There´s no question that Akin and Mourdock hurt our cause with their outlandish comments but being a social conservative in general isn´t what did us in.This whole idea that we need to reach out to hispanics,blacks and abortion rights nuts is ludicrous.

I said it was crazy to throw Lugar out over a stupid purity test,so we kissed that seat goodbye.

Romney himself is far from a far right social conservative but that didn´t get him any votes,neither did his suggestion he´d reach across the aisle. Republican planners and advisors create their own myths on how to win an election and then lose.

First you have to reach the middleof the country,then blacks,then hispanics and when that doesn´t work,throw in the towel on higher taxes,abortions so both parties look the same.

Everybody in these postmortems are missing the fact that Obama put millions of people on the government dime and you could say he barely won,I think by cheating in swing states.$800 billion in stimulus that all went to left wing activists.

Just look at Allen West´s problem with mysterious votes showing up out of no where.These people cheat because it´s in their DNA. How do we know if voting machines weren´t calibrated to flip every 10th Romney vote to Obama?

Ohio has swiss cheese voting standards.The left fought tooth and nail against voter ID for a reason.

Romney lost because he didn´t answer the negative ads over the summer which suppressed the working class white vote. He also had ad a lousy Get Out The Vote Operation. Had all the people tied up with Orca been out on the streets of the key states driving reluctant Republicans to the polls instead of staring at a blue screen he would have won.

Romney has always underperformed expectations and it was entirely predictable that Bain was going to be an issue with precisely the demographic that cost us the election.

Republicans nominate thinly disguised liberal candidate and get walked all over. Conservatives get blamed.

Kathleen Parker is a convicted moron and I can´t and won´t read her work anymore. I´ve lost enough I.Q. points reading it in the past and I need to hold on to what I´ve still got.

The Dems want the GOP to commit political suicide by becoming more.....liberal.
Parker. Peddle your nonsense somewhere else, perhaps, in Beijing or Moscow.

The only people I blame are those who would have voted against comrade obama but chose to stay home.

I plan to have as little participation in this economy, and as little contact with obamunists as possible.

What #4,#5, & #6 said. IMO, Kathleen Parker, is a one-time-"conservative" writer who was thrown under the bus by leftists and now wants to pretend she actually cares about what is going on with the GOP..No thanks. BTW, Jesse Jackson, Jr. won re-election in a landslide! Alan Grayson the detestable demonrat won re-election in Florida and Allen West LOST! There is something wrong with this picture! There WERE a lot of "republicans" who unmercifully attacked Mitt Romney for months. In fact there are still a few hanging around here, for no apparent reason other than to gloat. However, I agree it is the "dumbing down of the electorate" (including some "republicans") that defeated Mitt Romney, NOT Conservatives.

Romney lost because too many people in this country voted for taking money away from one group of citizens and getting it for themselves. And so dies another part of our Constitution.
Thatcher was right when she said the politicians on the left have no concern for the poor being elevated. Just concern that certain rich get poorer.

Less people voted for Romney than McCain? Is that possible?

The liberal press doomed the republicans. They clearly became a valuable part of the democrat campaign effort by what they chose to expose and exploit, and what they chose to ignore.

Their credibility is in decline, yet they provide "that´s the way it is" for a large part of the population.

Did you read her comment about speaking to a group of Republicans - 80% male, 99% white? Unless you think you can win an election with that demographic alone...it would be a good idea to listen to her.

Akin turned off the female half of the electorate. Republicans need to look at their rules and figure out a way to keep loudmouths like that from running and, should they end up in the running anyway, figure out a way to force them out.

The platform needs to follow the candidate, rather than the candidate having to try to hide it. If the tie that binds the party together is small government - then get out of the abortion/same-sex marriage litmus test business! You can´t in the same breath say that you want the government out of your lives...but you want it snooping on the lives of others. While the Libertarians don´t stand a chance of getting elected, they are absolutely right on this point.

Sadly people, she´s right.

Kathlene Parker is right about Akin and Mourdock with their stupid rape and incest comments. The leftist media waits like spiders hoping for such a chance to exploit. And republicans keep supplying them with tin-earred, mediocre minded kooks with big mouths.

The real problem of course is the media who chuckles at Biden´s pratfalls and bigotry then attacks uncrossed Ts coming from our side as proof of greed and Naziism.

Then there´s that other party, the one that has doomed its own nation.

#12 and #13 are correct. Five TEA party-backed candidates have run for Senate seats in the last two years and all five have lost. The TEA party is too conservative for state-wide elections.
Akin and Mourdock were especially bitter losses--these are seats we should have won, people. Stupid comments about abortion ruined their chances.

Parker is another Obama supporter that seeks to weaken the GOP. Ignore her.

Go tell it to Client #9, Parker. Oh, that´s right, even he can´t stand you.

Kathleen Parker is part of the problem herself. She is another liberal wannabe who pretends to be a Republican. Her opinions are irrelevant.

Just because you don´t like Parker, doesn´t mean she is wrong. If we don´t open our minds and engage in a ruthless post mortem, you will see this movie again. I met Mourdock at RedState last year and was impressed with him. As the state treasurer and a very pleasant personality along with the backing of DeMint, I thought he would be a great candidate. He wasn´t bad until two weeks out. Parker is right that men and women in our party need to stick to a safe answer - messaging and marketing do matter.

