Mitt Romney was a highly qualified and articulate presidential candidate, but he lost to the incumbent, Barack Obama, whose first term record on economic and fiscal policies was both dismal and dangerous. Moreover, Barack Obama had pursued increasingly radical social policies antipathetic to American religious and cultural traditions. His foreign policies resulted in huge power gains for the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East, jeopardizing regional peace and the security of Israel. In addition, the President shows little regard for the Constitution or its limits on his authority and actions. Yet Romney lost because several million conservative Republicans, who normally vote, did not vote.
In retrospect, this could have been anticipated and overcome. Many conservatives had become disenchanted with George W. Bush and John McCain. In 2012, they were looking for a presidential candidate more in line with their thinking, not only on economic, fiscal, and national security issues, but also on Constitutional, cultural, and social policies. Many of these disenchanted, normally Republican-leaning voters stayed at home rather than vote for McCain in 2008, who along with Bush and Democrat Ted Kennedy had tried to push an amnesty for about 12 million illegal immigrants through Congress in 2006 and 2007. In addition, McCain frequently tried to ingratiate himself with the liberal mainstream media rather than paying any real attention to conservative concerns about jobs and a changing social environment in America, with which they were increasingly uncomfortable.
Some of them were also uneasy about Romney’s Mormon faith. A June 2011 Gallup poll of registered voters indicated that 22 percent of them were not comfortable voting for a Mormon. This response was more common among Democrats with 27 percent uncomfortable voting for a Mormon against 18 percent for Republicans. However, only about 7 percent of those who said they were not comfortable voting for a Mormon said they absolutely would not vote for a Mormon. This is only 1.54 percent of the electorate, but enough to make a difference in a closely contested election. However, almost all candidates have some background issue that turns way 2-5 percent or more of the voters.
Gallup conducted another poll of registered voters in June 2012 that showed similar but improving results regarding Romney’s election prospects. Discomfort with voting for a Mormon had dropped to 18 percent. The survey showed that 24 percent of Democrats, 18 percent of independents, and 10 percent of Republicans were uncomfortable voting for a Mormon. Judging from the demographics of this survey, the strongest opposition to Mormon candidates is among black Democrats.
In at least one North Carolina instance, Obama operatives targeted Evangelical blacks on the Mormon issue, pointing out that the Mormon Church once prohibited blacks from being ordained as clergy. This helped overcome the difficulty Evangelical blacks were having with Obama’s newly announced endorsement of same-sex marriage. This was combined with an overall appeal based on racial loyalty.
To set the record straight, the Mormons have never excluded blacks from membership, but from 1852 to 1978, they did exclude them from the Church’s lay-priesthood. After 34 years, the issue was resurrected to counter the discomfort black families and churches were having with Obama’s social radicalism.
White evangelicals, especially conservative blue-collar and modest income white-collar families, were abandoned as a hostile voting segment by the Obama campaign, but they did not get much encouragement from the Rommey campaign. I do not believe Romney lost many votes among these conservatives because of his Mormon faith. According to a Pew exit poll, 79 percent of white Evangelical Protestants (23 percent of the electorate) voted for Romney, the same percent that George W. Bush got in 2004. A recent Barna Group survey also indicated that their combined classification of “Evangelical and “born-again” voters (38 percent of the electorate) supported Romney with 60 percent of their vote, just short of Bush’s 62 percent in 2004. Besides Barna’s combined evangelical-born-again classification, another 39 percent are what Barna calls “notional” Christians. These either call themselves Christians or are members of Christian churches, but their surveys indicate a lack Biblical understanding or commitment to the faith. These voters favored Obama over Romney 57 to 41 percent. The remaining 22 percent of voters either claim other religions or religious skepticism. Both of these groups favored Obama over Romney by about 69 to 29 percent. Unfortunately for Republicans, this classification is growing.
The Barna Group does not use self-descriptions or church membership to classify respondents into various religious belief categories. It uses nine survey questions on respondent beliefs about salvation, Jesus, the Bible, and personal commitment to define the categories. One result of their findings, which may be surprising given some major differences between Mormon and more traditional Christian theology, is that 34 percent of Mormons fall into the evangelical-born-again faith category, a higher percentage than many Christian denominations. On social issues, the Mormons are very close to conservative Protestants and Catholics.
About 84 percent of Mormons voted for Romney. According to the Pew Survey, 66.5 percent of white Protestants and 57 percent of white Catholics voted for Romney, while only 31 percent of Latino Catholics voted for him.
I believe there are two main reasons why Romney lost. First, Romney failed to convince a substantial percentage of blue-collar and lower income white-collar conservatives that he was a dependable conservative who would not wobble on issues like immigration and “affirmative” action (racial preferences), which are affecting their incomes and job prospects, and media-driven social radicalism and political correctness, which are threatening their children’s understanding of their religious and family values. Millions of them did not feel compelled to vote. Second, Obama was able to quietly exploit the Mormon issue to overcome the objections of black Evangelicals to his radical social policies.
I believe this to be correct as far as it goes, but there were many more reasons why Romney lost. He was NOT a conservative, as his record clearly showed. Romneycare was an albatross around his neck from Day One, and he never adequately addressed it. His team actively worked with the RINO Establishment to disenfranchise Ron Paul voters, and never reached out to them after securing the nomination; only sent out his proxies to basically demand their vote (in insulting terms, no less). He listened to consultants who were trapped in their own little bubbles. Team Romney ignored the Tea Party activists, and also neglected the ground game. Romney relied too heavily on the SuperPacs, and didn't stress-test his Orca voter tracking system prior to election day (Obama's team was testing Narwhale to fail multiple times for weeks prior to the election). Romney tried to run a 'nice guy' campaign, while Obama's proxies called him everything but a child of God. In every way, Romney seemed to be running to loose...and he still almost won. That's the amazing thing to me.
ReplyDeleteThe Ron Paul/Tea Party crap pissed me off to high heaven and yes, he would have won without the hurricane, so even though he wasn't my man, the campaign was run correctly in order to win except for Mother Nature. Just astounding.
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