So Now What?
By Greg L | 7 November 2012 | Prince William County | 43 Comments
If you’re a conservative in Prince William County, Tuesday’s election results are beyond disappointing. Obama wins on your turf by about 9 points, driven by a spectacular and pretty stealthy GOTV effort? Are you going to take this sitting down?
Here’s my question: what are you going to do now?
Maybe you made calls and knocked doors. Maybe you didn’t. Perhaps you talked to lots of friends, or maybe you just assumed they were going to vote with you and actually show up at the polls. Some did much, some did little, and the ones that did much might be wondering whether what they did made much difference.
Results won’t change unless we change. So what do we do differently going forward?
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The Romney ground game wasn’t good enough or smart enough. There is hope. Things could have been vastly improved. We just need to work harder and smarter.
How about we not hate brown people and not hate gays?
Just a thought.
PWC is blue now. It has turned.
Throw up!
Actually Obama’s policies are very hateful to brown people. Black Unemployment is destroying many lives.
The 47%+ have unfortunately spoken. Romney was right on when he made that comment. The tax paying people in this country are forever screwed!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/30/rnc-left-with-hoards-of-cash-but-little-time/
So what do we do differently going forward?
GOP had a fair amount of money. Looks like they spent too much money on media consultants and ads in northern Virginia and not enough on the ground game.
This has been covered before on this blog. In GOP losses in 2007 in Virginia we looked at the track record of some local political consultants. The political consultant industrial complex has been tilting to much to the media and not enough toward the ground game.
The Washington Times article hints at these problems and were asking questions.
What can you do? Allow me to suggest:
1) Tell the religious right to take a hike. Even the most cursory glance at history shows that NOTHING good ever comes of mixing religion and politics. Politics is concerned about the here and now, religion the hereafter. Government should protect your right to believe whatever you want, but those beliefs shouldn’t affect governance. Just because you believe in a moral code developed two millennia ago by cattle sacrificing primitives doesn’t mean you should force those views on everyone else.
2) If you think you have something interesting or intelligent to say about rape, just shut up. You don’t.
3) As said above, stop all this so-cleverly-disguised racist dog whistle blowing. White people are going to be a minority soon, so it really doesn’t behoove you to talk about “welfare queens” or “that element” or any of the other coded racist language. No, we can’t roll the clock back to Jim Crow days, I’m sorry. Give up on the racism.
4) Same goes for gays. You’ve already lost that one. Nobody, ever, has managed to come up with a single good argument against gay marriage. Not one. Nobody is going to make you gay marry, so just STFU on that one.
5) Embrace science. Stop trying to push creationism, and climate change denial, and other thoroughly discredited pseudoscience. Every day, science shows what it can do: cure diseases, speed information flow, predict weather, put robots on other planets. The cell phone in your pocket is a greater miracle that anything described in the Bible. You keep dumping on science and learning, and science and learning keep whupping you like a rented mule. People are noticing.
6) Push the small government thing. I mean really push it. You haven’t been. So far small government has just been code for “let’s stick it to poor folks by chopping welfare.” Meanwhile you shovel tax cuts to corporations like they’re going out of style, push for more government intrusion into our bedrooms, advocate for warrantless searches and illegal wiretapping and torture. Bush talked about small government and then vastly increased the size of government by creating DHS. See, here’s the thing. Liberals do dumb stuff. That soda ban in NYC or the ban on transfats? Stupid. But I can still buy a big soda or transfats somewhere. When republicans do dumb stuff, it completely outlaws something. You want to get rid of abortions, ostensibly because of “da widdle baybees,” but really because you’re stuck in a two-millennia old morality that frowns on recreational sex and you’re jealous of those of us who don’t follow those outdated ideas. Knock that off. If you don’t like abortions, don’t have them. If you don’t like Muslim churches, don’t go to them. If you don’t like sex on tv turn it off. If you don’t like gay marriage don’t gay marry. Stop forcing your delusions on the rest of us through government. Push the limited, responsible government thing.
7) Quit whining about taxes. You want to live in a society with a military and roads and bridges and regulations to make sure you food and water are safe, taxes are the price you pay. Stop trying to turn this country into Somalia (no social safety nets, nonexistent federal government, no health care, no taxes, all the guns you want, no burdensome environmental regulations). In other words, make the teahadis take a hike.
That’ll do for starters.
Or, you can run around for four more years crying, “WHAR BIRF CERTIFIKAT, WHAR?” and see where that gets you, since it worked so well last time.
