GOP State of Confusion

We lose because we choose liberals like Romney.
~ comment by SameOlBS on Daily Caller

I don't think the Republican Party schooled their candidates very well or supported their candidates very well.
. . . We had a lot of candidates quite frankly that did dumb things out there.
~ Dick Armey on CBS News

Republicans have lost a majority of the popular vote in five out of the last six elections. There’s a message there. The Republicans need a new business model, and a new product for the new century. It’s not just a problem of one candidate or one campaign.
~ GOP Pollster Whit Ayres

I simply want to highlight a temptation all of us in politics face, which is to assume that because we hold a certain view, a majority of the public does, too. Those who hold this mindset usually fall back on an explanation that goes something like this: Republican politicians simply didn’t make sufficiently forceful and articulate arguments. If they had, the public would flock to our side since, after all, the arguments are all on our side.
The people who take comfort in this explanation usually reside in the “we have a communications problem” school. They lament the fact that we don’t have another Ronald Reagan to articulate conservatism and if we did, all would be right with the world once more.
. . . it’s unwise to pin one’s hopes on producing, election after election, a candidate who possesses a once-in-a-lifetime set of skills.
~ Peter Wehner on Commentary

My own view is that conservatives should recommit themselves to federalism and states’ rights. The party of Lincoln should protect core civil rights, but beyond that, states and localities should be given as much freedom as they can handle. If California wants to become Sweden with better weather, let it. If Texas wants to become Singapore on the Rio Grande, great, go for it. And the same principle goes for cities and towns within those states.
~ Jonah Goldberg on National Review

My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites.
One of the groups with whom Romney did worst was female “low-information voters.” Those are women who don’t really follow politics, and vote based on a vague sense of who’s mean and who’s nice, who’s cool and who’s uncool.
Since, by definition, they don’t pay much attention to political news, they get this sense from what they do read. And for many, that’s traditional women’s magazines — Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, the Ladies Home Journal, etc. — and the newer women’s sites like YourTango, The Frisky, Yahoo! Shine, and the like.
. . . For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.
~ Glenn Harlan Reynolds on NY Post

There are just so many off-putting comments from the Republican party. It's crazy to me that they're still acting as if women are a niche market.
~ Sara Stevenson, single voter, quoted on Huffington Post

Viewed a certain way, the 2012 election can be seen as a gift to Republicans wrapped in ugly paper. The wrapping looked like a hostage note with a message scrawled in crayon: "We hate you." But inside was a gift, and the gift was time. The party was given the opportunity, when it is still strong, to hold the kind of fresh, open-the-windows debate it would have been forced to have in 2016 anyway, and in less favorable conditions.
. . . Organisms that survive a shock are often able to see their surroundings more acutely. The establishment, hardy self-seeking survivors that they are, already knew the party was in trouble. Now, importantly, the base does. Now local precinct leaders know. The tea party knows, Christian conservatives know. They're all reading the same data, the same polls.
. . . For the past 10 years the party has operated under an ethic of Questioning the Team Is Disloyal, Dissent Is Disloyal, as Is Criticism.
This has been a recipe not for peace but for disaster. Which is what we saw on Nov. 6.
~ Peggy Noonan on WSJ