Parker might restore her reputation if she avoids the Washington Post crowd and speaks truth - like it was the RNC that blew the election. They showed hypocracy and total disrespect and stupidity by attacking Akin. The South, West, and Evangelicals were ignored and many just stayed home Nov 6. Want to lose another - pick turncoat Christie. As for me, I hope Sarah can mold the T-Party into the voice of American´s culture of yesteryears

Romney lost because (1) unlike most Republicans, the independents, libertarians, etc. could not induce enough amnesia to forget that Romney pioneered socialized medicine in this country and had no problem in executing the left-wing agenda of the Massachusetts Legislature. In other words, if you´re going to vote for a liberal, why not vote for the real thing, instead of a pale reflection?
His recent forced conversion to Conservatism did not sit comfortably with him, and it showed.

Secondly, the insulting, bullying behavior of the Romney supporters toward the admirers of Sarah Palin, and Palin herself, and their collaboration with liberals in defaming her -- and her supporters ("nutjobs" "nitwits") -- played a part. If you´re looking for the 3 million missing Republican votes that were there for McCain/Pain, but vanished for Romney. that´s where they were, staying home, letting the Romney clique mastermind the Flaming Victory of 2012.

Sorry for 2nd post, but this is a comment to #23 I sincerely hope he/she and he/she fellow anti-Romney voters out here who STAYED HOME will continue to be proud of your decision to give obama another four years to destroy this Country, simply because Mitt Romney did not fit your demand for a perfect "conservative".. Better obama than Romney? Seriously? "Romney clique"? Wow! Just Wow!

When conservative candidates speak in public they should speak after prior thought, with full realization that the nation´s enemies are listening with malign intent.
As for this article: it is a position paper of The Ministry of Truth, Washington Plop Division.

It was voter fraud. You know, in the primary and the election; I never saw one minority voting; only whites. If Romney would have taken the bait; it would have brought him down. He did the right thing; even though I don´t believe he was our real candidate just like McCain. Both were chosen for us; not by us to make sure Obama won. But he didn´t win.

Do not allow Obama to take his 2nd term.

Please, stop trying to ´kill the messenger,´
Parker is doing her job. We all have different ideas about what went wrong and we still have the right to express them with all due respect to others. My question is big picture... are you a Republican or a conservative who votes (or not) Republican? If you want a litmus test Conservative Party, then go build one and make your case to the people. Stop canibalizing a ´big tent´ Republican Party that never will be able to appeal to a majority as long as it is being torn apart from within. It´s bad enough that all the institutions in this country are arrayed against Republicans... that so many of it´s own voters hate it as well sounds the crack of doom.

Blaming this on Akin is stupid. 99% of voters never heard of him. Not answering the attack ads and not attacking is what cost mitt.

Correction, #28. Nobody heard of Akin till he made his idiotic remark about the female reproductive system shutting down during rape. After that, everyone on the planet knew who he was. The press made sure of that.

Elizabeth Warren was first up to the plate to use Akin as a weapon against Scott Brown. And apparently it worked. And it sure worked against Akin himself--even in Missouri they preferred Claire McCaskill to him.

# 23 It was stupid, conservatives that stayed home they hated Romney so much,they sent the country and their own children to hell. The problem wasn´t Romney the problem is to many of our supporters have three eyes. As a party we have to understand many in our coalition don´t care about winning, they rather sit out the election and beat their breast in self rightist satisfaction, rather then vote for a less than perfect candidate. We are doomed and it is by our own hands.

Consider the order of battle.

On one side are aligned,
1. The no-holds-barred Chicago-styled political attack machine
2. The ACORN-styled fraud machine
3. The New Black Panther intimidation machine
4. The low-information ObamaPhone lady hordes
5. The ill-educated teachers-union-indoctrinated public school class
6. The higher education social indoctrination robots
7. The J-school indoctrinated MSM
8. The Hollywood zombies
9. The union thugs
10. The government union devotees
11. The AARP Social Security and Medicare protectorate

On the other side are aligned,
1. A few remaining Greatest Generation citizens
2. The Tea Party
3. Reaganites

The battle was over before was over before it started.

The country is gone, folks. It’s a brave new world.

Remember the rallies... full houses for Romney, 1/2 full for Obama. A community that votes 99% for Obama is a database vote, not human votes.

Focus on fixing elections... Take a page from Iraq; Purple thumbprints on paper ballots.

If for the sake of argument there were conservatives who were willing to sit this out, perhaps one note Romney enthusiasts could reflect upon a strategy reflected in this salon as well as other places, where established conservatives and their supporters were misrepresented, vilified, lied about, intimidated, Alinskied. The ideas and accomplishments of Bachman, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Fred Thompson had merit, and yet in the interest of building a winning coalition behind a "severely" conservative east coast liberal republican governor who championed an expansive government program as his singular political achievement, these people were trashed in a manner unworthy of the long term participants of this establishment.
You deceived yourself, you lied about your candidate and then proceeded to lie and attack others, and know you are mystified why that approach failed.
A lot of people far less enthusiastic about Romney than you did a lot more than attack potential supporters. Own it.

