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VFR readers on the election
There have been so many entries on the election, and so many comments responding to them, as well as standalone comments, that to make things simpler, both for myself and for readers, I am posting most the comments that have arrived since this morning in this one thread.
Terry Morris writes:
Funny thing about democracy: Muslims in Muslim dominant countries democratically elect sharia-based governments; liberals in liberal dominant countries democratically elect totalitarian statist governments.
I sent a message out to all the “doubters” in my circle this morning, declaring that Obama did not “steal” the election. Rather, he wiped the floor with Romney because we live in a country dominated by leftist-communists whose preferred form of government is totalitarian statism; that this ain’t Kansas anymore, Toto; that “conservatives” who continue to hold to the idea that America is a “center-right” country are delusional; and that they had best prepare themselves for what is about to happen to them. leftism’s version of sharia is about to be unleashed.
Andrew B. writes:
Will you ever believe Rasmussen’s and Gallup’s polling again?
Obviously both were way off the mark, probably by about three percent.
Andrew B. writes:
Look at the returns down in the interior South and the mountain West. It is clear Romney won around 90 percent of the white vote in those states.
It is sad that their internal unity is not able to be extended to similar northern states. What a waste.
Henry S. writes:
I’m in a state of shock. I’m checking the—I don’t know what to call it, do you have a name for it?—pseudo-conservative, libertarian website, PJ Media, and I came across this, by pseudo-conservative Ron Radosh.
It occurred to me that the one good thing about these results is that it may destroy the careers of those mentioned in the second paragraph: “Fred Barnes, Peggy Noonan, Dick Morris, my PJM colleague Roger Kimball, George F. Will, Karl Rove, and Michael Barone … “
I’m not so naive as to think they will lose their jobs as talking heads, columnists, etc. But they have been exposed as fools and they will never live this debacle down. I should have listened to myself when I called Barone a hack.
Buck writes:
We’re all four years older than since Obama One, and even deeper into the weeds, so this is temporarily crushing my spirit. I’ll recover for the most part, but I honestly believe that I’m a changed man this morning. I made up my mind. A host of my personal relationship will change today, for good. Many of my casual but regular acquaintances end today. I was secretly harboring a hope, what I saw as a thin and final hope and which was actually animating me as the election approached; that a sufficient remnant of America remained. I’m done with that tiny bit of self-deception.
On a Maryland note; I was perusing VFR’s collection of entries on same-sex marriage. This one struck a cord. The sad, afraid and still irrational twenty-five year old homosexual male in that post was temporarily confused and so he felt hated in 2004, but, as it turns out, he was a young, albeit a perverted prophet.
I’m sure that today, he is happy and is feeling the love.
Timothy A. writes:
If the Republicans weren’t the stupid party, they would be actually be totally committed to the “voter suppression” that the evil party (Democrats) falsely accuse them of committing. Motor-voter, same-day registration, early voting, vote by mail, no-fault absentee voting, etc., have empowered the lazy, the uninformed, the illiterate, the disengaged to influence our state and national elections to a greater degree than they ever have in the past (you can draw your own conclusions about how the shifting demographics affect the size of this group). The unlimited spending on elections which the Republicans have also embraced allows government employee unions and liberals to “community organize” these people and herd them into voting for the correct (Democratic) candidate.
M. Jose writes:
I’m not certain that the Lucianne.com comment you posted is quite as in denial as you think.
I think that “illegal immigration” in his mind is equivalent to Latin American immigration, and if someone mentions how much legal immigration there is from Mexico, he probably would agree that it should be reduced. He isn’t using the right terms yet, but I think he knows what the real problem is.
Karl D. writes:
I have been going over the vote breakdown by county and was amazed at what I saw. In Ohio and Pennsylvania for example, Romney won almost every county except the ones with major cities. The same could be said for many other states as well. Look at Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and Michigan, for example. It seems that major cities are what elect presidents. I really see no other option but some form a secession if our Republic is to survive in any way, shape or form.
Gintas writes:
If you look at this map, you can see there are many states that are still unreconstructed. If these states were their own separate country, would you move there? I would try.
Henry S. writes:
I will be honest about my feelings. I am crushed and shellshocked.
There are many ways to parse this defeat but I hew to my model, Sane Core versus Fringe, although I was wrong in my reading of the reality of who would vote and in what numbers.
This NY Times exit poll data tells a lot. Take a look at the youth vote.
The age cohort 18-29 went heavily pro-Obama. He won narrowly amongst the 30-44 group. I am fairly sure that the younger the latter group, the more pro-Obama they voted.
