Why romney lost

He criticised the president for breaking a promise to keep unemployment under 8 per cent. He never said such a thing. In the last week of the contest, campaigning in Ohio, the Republican hopeful suggested a local car maker was planning to shift production to China.

The company boss, in a fairly unusual intervention in a presidential election, said the claim was false. In the final few days of the election, the row badly damaged a candidate who desperately needed success in Ohio. Lost women: The gender gap in the election was significant. Romney hammered on about the poor economy, but during the final weeks of campaigning, things started to look a little better.

That let women concentrate on social issues such as reproductive care, healthcare and education. Women simply trusted Obama more on these key issues. He lost because he is a rich man who ran during rough economic times pledging to give tax breaks to other rich men. He lost because he didn't turn over his tax receipts.

He lost because he is a Mormon. He lost because of Barack Obama. He lost because of Hurricane Sandy. May I suggest instead a simple, elegant overriding theory on why we won't have a Romney Administration in ?

No serious political party in America -- no legitimate party in any viable democracy -- can win an election by suppressing votes. So long as the Republican Party endorses and enacts voting laws designed to make it harder for registered voters to vote, so long as Republican officials like Ohio's Jon Husted contort themselves to interpret those laws in a restrictive fashion, the Republicans will continue to play a loser's game.

That's my theory, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. Having covered for the past two years the voting rights front in this epic election cycle, I have come to believe that the Republicans will begin to win presidential elections again only when they start competing for votes with the substance of their ideas.

Instead of legislating on the theory that some people are too poor or too old or too lazy to vote, and for all their talk about freedom and the Tea Party, they should try to find ways to encourage the franchise in America, to nurture and protect it. But I don't want to talk about the losers. There will be plenty of time for that. I want to talk instead about the winners of the election of They aren't just the returning members of Congress and the president and his cabinet.

They aren't just the donors and functionaries who helped fund and operate the massively expensive reelection campaign. They are, to cite just one example, the tens of thousands of citizens all over the country who fought back against the greatest threat to civil rights since the s. He no longer leads the Republican party, if he ever did. He lost, and though he lost well, he will quickly be pushed aside.

All the same, GOP manager and strategists would do well to take stock of his legacy. The big lesson for Republicans from this election is that extremism does not pay. Obamaland is where the decent, hard-working open-minded middle lives. There are no signs, yet at least, that Republicans are ready to adjust to the change.

A more likely reaction, like that of Britain's Benn-ite left during the Thatcher era, is to lurch ever closer to the political edge in pursuit of political purity and truth. The aftermath produced a striking example of such thinking, from Keith Koffler, in the White House Dossier blog :.

This sort of un-magical thinking spells political oblivion. Unless Republicans quickly regain perspective and balance, the abyss beckons. This article is more than 9 years old. Simon Tisdall. The Tea Party zealots, homophobes and misogynists hijacked Romney's campaign — and threaten the Republican party's future. The aftermath produced a striking example of such thinking, from Keith Koffler, in the White House Dossier blog : "The re-election of President Obama is a catastrophe for conservatives that will set the United States on a track from which it will be difficult to derail.

But the momentum slowed weeks later as the devastating cyclone Sandy blew the campaign off course and allowed Obama to project leadership at the head of a multi-state disaster response. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation.

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