Pelosi, and Reid to a lesser extent, have become the new demons for the right-wing to scare voters silly.
A lot of Republicans and GOP PACS run ads that successfully vilify Democrats, in right-leaning districts, by tying their voting record to Pelosi.
I can understand Shuler wanting to challenge her. As popular as she is among most Democrats and liberals, she has become highly toxic for Democrats trying to hold onto seats in conservative districts.
Tone in DC
Moar LULz.
The last few days have been a bit like 2009, but intensified. More than 27% of the people have truly lost what is left of their minds. And they aren’t just letting their freak flag fly, they are putting it on the Goodyear blimp with neon lights.
LD50
@Ash Can: Actually, judging from the Facebook Wingnut Barometer, half of all Republicans are saying that the Democrats won by giving free stuff to the moochers, and the other half are saying that the GOP really won but the Dems stole the election with CHICAGO STYLE POLITICS BENGHAZI.
the Conster
@quannlace:
The 2016 GOP candidates will campaign wearing sombreros.
LD50
@redshirt: Or another sign that someone is just begging for you to piss on their head: when someone claims that Obama “thinks that there are 57 states”.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Feudalism Now!:
I’m sure. I don’t expect them to be open to being convinced they’ve been had. I just thought it would add to the mocking. Oh, and console some of the more panic-inclined emoprogs.
Also, too, some percentage of the people signing those petitions are “Yes, please secede, glad to see you go!” types.
SuperHrefna
@bjacques: That cracked me up so much :-) Right, I’ve had a nice lazy morning off so I am off to report back to FEMA HQ – ie my local foodbank where FEMA is carrying out its evil plot of feeding the hungry.
Schlemizel
@Yutsano:
Anybody who enjoys decent food (and actual Mexican food is outstanding!) weeps!
If you say you want Mexican food why do you insist on Taco Hell or Chilies, Chi-Chi’s (where is Max McGee?) Zantegos – the sludge pile goes on & on
Schlemizel
@Schlemizel:
JOHNK – eh, maybe not
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-gerrymandering-house-representatives-election-chart?1
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
Here’s another problem for the GOP: Eighty percent of the human race lives in cities. Outside of Agriculture and Resource Extraction, most human wealth (and knowledge) is developed in cities. Even post-Sandy, a tightly-packed city like NYC has orders of magnitude more value per sq ft than any Red State in the union.
For all their big talk of ‘gifts’, much GOP domestic policy since at least 1980 has been driven by the impulse to extract wealth from the cities and give it to white flighters in the suburbs, to buy their votes. Starve the urban schools of funding, divert the funds to suburban whites. Favor essentially non-productive sectors like suburban construction over manufacturing. Starve urban infrastructure (including transportation) to favor roads out in the burbs.
I’ve come to think of the suburbs as a well-managed theme park for older white people, and it’s worked for some of them. But the nation as a whole can no longer afford the expense of maintaining that illusion for them. And as younger folks continue to move to the cities, the country will continue to become more and more urban. In this long term, this is a very good thing.
Cities are the future, and there’s really nothing the GOP can do to stop it.
SFAW
@NotMax:
So wie immer.
JudenSchwartzenLatinos raus! Jetzt!GregB
@gene108:
Clearly we should have abandoned President Obama for a person who wasn’t so toxic to the GOP base.
Lurking Canadian
@J R in WV: This! Their whining amounts to “WAH! The Democrats cheated by running a more popular candidate on a more popular platform!”
Both of them need to go back to kindergarten again and stay there until they understand how not to be sore losers.
SP
Also too, it was expected since it’s part of the liberal Boston suburban ring, but Rmoney lost his hometown of Belmont by a slightly worse margin, 64.5-33.5.
one two seven
@JohnK: The old districts were drawn in 2002 and were also gerrymandered, just not as severely.
SFAW
@Lurking Canadian:
Fixed for nit-pickiness.
Also: there ain’t enough kindergarten, therapy, or re-education camps in the world to fix Romney and Ryan. The will continue to be clueless, whiny, entitled, amoral, lying assholes until they die.
Or so I’m told.
SFAW
@SP:
I think it’s especially good fun that W got a higher percentage of the Mormon vote than Mittens did.
Boy, Teh Angel Moron has gotta be some kind of pissed about that. Maybe enough to have Kolob pass new immigration laws to keep out Mittens and the Mittlets?