What I don’t know is how the white 18-34 age cohort voted, but in my guts, I feel that they went for Obama.
Conservatives are clueless. They keep referencing Reagan, the 1980s…. have they been living in a root cellar since then? Do they not realize that the country has changed demographically since 1980? That in addition to the racial changes (which they ignore), an entire generation of white children has been born since 1980. That is 32 years ago, for goodness’ sake. They determined this election.
These “kids” were born into a country where divorce, homosexuality, very early sexual activity, rampant STDs, tattooing and other indicia of deviance, defeat and decline are normal, yes, normal. Fondly do I hope, and fervently do I pray, that some of them age out of the Fringe Crazy group and join the Sane Core, but I’m not sanguine about the prospects. As Ann Althouse approvingly quotes her son, Chris, yesterday night was the greatest night in the history of gay rights. For the first time ballot measures enabling same-sex marriage were approved by voters. An openly gay senator was elected in Wisconsin, an openly gay Congressman unseated an incumbent Republican in Orange County (NY), and of course, an openly pro-gay President was re-elected.
I cringed when I read that fool Stuart Schwartz” “Reagan 2.0” (“By the end of the week, a thankful nation will settle down to anticipate the hope and change that will accrue from the presidency of a Ronald Reagan for a new generation: Mitt Romney”), because it showed a complete ignorance of the reality of the society he lives in. Even if Romney had won, the U.S. would be bitterly divided and the left, enraged at their loss, would go on a cultural rampage, and initiate a blizzard of litigation to advance their cause. What accounts for such idiocy in consistently employed clueless conservative writers?
LA replies:
Answer: They are keeping their world alive. If they admit that the left has taken over America, then their entire belief system, loyalty, and identity is finished.
James N. writes:
The last word:
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
LA replies:
Fine. But do you think that the powers that be will leave you the freedom and the means (including your wealth) to cultivate your garden?
Andrew B. writes:
1980 election had an 88 percent white electorate.
So did 1992.
Then the flood.
Credit the 1986 Amnesty and 1990 Immigration Act.
[Demographic trend table upload]
Kathlene M. writes:
If the 2012 voter numbers hold true, then here is a theory proposed by Ron Holland at Zero Hedge:
… the GOP leadership antagonized the 10 percent of the Republican Party electorate who supported Ron Paul for President … While some voted for Romney, a few—as the returns show—voted third-party and many like me just sat home on election day disgusted at the entire political charade. Romney lost because he needed a majority of this 10 percent to win….
Peter Brimelow notes at Vdare that Romney didn’t get more than 59 percent of the white vote. In comparison, the Congressional GOP received 60 percent of the white vote in 2010. Recall that, during the primaries, the Romney supporters (including Ann Coulter and Jennifer Rubin) were snarkily insulting those conservatives who supported other Republican candidates. Romney may have had many good qualities, but based on Holland’s remark above, it seems that the GOP leadership and Romney’s advisers didn’t help his cause and in fact may have alienated some potential voters.
Amazingly if at least three million more voters had voted for Romney, Romney may have been president since 10 million Obama voters didn’t even bother to vote for Obama this year.
Of course another possibility is that Republican votes were undercounted or lost, but is that a realistic scenario on a national scale?
BD writes:
Yes, America is lost, but it has been on the losing side for decades. Now the slide will accelerate. I’m disappointed but not really surprised.
I’m a Baby Boomer, and ,I’ve done very well for most of my life under the old system, which is now vanishing. Clearly the upcoming generations will have a much tougher time of it than we had. My question is this—what advice would you offer to a bright, ambitious young American ? Is it better to remain in this country? If so, what actions would be appropriate to improve one’s lot amid such deterioration? Would emigration be a better option? If so, to where?
I’ve taken to reading your excellent blog on a daily basis, and I really enjoy it.
LA replies:
I don’t have answers for you right off. These are the things that need to be figured out in light of the decisive historical disaster that has just occurred.
Timothy A. writes:
Would it be an exaggeration to suggest that the position of the Republican Party following the election of 2012 is similar to that of the Federalist Party following the election of 1812? In that election, DeWitt Clinton and the Federalists lost the popular vote to James Madison and the Democratic-Republicans 50.4 percent to 47.6 percent, somewhat similar to yesterday’s popular vote figures. The War of 1812 accelerated the rapid decline of the relevance of the Federalists, and in 1816 James Monroe defeated the Federalist candidate for President, winning more than two-thirds of the popular vote. The Federalist Party then collapsed, leaving the United States with effectively a one-party government under the Democratic-Republican Party, which in later elections split into different parties. One of the parties emerged as the Democratic Party in 1828, under which Andrew Jackson won the presidency.