H.L. Mencken reportedly said “People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”
To all the folks out there who believed the BHO line, his pious rhetoric, and did so in the face of horrible economic results, I hope you have a job a year from now in the middle of the second great economic collapse.
How about next time we put in a candidate we can truly believe in. We had to choose between Obama and Romney. Not much in the way of good choices.
“What to do”?
Admit that your party is on the wrong side of too many issues. The map won’t look better in 2016…
If the Republican Party doesn’t get its act together and start representing more people, I certainly hope you enjoy Hillary Clinton’s administration in 2016.
Can someone who voted for Obama (and voted based on information not race) please list all the things that Obama plans to accomplish going ‘forward’ so that we can keep an honest score for 2016. I’m tired of the BS and excuses as to why Obama didn’t do what he promised he would do to get elected the first time. You know like promising not to run if he couldn’t lower the deficit or unemployment or whatever it was. Those kind of important issues. I could give a rats a@@ about minor things.
Former Officer is dead on and I’ll have to admit that Blue Virginia is damn close to the mark on many counts.
Not that I have much room to complain as I sat on the sidelines but the RPV and PWC Committee efforts in PWC were an epic fail. NO ground game in the weeks prior to the election, NO presence at many of the polls on election day, NO signs for any GOP candidates (OK there were a few but most didn’t know where to get them and virtually nobody offered them).
The GOP got worked in PWC. The percentages by magisterial district indicate that the old model of relying on Brentsville and Gainesville just won’t work anymore, the Gainesville numbers (49.8% for Romney) are particularly distressing. The leadership, organization and model must change or we can write off next year’s statewide elections and will likely have a BOCS loaded with Principi and Jenkins types in three years.
Magisterial District
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney
Gary Johnson
Virgil Goode
Jill Stein
Write In
Romney %
Brentsville
11410
12063
199
41
30
30
50.7%
Coles
11699
11770
249
68
84
55
49.1%
Potomac
10407
6822
143
32
42
40
39%
Gainesville
11461
11696
188
46
39
42
49.8%
Occoquan
11844
8595
169
38
57
45
41.4%
Neabsco
13218
5128
128
67
47
34
27.5%
Woodbridge
12759
4582
113
31
31
28
26.10%
TOTAL
82798
60656
1189
323
330
274
41.6%
Our board will probably turn blue because the Republicans on it are caught in so many different scandals it’s ridiculous. I wonder how many folks looked at the shenanigans going amongst our Republican Supervisors and thought, “so THAT’s what a Republican looks like?”
If you want to make Prince William County Red in four years, start local. It’s time for local elected Republicans do do a better job of representing integrity in Government, fighting hard for lower taxes, fewer rules, and more empty offices (because they shut down things that Government shouldn’t be involved in to begin with).
Residents don’t have to look very far to get a very poor impression of the Republican Party.
Until the 1960s “what’s in it for me” generation (and the pied pipers that led them) die off, and a new generation re-learns (as a group) personal responsibility and grown-up attitudes, it will be a rare election that is not decided on the basis of which candidate is offering the most hand-outs and which party is affirming the largest number of aberrent behaviors.
The GOP needs to be a lot bolder about who it runs for candidates. Time and again it is proven that the cautious choice (Dole, McCain, etc.) doesn’t work. If your message involves calling people to stand up for themselves, take charge of their lives and be responsible adults, it really matters who delivers the message. (If all you are saying is “vote for me and you can have all you want” then Bozo the Clown is a fine candidate.) Several very dynamic and solid people were weeded out before Romney was settled upon. The GOP seems to cave whenever the media attack dogs home in on a rising star.
If you believe that the GOP is on the wrong side of too many issues, then go join the party that in your mind is on the right side. If the GOP becomes more like the Dems to win votes, it won’t work (people will go for the real thing over the imitator) and you really will wind up with a one-party system. A political party is not about winning elections and getting power as an end in itself. It’s about what kind of a society you want, and how you believe it should be governed (or not governed, as the case may be). The left knows this and when they get into power they impose their values on everyone, and then convince people that it was the people’s idea in the first place.
The GOP needs to clearly and consistently state and explain its principles (like limited government, restrained regulation, respect for the constitution and the rule of law, etc.) and it needs to groom and get behind really engaging personalities as candidates for office. The party needs to accept that the media is opposed to them (or at best neutral) and won’t help. The GOP needs to take its message directly to the people and educate them about this nation, the Constitution, and why it’s important to preserve, protect and defend that Constitution.
