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 »

You can almost hear the goose stepping coming up the street. The reelection of Barack Obama is less than two weeks old and already his acolytes are wasting no time marching the losers to their demographic graves. Beaver Cleaver is doomed; Opie and Donna Reed are right behind.  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 »

With Election Day now less than a week away, just where do things stand on the most important election in our lifetimes?

In short, I think “good” is the right answer.  Of course anytime you make that sort of statement, you’re almost always looking around for some wood to knock on, but given that, let’s take a look at where things stand and then make some predictions for posterity.

Obama’s strategy has been neutralized:

Like any other type of campaign, political campaigns begin with a strategy which answers the question “how are you going to win”.  In Obama’s case, given that he couldn’t campaign on a record of success, the answer was to convince the country that Romney was the boogeyman.  Obama’s campaign spent over a quarter of a billion dollars this summer throwing everything but the kitchen-sink at Romney in an attempt to convince voters of what a bad guy he was. 

The potential problem with any strategy is that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  There are opponents, and if they do their job they will try to undermine your strategy.  It only took Romney ninety minutes in front of seventy million people to render Obama’s strategy worthless, (meaning the biggest beneficiaries of Obama’s strategy were TV station owners).  read more »

An astute political observer by the name of Machiavelli once said that “Anyone wishing to see what is to be must consider what has been”.  Given that recent polls have shown the race for President to be essentially tied, a look at the “tale of the tape” from a current and historical perspective is in order.

The Economy:

No president since World War II has won re-election with an unemployment rate above 7.2%.  The current rate is 8.3%, and has been above 8% for forty-two straight months.  The economy is growing at an annual rate of just 1.5%, and the only president in recent years to run for re-election with a worse growth rate was Jimmy Carter.

The Consumer Confidence level is currently about 60%, which is historically (and electorally) awful, since it was 65% when Carter got clobbered by Reagan in 1980.

According to the Rasmussen Poll, a majority of Americans (54%) think that the economy and their own finances (52%) are getting worse.  Only 40% believe that things will be any better five years from now, and that number is down to 35% among business owners who recently found out that Obama thinks that they didn’t build their own businesses.

The last two times that the economy dominated the election like it does today was in 1992 and 1980, which weren’t good years for incumbents.

Job Approval:  read more »

So far there’s not a whit of evidence that Mitt Romney’s “gaffes” in inadvertently referencing his personal wealth at campaign appearances and debates have cost him a single vote in the 2012 presidential election.

We hear from mainstream pundits and wire service reporters—most of whom wouldn’t dream of voting for a conservative but are terrified that Romney will be the GOP nominee—how Romney’s horrifying Freudian slips are bound to alienate undecided voters, Reagan Democrats, and moderate Republicans.

Romneys’ unspeakable comments have: extolled voluntary contracts in the free market (“I like being able to fire people… if someone doesn’t give me the good service that I need”), affirmed the social safety net (“I’m not concerned about the very poor—we have a safety net”), challenged candidate Rick Perry on a falsehood (“$10,000 bet?”), and expressed his support for the Detroit auto industry (“Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs”).  These forbidden lines have supposedly frightened off otherwise open-minded voters and driven them straight into the comforting arms of everyman Obama.  Good citizens everywhere were supposedly all set to pull the lever for Romney, but are now running screaming at the thought of a president who has achieved phenomenal business success in the private sector and isn’t ashamed of it.  read more »

 We're launching a new online application for Facebook to make it easy to identify and "roundup" other fellow conservatives.

It's called "Conservative Roundup" - and all that's missing is you!

(Click here and start rounding up fellow conservatives right now!)

Conservative Roundup makes it easy for you to identify fellow conservatives, and organize and collaborate in support of conservative principles.

You can:
 read more »

In 2008, Mitt Romney bested John McCain in both the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses by huge margins, and was part of a three-way split in Missouri.  Just a week ago he lost all three.  So what’s different in 2012?

The fundamental difference between the current race for the Republican nomination and the 2008 version is that Romney is viewed as the “least conservative” of the field – vs. 2008, when McCain held (or at least shared) that title.  The result?  Romney has had a harder time attracting conservatives, and many of them have spent the better part of the last year trying on other candidates.

Given Santorum’s recent wins, and his new status atop some national GOP polls, it should be a validation of his strategy to stay focused on conservative issues.  For Romney and Gingrich, it should remind them that they need to lay off of attacking each other and get back to the issues.  Everyone knows that both of them (and a good many of their supporters) think that the other is suspect.  Some think both of them are.  Some even have suspicions about Santorum.  But, baring divine intervention, one of them will be the Republican nominee, and as they say in NASCAR, “you’ve got to run with what you brought to the track”.  read more »

We're launching a new online game/application for Facebook to make it easy for conservatives to help identify and "roundup" other fellow conservatives.  It's called "Conservative Roundup" - and we need your help to test it out!

Just CLICK HERE and it will take you straight to the app.  Click the login button and give permission to Facebook and you're in!  Then help us kick the tires.

As I mentioned, it's a "beta test" for version 1.0.  Our design team is making improvements to it each evening, and will continue to do so as you help us identify any needed fixes, or any good suggestions you may have for useful improvements that could be made.

We'll update you on the progress as we go, but in the meantime...

CLICK HERE and help us test!

Given that we all usually have room for improvement in our lives, resolutions are always a good idea.  They are even more important when there is so much to be gained (or lost) for not bettering ourselves.  So it is with this coming election year for conservatives.

With that in mind, the following resolutions are offered up for conservatives everywhere in 2012:

#1) Don't be a cannibal.  No matter who you are for in any given race, don’t “go cannibal” on fellow conservatives over who they support.  You might win for the moment, but you’ll lose productive relationships in the long run.

As for the presidential race, whoever the Republican nominee is, he will not be perfect and will probably be "high maintenance" from a policy standpoint.  But as a movement, conservatives are much better prepared to deal with such politicians than in years past.  And remember, ANY Republican president, no matter how squishy they may be, will have absolutely no choice whatsoever but to sign a bill repealing Obamacare.  To borrow a phrase, keep your eyes on the prize.  read more »