Projecting the analogy into the future, the Democrats win a crushing victory in 2016, leading to the collapse of the Republican Party, a Democrat runs unopposed for president in 2020, and 2024 sees the Democrats splinter into competing factions—blacks, Hispanics, Government workers, etc.
Kevin V. writes:
(Link: http://theconservativekitchentable.blogspot.com/2012/11/okay-now-what.html )
Okay, Now What?
Election Night was intensely painful for me. It is one thing to know in advance what will happen, it is another thing altogether to watch it unfold. As I received confirmation after confirmation that the long-awaited demographic turn in the road had definitively arrived, I found myself fighting against realizing exactly what that means, in all its likely effects.
First, what happened last night?
What happened is the arrival to determinative status of America’s Latino population, which was able to overrule the most solid European-American block vote in the modern era. Today, the New York Times set forth the results of its state-by-state exit polling, including results by ethnicity. It shows the following results as averages for ALL STATES:
White 59 percent Romney black 93 percent Obama Latino 71 percent Obama Asian 73 percent Obama
This finding provides solid proof that the American electorate has functionally broken down into the “White Party” and the “Non-White Party,” although in all cases except with blacks there are minor numbers in each block voting differently. Even if you refuse to believe this, despite all evidence, despite the fact that ALL of these racial groups save White are explicitly organized openly on the basis of race and ethnicity, even if you feel strongly that these votes are not primarily motivated by racial interest but by a rational weighing of the national interest, the result is the same: in the United States of America, European-American Whites’ decisions about leadership and policy are minority views.
right-wing dissenters have been saying this was coming for years, but to say it out loud was to be called a racist. Of course, now that the long-awaited tipping point has arrived, it suddenly can be spoken aloud with glowing, slobbering praise. Thus, today’s San Francisco Chronicle:
“A demographic tidal wave became a Democratic tidal wave as President Obama won a tight but decisive re-election victory Tuesday with the help of record-breaking support from Hispanic voters, massive turnout from African Americans and continuing enthusiasm from young Americans.
“Although Republican nominee Mitt Romney won a larger share of the white vote than any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan scored a landslide re-election victory in 1984, the former Massachusetts governor ended up a loser at the polls because of the racial, ethnic and generational changes that have altered the U.S. electoral landscape.”
NOW they tell us. Did. Not. See. That. Coming.
Okay, it’s a done deal. So, second, now what?
The level of unease and distress that will now accompany White political discourse, while a significant development, is not enough yet to overturn decades of ideological indoctrination. Expect the Republican Party to pander even more to non-Whites in an attempt to become competitive again. A non-entity with a Latino name, like Senator Rubio, will probably be the next hapless sacrifice.
By the next Presidential election, Texas will occupy the slot California now does: so solid Blue that there is no point of any campaigning there and unspoken of even though it provides a huge number of electoral votes.
And quietly at first, but picking up steam as European-Americans are tax farmed, subject to capital controls, surveilled overseas for possible asset-hiding, as crime creeps back up, as everything seems to begin to crumble, literally and figuratively, as the government becomes even more openly corrupt as it is today, as more and more men realize the ballot box is no answer, well….
Well, just look at the election-night map: the second crisis of secession is coming.
Randy writes:
In the end, the impact of mass Third World immigration is the result, not the cause. Whites, more accurately, the WASP, willingly gave up their majority status because they no longer believed in God, truth, themselves, or the Judeo-Christian civilization that they inherited. They just either let it happen out of apathy or actively supported it-as they did last night.
Daniel S. writes:
Mark Steyn writes today:
A lot of the telly chatter is about how Republicans don’t get the shifting demographics: America is becoming more of a “brown country,” as Kirsten Powers put it on Fox. But New Hampshire is overwhelmingly white—and the GOP still blew it. The fact is a lot of pasty, Caucasian, non-immigrant Americans have also “shifted,” and are very comfortable with Big Government, entitlements, micro-regulation, Obamacare and all the rest—and not much concerned with how or if it’s paid for.
I think him wrong to pass by the browning of America as a major factor behind Obama’s victory, but he does touch upon an important fact: a large number of white Americans openly and positively embrace left-wing statism, regardless of the fact that is ultimately against their ethnic group interests. He rightly observes that Americans seemingly want to “go off the cliff,” which fits with my previous comments about Americans will to collective suicide.
N. writes:
Look closer at the Obama voting majority. A majority of voters now are women. And of those women voters, a majority are not married. This is another demographic change that conservatives have essentially ignored.
