Election afterthoughts and reactions here:

[frigidmagi]

And as of today you can see the shooting starting.

Let's start with our favorite idiot loudmouth Rush.

This can't be my fault, it's yours!

Two months ago, Rush Limbaugh said that a victory for President Obama would bring about the death of the Republican Party.

"If Obama wins, let me tell you what it's the end of: The Republican Party. There's gonna be a third party that's gonna be oriented toward conservatism," he said. "And I know if Obama wins, the Republican Party is gonna try to maneuver things so conservatives get blamed."

The GOP's internal debate over the future of the party is now in full swing. Many Fox News hosts and contributors argued last night that the party needs to do a better job of courting Hispanics. On NBC, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said Republican leaders needed to stand up to the "extremist" Limbaughs and the Donald Trumps in the party. Today, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan also addressed the party's shortcomings with female voters.

But Limbaugh, who represents the far-right faction "oriented toward conservatism," isn't having it.

On today's show, Limbaugh argued that conservatism "did not lose last night" and that there's no need to reorient the party.

"The usual suspects are out, and they're saying, 'Rush, we gotta reach out now to the Hispanics and reach out to the minorities, blacks.' Okay, let me remind you of something. Let me take you back to the Republican convention," he said. "We had Suzanne Martinez, female Hispanic governor, New Mexico. We had Condoleezza Rice, African-American, former secretary of state. Both of those people eminently qualified, terrifically achieved. They have reached the pinnacles of their profession. We had Marco Rubio. We had a parade of minorities who have become successful Americans. And they all had a common story: up from nothing, hard work, their parents sacrificed for them."

"Now, why didn't that work, folks? The answer to that is our future," he continued. "Why didn't it work? Some people say, 'Well, Rush, we pandered.' No, we didn't pander. Everybody says that we need to reach out to minorities. We have plenty of highly achieved minorities in our party, and they are in prominent positions, and they all have a common story. They all came from nothing. Their parents came from nothing. They worked hard. They told those stories with great pride. Those stories evoked tears. It didn't work."

If it didn't work, Limbaugh argued, it was because Obama "successfully painted Romney's policies as caring primarily about the rich... successfully convinced roughly half the country that his policies will favor the middle class." It was not because the party was too old, too white, and too male.

On the flip side, you got a number of GOP younger leaders, let me quote from here

“The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),

Our party needs to realize that it’s too old and too white and too male and it needs to figure out how to catch up with the demographics of the country before it’s too late,” said Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and a longtime GOP leader. “Our party needs a lot of work to do if we expect to be competitive in the near future.”

Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), a prospective 2014 statewide candidate in a state moving sharply to the middle, was just as blunt: “After tonight, the GOP had better figure out that a big tent sounds good, but if there aren’t any seats in it, what good is it.”

Lastly I present this video:

[youtube][/youtube]

This video interests me for a number of reasons. The presenter is clearly rational and capable of observing data and adjusting his expectations to that data unlike many current GOP commenters. That said, he is starting from a broken premise (democrats are socialists, Obama won cause he's black, etc) and a lack of understanding of what's going on in the left. He also very clearly presents his case in unbending, precise terms that aren't vague or covered in meal mouthy crap. He's way off base, but if you take his premise, every position he takes makes sense. So I'm left both wondering how this happened.

Still that said, we can see the sides drawing up here. Bluntly we won't know whose winning til we see who is running for office in 2014 however. But very clearly, Reagan's very last commandment, the last rule of his Republicans were faithful to, is now cracked, broken and being swept aside:

Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Another Republican.

It's gone guys.

[Josh]

That video made my head hurt. I get where you're coming from that he comes straight at his ideas, it's just... so damned representative of the information bubble they locked themselves into.

This is why I wanted them to take it in the teeth. Romney's loss was a good shock and well-needed, I know that most of the people I know were pretty sure running up to the election that he had it in the bag because of the Fox-Limbaugh echo chamber. But really, losing ground in the senate was the real key to my mind because it's a direct repudiation of running the Good, God-Fearing Candidates that are Tea Party-approved.

I don't know if 2014 will see this settled. However, I do think that if the Bachmann/Santorum types do manage to cling to enough power to cause a ruckus in 2014 and they manage to lose more ground, that'll really start the process. What I do see the strong prospect here is that the money will talk, and the money's going to want to flow toward the genuine prospect of victory.

Like you said, we won't know for a while. But this process, as nasty and ugly as it's going to be, is precisely what's needed if they're going to have a reformation. And the fact of the matter is that if we're running a two-party system, we need both parties to have some degree of general parity over the long term.

[Norseman]

Orson Scott Card has also gotten into the play with Democracy did not fail. It's way too long to quote here, but oh so representative.

[General Havoc]

Limbaugh's an idiot, but I do have to say in perfect fairness that he's probably right about one thing.

If it didn't work, Limbaugh argued, it was because Obama "successfully painted Romney's policies as caring primarily about the rich... successfully convinced roughly half the country that his policies will favor the middle class." It was not because the party was too old, too white, and too male.

One of the virtues of democracy is that ethnicities, age groups, and genders do not vote. Individual people do. And I know nobody who votes on the basis of 'which party's upper echelons are proportionately comprised of people who resemble me in skin color and age'? The failure of the Republican party this time around was not that they failed to meet this quote or that one, but that their policies were widely perceived to be detrimental to enormous groups of people. I may be bucking the trend here, but I don't think the Republican's position on immigration is what cost them this election. It didn't help, certainly, but a lot of pollsters tend to assume that various groups vote only on the basis of issues perceived as being specific to themselves. Such latinos as I know out here who voted for Obama told me they did so for a whole gamut of reasons. One of these reasons was immigration (or more specifically, their belief that the Republican party favors racial discrimination against Latinos, of which the immigration question is one element), but it was not the only, or necessarily the most major reason.

The Republicans lost this election on the basis of their economic policy, not their demographics. Demographics do not favor them long-term, but Demographics don't get to vote. We the living do that.