The Left will always have the easier job, appealing to comfort, ease, and often baser instincts. The GOP needs to try harder, take risks, practice what they preach and show that they believe the message. And the importance of inspiring candidates can’t be overstated.
Own your principles, clearly enunciate them, and find the right people to carry your standard.
Stop with extreme Tea Party crap. It doesn’t resonate and got us in this mess in the first place.
“Your turf” - i.e. “our turf”, Greg? How can it be “our turf” when Virginia went to the President?
It wasn’t the “extreme Tea Party” that got yesterday’s result. It was the co-opting and caricaturing of what the tea party represented in 2010 by the GOP establishment that got the result.What they, the Republican stablishment, missed about the Tea Party was that it is necessary to discredit your opponent’s narrative, just as it is necessary to offer a positive viable alternative. Romney did pretty well on the later and miserably on the former. Both on domestic and foreign policy Romney refused to tag the Obama record for what it is a man made disaster.
If you want to understand how the GOP got into the mess in the first place go back to 2005-2006 and search under Rove. No one can steal defeat out of the jaws of victory like Karl Rove.
@Christopher Cummings remark, “If you believe that the GOP is on the wrong side of too many issues, then go join the party that in your mind is on the right side.”
I think a lot of folks have already taken you up on that offer. If the Republican Party really doesn’t care what most of the people want, they deserve to continually be marginalized as irrelevant to the future of this Country.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Case-Polarized-Politics-Conservatism/dp/1594035784/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352302461&sr=8-1&keywords=jeffrey+bell
Blue Virginia read up on how social conservatives win elections as well.
I noticed many of the elected republicans in Prince William county didn’t really stop to thank any volunteers yesterday. They come strutting into parties like they have their own little social club and ignore the volunteers who help them win.
Pretty soon the GOP grassroots will vanish.
I do have high praise for the PWC county chairman who welcomed volunteers and was very polite and respectful.
Blue Virginia said on 7 Nov 2012 at 6:48 am:
Flag comment
What can you do? Allow me to suggest:
WOWWWWWWWW!
@Loan Arranger “I think a lot of folks have already taken you up on that offer. If the Republican Party really doesn’t care what most of the people want, they deserve to continually be marginalized as irrelevant to the future of this Country.”
Oh, so the key to relevance is to pander until you become Dem-lite? Doesn’t work.
Buy guns and LOTs of ammo.
Suggestion:
Retreat to the rural areas and disengage from ‘national’ politics and get involved locally. We need to start demanding that our state legislatures pass legislation that protects our freedoms from the leviathan gov’t in DC.
We need to stop looking to Washington to solve our problems
Gaius… Northern Virginia will pick the next Governor. I’m just guessing it won’t be Cuccinelli… we’ll be lucky if it’s Bolling… I’m guessing it will be Mark Warner.
You might want to leave the state and head to Montana for the lifestyle you seek. Virginia will never the same.
@ Badger
Sadly, I think you may be right. Although there seems to be some hope in Tennessee where Republicans won a SUPER majority in both houses of the legislature - and there is no income tax. They seem to be on the right track. Now they just need to think locally and protect themselves.
The point I am making is that we (even as conservatives) must stop thinking that all solutions emanate from Washington, DC and recapture the idea that our states are our homes. There are not enough of us anymore to engage the left, so we must disengage, protect ourselves and educate our children properly
Pure and simple, 3 million McCain voters sat out the election. Romney lost the popular vote by 2.7 million. The GOP didn’t turnout the number of voters we did for John Freakin’ McCain. Overall turnout nationally was down 10-13 million.
Why didn’t those 3 million McCain voters come out to vote? That is the question that should be asked.
Riley,
You don’t understand it’s all about micro-targeting voting districts. Didn’t you get the Rove guru memo. Why should getting more votes in a national election be the number one priority? I think Rove is still on Fox arguing that Romney hasn’t lost Ohio yet.
Obama Voters are gloating that we are now ruled by and must submit to Aliens, Perverts, and Parasites.
Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Hell No, but you are better off now than you will be four years from now.
Well, with the stock market doubling over Obama’s term, Bin Laden dead, and our troops coming home…yes, I’m much better off than 4 years ago.
What can we do? Well, you can follow the suggestions offered by Howard Galganov’s editorials (google Galganov’s plan). You leftists refuse to recognize and understand the ramifications of what you did on Nov 6, 2012.
