The GOP Got Punk’d

It’s over.

So far, I have seen the media, libertarians and independent voters, fraud, and liberal thuggery blamed for the GOP loss last night. None of these, individually or collectively, is to blame for the fact that Obama was re-elected. The blame lies in our own inability to combat the culture of dependency and present a vision that combats the plays on fear that liberals use to win support from the average voter.

Women and Hispanic voters came out big for Obama. They came out despite Obama’s broken promises on immigration reform and despite his own White House employment gender disparity. Why? Because his very effective campaign of fear convinced them that the GOP fully intended to deport every immigrant and tear apart families and to summarily shove women barefoot into the kitchen, pregnant with rapist spawn. We have done nothing to give them any reason to think differently. Political campaigns, at any level, are no place to espouse personal ideology that will not be entertained in policy. As much as I cannot stand liberal ideology, suggesting legislating of morality is never going to sit well with a majority of Americans.

The right, collectively, allowed an out-of-touch group of political elites hand pick a nominee that didn’t represent anyone except themselves. While I truly believe that Mitt Romney is an excellent businessman, a great man, and loves America, he never represented the mainstream right. His nomination was exemplary of everything that is wrong with the GOP today. He ran his campaign as the personification of everything that the left was demonizing. There was nothing wrong with Mitt’s business dealings in Bain or his religious ideology, except that they are the very things that the left uses in terrifying liberals into entitlement submission.

If the right want to win, from State offices to the Presidency, it is time they came to grips with the fact that their current and proposed representatives are more RINO than Republican. The GOP says it is the party of smaller government and less spending. Nothing in Romney’s five point plan indicated either of those pieces of the Grand Old Party’s platform. The cheerleaders who jumped on the Romney Express to failure endorsed a candidate contrary to everything that they fought for in the last four years. Romney was not a moderate in the GOP party… he IS the GOP party in it’s current state. You want the GOP to have the confidence of the majority? Hold them to their platform, and stop accepting everything they shove down your throats.

I listened to Romney debate. I read Romney’s speeches. I know his governing record. The left did, too. Did you? I heard three things in his Five Point Plan: Hope and change, more spending, more government. And, as far as the left was concerned, every time Romney or Ryan said “Five Point Plan”, they may as well have been saying “Nine. Nine. Nine”

Can we do this right, this time? In the next four years, can we make the GOP the party of smaller government? Can we get them to put up candidates who can articulate the message of individual responsibility and personal liberty without invoking images of midnight raids to deport anyone with brown skin or a raped victim forced to give birth to her attacker’s child? Can we use pop culture our advantage by encouraging film, music, and entertainment that espouses family values and responsibility? Can we stop making excuses as to why we have failed to make our own message appealing? Can we?

Disagree? Agree? Want to hear more? Join me tomorrow night, at 10pm EST on In Deep to start on the road to winning between now and 2016.