How DO you say “la Migra” in Kolobian?
LanceThruster
@aimai:
When the long national nightmare of Bush the Lesser was coming to an end, I was reminded of Vonnegut’s line from Timequake.
“You were sick, but now you’re well, and there’s work to do.”
LanceThruster
@the Conster:
I love it here. The trees are just the right height. You people are so good with landscaping.
LanceThruster
@SFAW:
Clueless, whiny, entitled, amoral, lying assholes cannot fail. They can only be failed.
The problem, dear SFAW, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.
1badbaba3
First, nice blue eyes ref, ‘Nardo.
@JohnK: I’m going to assume you’re not down playing racism as a reason why Money Boo Boo and Lyin’ Ryan lost, but racism is very much a fact-free delusion, one of the most destructive delusions there is.. It permeates the GOP at EVERY level and informs EVERYTHING they do. And it will ever be thus. So fuck those racist motherfuckers.
cckids
@mamayaga:
The problem with this interpretation is that it assumes that the Obama campaign would not have adjusted & run differently. It was pretty finely tuned to the current EV situation. I have confidence that they would have had a strategy for the shifting EV world if that had been the case.
Its what made them different from Romney’s campaign; they didn’t just practice magical thinking, they assessed the obstacles & worked out ways around/over them.
LanceThruster
@LanceThruster:
Our should I say, “muy fantastico con las plantas!”?
JCT
@Schlemizel: When my college- age son visited us at our new home in Tucson one of his first comments was “OMG, are you kidding me? People go to Taco Bell here???”
Apparently they do , hopeless.
SFAW
@LanceThruster:
Meinst du “planetas”?
But, yes, you’re right, I realize it may be all my fault that Rmoney lost, because I failed him.
That’s a secret that I guess I’ll have to carry to my grave. Well, either that, or I’ll see if Jim Messina can use some extra help at his next gig.
WereBear
Let’s see, cranky scheme to defraud nice folks from their rightful property out of greed and meanness…
when were they NOT?
Lurking Canadian
@SFAW: He did? That is the schadenfreudenist bit of schadenfreude I’ve heard. UNLIMITED WHITE HORSES LIBS!
SFAW
@Lurking Canadian:
Alternatively: Suck It, Kolob-tards!
russell
also know as “talking”
Chris
@MosesZD:
I agree that most people overestimate the winnability of this thing for Mittens.
Actually, I’ll go one better and say it wouldn’t have been nearly as close without the voter suppression efforts. Voter information packages with the wrong dates on them in Florida and Arizona, machines turning Obama votes into Romney votes in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Republican “election monitors” unsubtly monitoring the proceedings, not to mention my one friend who mysteriously never got his absentee ballot.
Romney cheated with every trick in the book, and STILL it wasn’t enough to close the gap. That’s my takeaway from the election.
Roy G.
Once again, the Republicans have to look away from the obvious facts: Urban dwellers have to interact daily with a heterogenous group of people, and tend to realize that we are in this together. Rural society is very homogenous and its much easier to only interact with ‘your kind.’
The grand irony is that there are so many productive urban people who were driven away from their small towns because they are ‘different.’ Big cities, especially on the coasts, are the beneficiaries of this provincial bigotry.
grandpa john
@MosesZD: people who had a factual bent and followed the polling and polling aggregations and sites like 538 and Princeton Consortium instead of following their “guts” knew all the time that this election was never winnable for R/R
Suffern ACE
@Mark S.: Honestly, I think that the saddest thing about that – besides the fact that these are elected state officials – is that they invited only Republican legislators to that little session. I mean, come on. If they think it’s a threat and they’re convinced that there’s a stalinist mind control going on, they shouldn’t keep that to themselves. Shouldn’t they hire some kind of deprogrammer to snap the Democrats out of their zombie-stupor?
Chris
@grandpa john:
Yep.
The thing I don’t understand is, I followed the polls not because they were telling me liberal things but because I wanted to have some idea of what was coming – if Romney was going to win, I wanted to have an inkling ahead of time so I wouldn’t be caught shell-shocked on election night and then flip a shit like they’ve been doing right now.
Guess that’s not how their brains work.
El Cid
Yes, but if you allow us Republicans to design the Presidential voting system each time so as to specifically benefit Republicans, then we will win, and any other way is clearly unfair and un-Constitutional, no matter what the Constitution may say.