Single women, especially single women with one or more children, are a major component of the voting base for Obama. A woman who has one or more children, is either never married or divorced, is either going to vote for the Democrats, or not vote at all. She is unlikely to ever vote for the Republicans, who are the party she associates with such bad things as “Patriarchy.”
This is a success of feminism. To create an entire class of women who live in the illusion of total independence, yet who support the party of dependence from whence their benefits flow.
It is more than people from other countries since 1965, the demographic shift includes native born women who have been alienated from the historic American identity, and who will now support the Party of benefits.
The ruling coalition thus consists of: blacks, various Hispanics, single women (especially single mothers), upper class rich, academics, government employees, and the aging white liberals (Farm-Labor in the upper Midwest, auto union, etc.). The aging white liberals are of less and less importance as they are replaced by single women.
Welcome to the one-party state.
N. writes:
Here is what demographics means: when enough voters become sympathetic to criminals, for whatever reason, then laws must be weakened that punish lawbreakers.
By itself this is probably not significant, but it points to a culture change in California. A California that will look not like the Beach Boys and surfers, but more like Rio de Janero: rich families along the beautiful coast in gated communities, with slums kept a few miles away, and very few middle class families struggling in between.
LA replies:
The same has been said, and has been true, for several decades.
William H. writes:
The Republican Party establishment, hardheadedly, is wishing to repeat the errors that were just committed. They are talking about outdoing the Democrats at their game. Mike Huckabee and George Will, among others, are complaining that the Republican Party needs to reach out and be inclusive, because the party is too white. That inclusiveness can be manifested by producing immigration reform, which should be to the liking of the immigrant groups from Latin America. These great thinkers bemoan how the Democrats are attracting a much larger share of those groups than are the Republicans. I wonder how the Republicans can compete with the Democrats in that pursuit? It only means that the Republicans will need to give away more of the store than the Democrats. Instead of distinguishing themselves from the Democrats by presenting good conservative ideas, they are employing the Democrats’ own slogans. These Republicans are saying, if you can’t beat them, then join them. No lesson has been learned. Or maybe, the lessons learned are all the wrong ones. So, don’t be surprised to see Marco Rubio being groomed and presented as the savior of the Republican Party.
LA replies:
Of course the same has been urged on the Republicans since forever. And the Republican politicians are so brainless and clueless that it never occurs to them to say the following:
1. “How can you say that we are racist or anti-Hispanic, since we support America’s current and long-standing immigration policy which is admitting over a million immigrants per year into the country, 90 percent of them nonwhite, and most of them Hispanic? If we were racist, would we support an immigration policy that is turning us into a non-white country?”
It never occurs to them to say this, because they are completely incapable of recognizing racial reality on any level whatsoever.
2. “If it is the case that Hispanics demand that America legalize all Hispanic illegal aliens and make such support their condition for voting for a party, then it is not true that Hispanics are assimilating into America as loyal Americans. Rather, they are mainly interested in enlarging and empowering their own ethnic group at the expense of America and its rule of law. In that case why should their wishes be respected?”
Gintas writes:
Regarding your post, “How we have lost America and put ourselves under the power of leftists, aliens, and parasites who intend our harm”:
These are leftists, and the harm shall happen because there is hatred and ruthlessness in their hearts. It’s hard to imagine an American Gulag and ethnic cleansing squads, and liberals today would scoff at the idea of such things, but they don’t realize themselves how hardened already they are to a slaughter (I speak of abortion). What’s another slaughter to them, especially of their enemies? They will find it easier than they think. Here for example, is the despicable Tim Wise. I think he would like to cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war. Quotes:
“Let there be no mistake. I want conservatives crushed. Mercilessly destroyed as a political force. Forever. No mercy. Bury them. Now.”
“ATTENTION CONSERVATIVE WHITE PEOPLE: Yr nation has left the bullding … please follow as soon as is practicable for you … ”
In case you don’t know who Tim Wise is, he is a professional white hater.
Leonard K. writes:
Bloomberg Businessweek has posted an entry titled “California Voters: Please Tax Us.”
This headline is wrong: it should say “California Voters: Please Tax Them.” There are more voters in California who benefit from higher taxation of other people, than those who pay the higher taxes.
Karl D. writes:
Bob A. wrote:
“We are now tasked to protect our families. Each and every one of us, members of the tiny remnant, shall become tiny islands of sanity from which shall emanate concentrically to our families, kith and kin the knowledge we hold and know to be true.”
