Election Day 2012 Losers

Election Day 2012 Losers November 7, 2012

Here are a few of the big losers from Election Day 2012:

The white evangelical religious right

“On multiple levels, Tuesday’s election results seemed to mark a dramatic rejection of the Christian right’s agenda.”

They represent a coalition in decline — white religious conservatives — while Obama has a more diverse one, made up of various religious and non-religious voters, whites, blacks, and Latinos.”

The Religious Right took a drubbing at the polls yesterday as voters rejected not only Mitt Romney but also some of the most extreme Republican candidates, even those in races that should have been easy Republican victories.”

The U.S. Catholic bishops

“From the bishops’ inflexible opposition to the Affordable Care Act, to the decision to file dozens of lawsuits in an election year against a rule the administration had already promised to change, to the several high profile partisan statements by bishops across the country, there can be no question that the Catholic bishops decided this year to cast their lot with a single party in a way that is genuinely new.”

Catholics … voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 50-48.”

Super-PAC donors

“Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, have been the two biggest individual donors of this election, handing candidates and super-PACS more than $53 million (that we know of), including $20 million to Restore our Future, the super-PAC created to put Mitt Romney in the White House.”

“Rove effectively told Adelson and other hyper-wealthy donors, ‘Give me your money and I’ll deliver the election results you want.’ The checks came. The victories didn’t.”

Prop. 32 backers spent more than $50 million.”

The Southern Strategy; divide-and-conquer politics; white resentment; Donald Trump

“These are the men who bet the farm on White Supremacy and lost big.” (See also.)

“Put simply, the Republican Party … will soon become a retirement community for aging conservatives. The party’s position on immigration is disastrous, and it is at odds with the party’s own values. … No party can win if it appeals only to white and older Americans.”

America is tired of discrimination, of exclusion, and of unthinking oppression — the belief that people have to live their lives according to someone else’s views rather than their own free will.”

The loser one! [sic] … We should have a revolution in this country!”

Voter suppression

“While in-person voter fraud is virtually non-existent, what is all too real is the GOP’s unconscionable effort to stop people with the wrong complexion from voting.”

Despite long lines, voter suppression laws and Republican efforts to discourage voting, President Obama won reelection last night.”

“They ‘purged the rolls.’ They passed nit-picking voter ID laws. … They sent letters to challenge the registrations of people who lived at the same address for half a century, claiming they thought it was a vacant lot. They sent poll-watchers to challenge random voters at the polls. … They restricted registration. Drove Acorn out of business. Arrested a high school teacher for registering her students. … They got caught dumping Democratic registrations, and forging signatures to get a Republican candidate on the ballot. They put up billboards threatening fraudulent voters with jail time. … They took away early voting. … Fewer polling places. Fewer machines. …”

Beltway Republican punditry, spiritual hunches

Submitted Without Comment

I’m just going to say bluntly, we were wrong. … Karl Rove, Michael Barone, Dick Morris, a whole group of us, frankly, misunderstood what was happening in the country.”

“According to Glenn Beck and David Barton, those who are ‘spiritually attuned’ were calling the race for Romney.”

Social Darwinism as health policy

“Now Obamacare is here to stay. Sure, a single illness won’t wipe out your life savings, but at what cost? A lower one! Now you’ll have to wait in line for hours for medical care instead of immediately not getting any.”

Patriarchy; gray-faced men with $2 haircuts

“Democrats scored decisive Senate wins in Missouri and Indiana after candidates supported by the tea party and evangelical Christians made controversial remarks on rape, pregnancy and abortion that appeared to cost them the support of more-moderate voters in their party.”

“Get people back to work and stop trying to control people through misogyny and other random American Taliban nonsense.”

“Mourdock and Akin lost because they each made the mistake of actually trying to explain an increasingly common position by Republican officer-holders, including Paul Ryan.”

“Bob Casey remains Pennsylvania’s senator, defeating Republican Tom Smith, who compared pregnancy from rape to having a child out of wedlock, with 58 percent of women’s votes. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat running for Senate in North Dakota, has a slight lead over Republican Rick Berg, who only supports abortion exceptions for the life of the mother and not for rape victims.”

Now let us honor Mr. Former Congressman Walsh with a montage.”

“This year’s ‘War on Women’ — the brutal attacks on Planned Parenthood, the assault on birth control (culiminating in the right’s vicious vilification of Sandra Fluke), the record numbers of abortion restrictions on abortion wending their way through the state legislatures (the most notorious of these being the ‘transvaginal probe’ laws), the rape-friendly comments by Akin, Mourdock, et al., the refusal of major Republican candidates to endorse even the mildest policies to promote gender equity (such as fair pay, via the Lily Ledbetter Act) — all of these phenomena helped clarify the stakes, and raised women’s consciousness about the dangers the Republican party poses to their freedom and their economic survival. Women came out to the polls in droves — this year, they represented fully 54 percent of the electorate.”

Talk-radio tea-party right wing

“Republican Rep. Allen West (FL), the bomb-throwing tea party darling elected during the 2010 tea party wave, was projected as defeated in a close race by Democrat Patrick Murphy.”

FreedomWorks, the group that had fomented, trained, and marshaled Tea Party activists to great effect in 2010, thought it would have reason to celebrate.”

Homophobia as effective electoral tool

“It was a historic night for supporters of marriage equality, where advocates are headed for success in four of four ballot measures.”

“The effort to recall Troy Mayor Janice Daniels officially passed early Wednesday morning.”

Franklin Graham

“[The Grahams] are feeding the bigotry of the racists under a cloak of Christian conservatism.”

“When ‘the greatest proclaimer of the gospel in the last century,’ as one Southern Baptist called Graham, embraced Mormonism last [month], he confirmed conservative evangelicals’ worst fears about the 2012 election.”

The War on Drugs

Marijuana legalization referenda won big in Colorado (with 54.5 percent supporting at last tally) and Washington (55.4 percent). … Massachusetts, which has already decriminalized recreational use of marijuana, passed an initiative fully legalizing medical use.”

“It’s no longer risky for the political class to get worked up about standing in support of marijuana legalization because the trends at this point are obvious.”

Mitt Romney

“And then he was gone, as vague and evanescent a figure as he always was, a strange and out-of-focus politician who surrounded himself with a baffling opacity that, within six months, I predict we will barely remember his campaign at all.”


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