If you really want to understand how to fix something, you first have to take a realistic look at what is wrong with it.

After the 2004 election, Howard Dean wondered how the Democrats would reconnect with men who flew Confederate flags and had guns in their pickup trucks.  They didn’t, but have since won two presidential elections.   After 2008, the GOP was filled with hand-wringing about connecting with minority voters, but it managed to win the greatest congressional swing election in generations in 2010.

In the wake of Obama’s re-election, there is a lot of hand-wringing going on in the GOP about making changes, but not enough clear-eyed assessments of exactly what went wrong and needs to be fixed.

There are three elements to any campaign: message, money and organization.  While money was obviously not a problem, attested to by the good Christmases the children of TV station owners and media consultants are about to have, our message and organization didn’t make the grade.

The decision was made to just focus on the economy to the exclusion of almost everything else, resulting in our philosophy not being effectively communicated and connected to the everyday lives of Americans.  read more »

AP / Stephen Morton

They stood in lines, sometimes for hours, to cast their ballot for a man whose leadership vision is to do more of the same. With a vengeance. Unabated by the shaky economy, these voters are younger, more ethnic and less religious than ever before, and according to exit polls, carry a grudge for the very rich.

Stunned at Mitt Romney’s butt whuppin,' conservatives are trying to figure out the meaning of it all; meanwhile Democrats are both giddy and cocky in their celebratory fervor. It is over, they say: 2012 marks the death of the Republican Party. For the 57 million Americans who voted for self-reliance over self-indulgence, the quick disposal of their values is a punch to the gut; in the course of a day traditionalists have been deemed culturally irrelevant.  read more »