That reminds me of something I read in “Twilight of American Culture” by Morris Berman. Berman said that much like the small numbers of monks who lived on cold barren islands off the coast of Ireland, and kept alight the flame of knowledge and truth while the rest of the world was in darkness, so too must we be the new monks. While the rest of the world goes mad we must have small repositories of all that is good and true. A light in the dark. From small communities to a single family, to a single man living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I may sound a little melodramatic. But I think things are coming to that point.
Malcolm Pollack writes:
Just as Churchill saw so clearly in the many years leading to the Second World War—“the years that the locusts have eaten”—this too could have been avoided. In a sense one might even argue that the folly to which Churchill referred is the very same folly that has brought us to this awful pass, because had Nazism been extinguished in the womb there would have been no Holocaust, and so the horrified over-reaction that resulted—the social “hysteresis” that gave to the modern liberal, irreligious West its fundamental axiom of radical non-discrimination as the highest Good—might never have happened. Had that been so, there would have been more principled resistance to the insane excesses of the Sixties, and in particular to the fatal Immigration Act that holed our nation below the waterline.
Yes, defiance, if only for honor’s sake—but it is hard not to despair.
Mark Jaws writes:
Well, it has finally happened. A good portion of the GOP electorate finally realizes that Hispanization has impacted electoral politics in ways we now can all understand. Our mainstream GOP friends also know the MARKET will not allow the U.S. to continue to borrow and borrow and borrow to support the welfare underclass without consequence.
We are quickly approaching that time of reckoning when California goes the way of Greece. When that happens the federal government will step in and assume California’s debt. and when that happens the MARKET will punish the federal government, which in turn will force a nationwide adjustment of programs and expectations (see Europe’s present situation).
There will be demonstrations, there will probably be riots, there will be masses of the electorate extremely unhappy. However, you can’t fight math and you can’t ignore the MARKET forever. California and America will be forced into making the correct decisions for fiscal prudence.
It will be rough but America will probably survive, but it will also change with regard to the New Deal policies and the Great Society, except without the leftist-government bent.
The interesting question is not whether this will happen. That’s a near certainty. The interesting question is what will emerge ON THE OTHER SIDE. Luckily, Europe is enduring this process right now, so at least we’ll have some corollaries. And if we’re EXTREMELY lucky, the politicians will see the writing on the wall and make the prudent choices now so that the long-term consequences are less severe. But then again, America has never been known for long-term planning.
Michael D. writes:
I too never felt that Romney/Ryan would win. However, the thing that shocks me most is that neither one carried his home state. Ryan lost Wisconsin by a substantial margin and Romney lost all of his home states, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Hampshire. Some have said that perhaps this is best, another four years of Obama, so we can blame the collapse of our country on him and not Romney. I don’t buy it but the next years are going to be absolutely awful, with the browning of America sped up double time.
Clark Coleman writes:
I am not a fan of Kevin Williamson at NRO. Also, his perspective in this piece is not comprehensive but is limited to the common ground among conservative and libertarian ideas, which is typical. But I think there is some very good insight here. I had been troubled for months that Republicans were not aggressively pushing the outline of a health care reform plan to replace ObamaCare. Knowing the tendencies of the “independent/moderate” voter, whom I refer to as the Man in the Mushy Middle, this was a big mistake. The conservative base was well informed on the issues and would have been happy with nothing beyond repeal. Congressional Republicans had specific plans in mind, actual drafted legislation, that they planned to bring to the floor for debate. There were a couple of competing plans for bringing free market competition to medical care. But the average voter was certainly unaware of any positive plans. Only the promise of repeal was really advertised in the campaign. As stupid as voters are, we sometimes aim too low, as if talking about our policy proposals will be too wonkish, so let’s just focus on the anti-ObamaCare emotions. Some positive policy alternatives would have been useful and effective. But the political consultants will always advise that campaigns consist of nothing but sound bites and slogans and shallow advertising.
I also believe that Williamson has good insights on the auto bailout issue, and economic issues in general. He also touches on a concern I have had for more than a decade: The GOP silver bullet is always to talk about tax cuts, but when you succeed in getting tax rates down (e.g. with the Bush tax cuts), the issue becomes less pressing and has less impact with voters. Eventually, you need to sound more than one note in your symphony.
I will write more in a week or so when I have time. I think we need a comprehensive look at the failings of the GOP, from immigration to taxes to welfare reform to medical care reforms and so on, as well as looking at what we can do as individual conservatives.
Giuliano D. writes:
Nate Silver once again aces the polling game. In 2008 he called 49 out of 50 states. This time he got a perfect 50 out of 50. All hail the Jew, now on the throne at the New York Times. From now on, I’m no longer “Giuliano,” call me “Jules” or “Julie.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2012 07:58 PM | Send
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