Blue Virginia, the stock market doubled under Barry’s reign…but look at the DOW at closing on Nov 7th!!! That’s just the beginning.
Sure, Osama is dead….thanks to our brave US Navy Seal team! Too bad Barry turned his arrogant head when it came to saving our American Ambassador in Libya..
Oh, and BTW, you forgot to mention how gas prices have more than doubled under
Barry. Hell NO…I’m not better off after 4 years under Barry, and at the end of his next four years, you will be saying the same thing.
Gloat while you can, Blue. Your Marxist hero now has plenty of time to bring the whole house down…and you with it.
The next four years are going to be disastrous.
HOW MANY BUSINESSES HAVE ANNOUNCED CLOSINGS OR LAYOFFS SINCE OBAMA WON A SECOND TERM?
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/how-many-businesses-have-announced-closings-or-lay-offs-since-obama-won-a-second-term/
…the stock market is just barely near where it was when it crashed…Record 70.4 Million Enrolled in Medicaid: 1 Out of Every 5 Americans…
far fewer people working now than 4 yrs ago….more people on disability….more people collecting food stamps…more people with “free” gubmit phones….more hamburger jobs and fewer good jobs…more spending, debt and regulation…
gas doubled….food inflation….health care insurance skyrocketing…the world is a mess and the muslim brotherhood has taken over most of the middle east….
yeah….its just grand out there…
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/6125-proposed-regulations-and-notifications-posted-last-90-days-average-68-day
Well, those of you bitching that the Republicans had no “ground game,” let me ask you this: How the hell are you supposed to get a “ground game” when your supporters are WORKING?
The demonrats just get their ground game people off the welfare rolls.
And Blue Vagina’s got some gall commenting here at all, since she bans all conservatives from her site.
7 million just four years ago.
17 million households currently
How to Get the Government to Cover Your Cell Phone Bill(s)
Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don’t qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.
Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/02/08/how-to-get-the-government-to-cover-your-cell-phone-bills/#ixzz2BxdreTk5
http://usbacklash.org/obama-crony-socialism-obama-phone-giveaway-makes-obama-supporters-very-rich/
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Greg. You are irrelevant.
Anonymous (why don’t you give us your name?), if Greg is so irrelevant, then why
the hell are you on here?
Blue actually made a intelligent argument, somewhat.
although I don’t get the whole “don’t whine about taxes” thing. you should whine about taxes, we are taxed enough already and it’s going to get worse soon with Obamacare, fiscal cliff, etc..
and in case you have not heard, the stock market isn’t doing so well the week after the election.
ever looked at the interest on a standard savings account? I’ll save you the trouble, it sucks. 20-25 years ago it was decent.
if our tax money was actually being spent wisely then you may have an argument. it isn’t, so you don’t.
Well, Elvis, Blue Vagina, like most liberal, is a tricky little β!tȼh. Let me show you how:
“Quit whining about taxes. You want to live in a society with a military and roads and bridges and regulations to make sure you food and water are safe, taxes are the price you pay.”
You see, she brings up all the things that the U.S. government is supposed to do, but does not mention all of the spending on things it is NOT supposed to do. (And even most of the roads and bridges are the responsibility of the States, not the U.S. government.)
VA disability backlog doubles under Obama
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2012/11/12/va-disability-backlog-doubles-under-obama/
What am I gonna do? I’m gonna buy gold!! That is a sure bet!!! Cuz this nation is goin’ down le chytteur!!! Bush started the collapse:
1. he started 2 unjustified wars that drained our resources.
2. he welcomed illegal aliens. The inrush started during his presidency.
3. he doubled out national debt from $5 trill to $11 trill.
4. he passed the “Patriot Act”, one of the most ironically named acts of all time!
And Bush was a Republican!!! The Democracks are worse!!!
I don’t want “free” schooling. If I had to pay for my children’s schooling then Juan Valdez would have to pay as well, for his 13 kids, and he may rethink his desire to bust into the USA illegally. I don’t want “free” healthcare. I exercise, I eat right, and I don’t smoke! The only thing I expect our government to do is GUARD OUR BORDERS! Yet they won’t. They are too busy rolling out the red carpet for illegals.
With this philosophy in place ITS OVER FOR THIS NATION! Bet against it, and be GUARANTEED a net gain!! Its like shooting fish in a barrel, folks!!!