Tuesday’s election was the inevitable result of a series of bad moves on behalf of the Republican Party (GOP). Their first mistake was how they nominated Romney. Instead of following the rules and procedures created and voted on at the Republican National Convention (RNC) the GOP decided to pull out all of the stops and actually cheat to ensure Romney’s nomination. Cheating at the RNC wasn’t even necessary since the GOP cheated in several states to ensure Romney had enough delegates to win the nomination. What the GOP’s complete disregard for their own rules did was disenfranchise Ron Paul’s supporters, which effectively turned them against the GOP. Paul’s supporters aren’t a majority within the GOP but they are a large enough voting block that pissing them off was not going to end well.
After giving Romney and his vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan the nomination on a silver platter the GOP failed to control either candidate. Both politicians made performed publicity stunts that ended up making them look bad in the public’s eye. There was also the fact that the Republican base was adamant about repealing Obamacare, which Romney failed to promise. When you fail to promise your voter base what they want they’re not going to be inclined to come out and support you. The GOP lost the presidential race because they nominated a guy that their own base didn’t like. You can’t expect to win an election by nominating a guy your own party members hate.
Problems didn’t stop for the GOP at the presidential race. Many of their endorsed candidates made extremely stupid public statements. Between Todd Akin’s claim that women seldom become pregnant from “legitimate” rape to Jon Hubbad and Loy Mauch’s defense of slavery to Richard Mourdock’s claim that pregnancies resulting from rape are a gift from God to Charles Fuqua’s advocacy of the death penalty for unruly children the Democratic Party had a lot of ammunition to use against the GOP. How did the GOP expect to win any major elections when a notable number of their endorsed candidates were running around the country spouting off things that were extremely offensive to a good number of people?
The GOP’s stupidity didn’t wasn’t restricted to the national level. Here in Minnesota the state GOP was hard at working sowing the seeds of their own defeat. Knowing that most people only show up to the polls for the presidential election and that their presidential candidate wasn’t going to fire up their voting base they took a gamble. Two constitutional amendments were put forward by the GOP controlled legislative body. One amendment would have implemented voter ID requirements in Minnesota while the other one would have made gay marriages more illegal. Both amendments were a ploy to get voters to the voting booths and it backfired. The state Democratic Party was able to use the amendments to fire up their voting base. In addition to the amendments the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization within the GOP that claims to support gay rights, stabbed the gay community in the back. I’m sure that encouraged members of the gay community that were in the Log Cabin Republicans to vote for Democratic candidates. With so many Democratic voters at the polls the state GOP got slaughtered.
I also want to take a moment to address the Senate race. Klobuchar was up for reelection and the GOP fielded Kurt Bills against her. Kurt Bills claimed to be a liberty candidate, a claim that was proven to be false when he switched his presidential endorsement from Ron Paul to Mitt Romney. Not satisfied that switching his endorsement would piss off enough liberty voters within the Republican Party Bills also made a public statement against all third-party voters. Minnesota’s liberty movement is fairly strong so alienating them can be costly, especially when the state is already strongly Democratic to begin with.
Tuesday had a valable lesson for the GOP. Alienating as many people as possible is not a good political strategy. Between a presidential candidate hated by the GOP’s voter base, endorsed candidates running around spouting offensive statements, and taking every opportunity to move against the gay community and their supporters the GOP sealed their fate. They got exactly what was coming to them. Frankly, after the RNC, I was hoping to see a little revenge during the election. I attended the Republican Party party in Bloomington, Minnesota just so I could watch the spirits of hardcore GOP supporters get crushed in real time. It felt good seeing what happened to my friends in the liberty movement happen to the neoconservatives. Vengeance was had by the liberty movement and all they had to do was stand by the sidelines and watch the GOP hang itself. To those of you who actively worked to surpress the liberty movement in the GOP I hope you enjoy the next four years because they are years of your making.