The day after the Tuesday Electoral Massacre, I stayed calm and stoical. The American people spoke — and a majority want the POS back for another four years, mistaken though I think they are.
Then analyses and data started coming in — about non-U.S. citizens voting; about the missing 3 million who had voted for McCain in 2008; and Ron Paul cultists openly admitting they sat this election out.
Add to all that what FOTM had already chronicled, on:
- Democrats behaving like they expected to lose;
- Problems with our military’s absentee votes;
- Eye witness reports of van loads of non-English speakers and the mentally retarded being bussed into early voting centers;
- Election day reports of GOP poll watchers being thrown out and of a polling place with a large wall mural of Obama.
Then I discovered that good Catholics and evangelical Christians fought the good fight by turning out in greater numbers for Romney than they had for McCain in 2008.
All day yesterday, as I processed this information, I became angrier and angrier. Until I saw this headline on Drudge, and my heart broke.
Romney ‘Shellshocked’ By Loss
Jan Crawford reports for CBS News, Nov. 8, 2012, that a senior adviser of the Romney-Ryan campaign says Gov. Romney was completely taken by surprise — “shellshocked” — by the electoral loss: “We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory. I don’t think there was one person who saw this coming.” They just couldn’t believe they had been so wrong.
Romney’s campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade. Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to Obama.
But it wasn’t until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn’t. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for Obama.
After Ohio went for Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it. But then came Colorado for Obama and Florida also was looking tougher than anyone had imagined. Romney then said what they knew: it was over.
Romney was stoic as he talked to Obama, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked; his wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.
“There’s nothing worse than when you think you’re going to win, and you don’t,” said another adviser. “It was like a sucker punch.”
Their emotion was visible on their faces when they walked on stage after Romney finished his remarks, which Romney had hastily composed, knowing he had to say something.
Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.
“He was shellshocked,” one adviser said of Romney.
Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks – not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan – bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.
They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time – poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats – and that would translate into votes for Romney.
As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed – they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn’t reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.
The CBS article then goes on to “analyze” just how the Romney campaign got it wrong. Blah, blah, blah….
To that, I say “Horse manure!”
Like our Hardnox and Terry, I don’t believe for even a second that the POS actually won Tuesday’s election legitimately.
No way.
How do I know that?
Here’s how, in addition to what I’d written at the beginning of this post on voter fraud, the military (non)vote, and Ron Paulists’ treasonous abstention:
THE ENTHUSIASM FACTOR
about which we are told is so super important to voter turnout and winning.
As early as last May, the POS already wasn’t drawing the large crowds he used to in 2008. Then in the days leading up to Nov. 6:
- Romney’s rallies were drawing TENS of thousands, far outnumbering the POS’s dwindling rallies. See Terry’s on-the-ground report of one such Romney rally in Florida.
- Hardnox did a post on Nov. 4 of how in Virginia, people were walking out on a POS rally before it was over.
- LTG did 2 posts on Nov. 4 of how only 200 people showed up for a Stevie Wonder rally for the POS in Ohio, and a rally in Massachusetts for Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren to which practically NO ONE came. Here’s the cringe-worthy video:
- In my post of Nov. 5, I finally let a big cat out of the bag, the best-kept secret of this election: I haven’t seen even ONE SINGLE Obama 2012 bumpersticker, yard sign, or apartment window sign in Berkeley, California — the Belly of the Left Beast. Whereas in 2008, the city was inundated with Obama-Biden signs and stickers. That certainly signals a total lack of enthusiasm for Obama among America’s most diehard Leftists.
Even Obama thought he would lose. Unlike Romney, Obama had prepared a concession speech. Feeling sorry for himself, the POS actually cried in his last campaign rally:
Don’t all the above mean SOMETHING? How could we, despite all the above striking signs of enthusiasm on our side and a lack of enthusiasm on the Left’s, have ended up with an electoral loss on Tuesday which is even worse than the one in 2008? Something just doesn’t add up!!!!
Shellshocked, Gov. Romney still is gracious. This is his message on his campaign website:
“I still believe in the people of America. And so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for this great nation.
Thank you, and God bless America.”
If we are hurting, imagine how he must be feeling.
To make it even worse, now the vultures in the GOP are croaking their typical “Blame the Candidate” noises.
Please send Governor Mitt Romney a “Thank You” message. Click here.
~Eowyn
