Three days after the 2012 presidential election, and every news source has a campaign coroner performing an autopsy on the Romney loss. They are scrutinizing minutia looking for the clues, the missed signs that should have been seen before ballots were cast. Stories are published front and center that the Republican camp is shocked, stunned, even in denial that Barack Obama was re-elected with enough electoral daylight to dismiss any thought of recount as the folly of desperation.
But there's something different this time. There isn't the usual conciliatory platitudes. There is no, "Oh, well. We lost, better luck next time," acceptance of the outcome. No, Republicans are openly confused and completely unable to comprehend how they lost after being assured by their trusted sources that the election process was nothing more than a formality that guaranteed them the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The candidate himself even admits he was so confident he didn't even write a concession speech, and it showed by his 10 minutes of exhausted midnight mumbling.
Was this arrogance? Were these "trusted sources" looking at the wrong data? Did the GOP feel so entitled to the presidency they fooled themselves into believing false truths? Were there obvious signs that went ignored? All of the above, and more.
For years, conservatives have closed ranks, circling their political wagons against the onslaught of a reality they didn't want to face, not the least of which is the cultural transformation of America. (See earlier post "Failure to Recognize Change") Any myth repeated often enough becomes a truth.
The candidate's 47 percent speech gave clear indicators just how disconnected his perception is from reality. It showed him as an ivory tower CEO that has no idea what his workers do, then chastises them for being slackers. His later comment that he lost because Obama gave "gifts" to poor people makes abundantly clear the one-term gov has still not accepted he had anything to do with the outcome. This coming from the party that espouses the virtue of personal responsibility.
This election has brought the full weight of reality onto the Republican party shoulders all at once, and the smart ones are recognizing it. Over half of the American people symbolically busted down the door of that smokey room of old white guys and exposed the cabal's regurgitated propaganda for what it is. And, as a result, the media have reclaimed an investigative imperative to ask the embarrassing questions and get real answers. The party has painted itself into the extreme right corner, and is running out of excuses while America is running out of time. We have finally reached the tipping point.
The good news is this cold slap will finally give GOP leaders a reasonable alibi to leave their cloister and seek a reality that will let it shuffle cautiously to the left, with one eye on the tea party, the other on the 1 per centers whose deep pockets they depend on if they ever want to win a nation-wide contest.
Americans are not tea partiers, asians, gays, catholics, latinos, liberals, methodists, handicapped, white, entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, muslims, machinists, conservatives, or atheists. We are all of them. This seismic election has shaken the republican party into seeing this reality, giving us all hope that the common sense and compromise we all need in our little lives will again come to Washington.
