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The weaker candidate
Why John McCain and Republicans lost
By Matt Capristo
There is no cohesive platform, and Republicans don't have a clue what they stand for anymore.
A lot has already been said on why Republicans lost this election. Even more has been said about how Senator Obama won. Unfortunately, listening to the aftermath only conservative talk show host Glenn Beck has touched on the real issue of why John McCain lost.
He was a weak candidate.
John McCain was a weak candidate, and it still astounds me that he ever won the nomination. I still refuse to call him the Republican candidate because he wasn't. John McCain was not the Republican candidate; he was the opposition candidate.
Especially later in the campaign you couldn't tell what John McCain was for. You knew he was against Obama's policies and rightfully so. I still don't believe that millions of voters know what their getting with an Obama presidency, but that is an argument others will make. My point is that John McCain didn't make the case to vote for him, only the reason to vote against Obama. No matter how misguided or dangerous I think Obama's ideas are, they are ideas, and the American people resonate with ideas.
John McCain also handled the campaign horribly. Even the greatest single achievement in the campaign of naming Sarah Palin as vice-president was bollixed. It was Sarah Palin who gave hope to the ticket. It was Sarah Palin who gave hope to millions of people and energized the Republican base, not John McCain. McCain handling and muzzling the pit bull did no favors to the ticket. Sarah Palin is a true conservative with true conservative ideas. However in true vice-presidential fashion she was told to toe the ticket line and be in lock-step with John McCain. She was forced to support policies that she didn't necessarily approve of and when she "stepped out of line" she was attacked by McCain staffers. McCain largely left her out to dry when the media unleashed a brutal and unfair personal assault on Sarah Palin.
The thing that upsets me the most, though, is McCain's concession speech. I didn't see or hear what he had to say. I heard it was a great speech. Personally, I couldn't care less what he had to say. McCain conceded the election at 10:21 p.m. CST. At this time, there were still states with the polls open and people going out to vote.
Conceding before the election was over was the most disgusting act of disrespect by a candidate I can remember. Now, you can say that the election was already over when Obama reached the 270-electoral-vote threshold. This is true, but people were still voting. McCain conceded the election before Sarah Palin's vote was even counted. It would not have made a difference, Obama still would have won the election, but out of respect for the voters and those who gave months of their life working to get John McCain elected deserved to have John McCain wait another hour and a half until the final poll closes and then call Obama to concede.
The Republican Party is in trouble. Despite the initial popularity of Sarah Palin, after months of being dragged through the mud there is no real leader of the Republican Party. There is no cohesive platform, and Republicans don't have a clue what they stand for anymore.
But don't listen to the pundits on what Republicans need to do. The talking heads even on Fox News said that we may be a center-left nation now; they’re wrong. Karl Rove says we need to wait and see what Obama and congressional Democrats do and then figure out a way to block, he's wrong. The only person I've heard get it right was our very own Congressman Paul Ryan. You can't win elections by playing defense, you can't regain the trust of the American people by simply blocking legislation and by now everybody knows you can't win an election by simply being against something. Paul Ryan had it right. You need to go out on the offensive. America is a center-right country, and we do have the better ideas more in line with the majority of the American people. We just don't have anybody who can articulate those ideas in a way that resounds with the American public. Only by going back to the people and explaining to them why our ideas are better can we truly begin the reconstruction of the Republican Party.
We lost the election. We lost in a bad way, but there is no reason why we can't come back. In the next two years we need to find a voice collectively. We need to find a new platform that is relevant to, counter to and better than the change that President Elect Obama promises to bring. We need to stay true to our roots and we need a platform that promotes true conservative ideals. We need to fight for the very soul of our country.
There are 729 days left until the mid-term elections. We have work to do. We need to identify those Republicans who do promote conservative ideals and will not simply follow with Democrats because it will be politically convenient or they believe in a shift in the electorate to slightly left of center. We need to have a conservative revolution within the party to get real conservatives with real conservative ideas to represent us, before we can have another conservative revolution on the state and national level.
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