Kathleen, blame your own profession too! Those Akin stories should NEVER have been brought near Romney, but the MSM smears every GOP candidate with the dirt of another GOP candidate gratuitously! Did the idiotic statements of Jim Moran or Pocahontas Warren ever get smeared onto Fauxbama? NO! Why? Because you idiots don´t play the same game with the Dems they play with the GOP. Stuff it.

I resent Parker´s implications as well as the Romney advisors who kept Romney one-dimensional by design. Exit polling demonstrated that Romney "won" on the economy but lost in the ideological battles, which cover a whole lot of fertile ground. Conservatives who honestly observed debates #2 and #3 were probably perplexed as to why Romney went soft. He played a "prevent defense" when he had the momentum, just as numerous college teams will play today on their way to losing. Romney is a good man but he chose to follow a flawed game plan, unlike the unpopular (c.1980) RWR, who chose to expand his campaign beyond the economy and express the overarching values of conservatism in a way that appealed to a broad spectrum of Americans. RWR never sat back passively and took hits from the liberals who sought to define him while his supporters scratched their heads wondering when their candidate would be unleashed.

#33 If conservatives stayed home because their little feeling where hurt, they are despicable pigs. They where willing to destroy the country and their own childrens future over hurt feelings, and we make fun of liberals for lacking logic and engaging in emotionalism.

XXXVI, I´m not conceding that they did. But the mystery, or not, of why the Romney advisors, beltway, Bush loyalists, pretended that 2010 and the local origins of T parties were just the rantings or rubes. Speaking only from a big ten state, where Bush clones lose and Reagan democrats vote republican, conservatives went to the mattresses in an effort to remove the One. Blame somebody else.

I figured out a long time ago that Kathleen Parker really is a one-issue voter.

And that issue, for her, is abortion. Her demand is that Republican candidates be "moderate" on abortion.

And what does "moderate" mean? To anyone who is honest, it means abetting the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children.

Well, how did that work for you, Kathleen, in this week´s elections in Massachusetts and Maine, where two "moderate" pro-abort Republicans went down in flames?

I´m confused. We Republicans lost because we won´t budge on our social principles, but the Democrats won because they won´t budge on their social principles. Yet, survey after survey indicates the majority (albeit a slim majority) don´t support abortion for all 9 months of a pregnancy, etc. and that a majority does not like abortion on demand (excluding rape, life of mother, etc.). We ran several socially liberal candidates (including Romney) and we still lost.
I thought it was the economy this time around, stupid. I guess free birth control and access to unlimited abortion will help keep people warm the next four years and feed their families and fill their tanks. Silly me.

There is a scene in Life of Brian where the squabbling leaders of the anti-Roman "People´s Front of Judea" are told they need to unite against their common enemy. So they start criticizing the Judean People´s Front. It´s the Romans, people, and until we learn to unite and fight they will divide and conquer us. The Democrats won by cobbling together a disparate collection of interest groups united by one thing: fear and loathing of us. Their allies in the liberal media complex did the rest.

On the disputes above, two points: 1. Mitt Romney worked his heart out to win this election. 2. Many conservatives who had been principled opponents of Mitt during the primary swallowed all the guff and nonsense they´d endured from over-the-top Romney supporters on this site and did likewise. I got Mitt every vote I could from within my own circle, and I am deeply saddened by his loss and ours.

Just another GOP/RNC Establishment lemming burying their head in the sand trying to avoid looking reality in the face. They demand you do the same.

No point in debating the pinheads that have now lost 2 presidential elections in a row to a incompetent fool. Your are dealing with an impenetrable wall of denial and stupidity that even nuclear warheads cannot dent nor scratch.

I agree with #13. The MSM looks for gnats in our party while choking & covering up camels on their side.

The only way we can beat them is to buy our own air time on their channels & show people the crap they cover up & don´t report. They have succeeded in demonizing FOX as biased while they get off scott free of their own bias on 7+ channels. We have to put programs on their channels where the "useful idiots" in the middle & senior citizens think it´s legitimate news.

Like we need advice from this liberal. However, let´s stipulate to her point. Then cut us loose, GOP. Let us walk away and form our own party. See who´ll be the Losers. Wait .. the GOP apologists already are.

There is a lot of sound and fury here signifying nothing. Have I mentioned that we have a two party system here? If you don´t go to the polls and vote for the candidate of your party, the other party wins.

I would go to the polls and vote for Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy if he ran on the Republican ticket. Cry later if you will. I am crying today.

Parker´a job is to elect Democarts. She was far worse than Noonan in swooning over Obama in 2008.

As for the Tea Party, Cruz was supported by them, Akin wasn´t. Akin was a fluke winner in a 4 candidate race because of Democrat crossover. Maybe if Huckabee hadn´t rallied to him they could have bribed him to step aside.

What sticks in my craw are the retreads who keep losing. In 2010 three of our Senate candidates had run statewide twice before. All three lost -O´Donnell, Rossi and Raese. In 2012 we had one candidate come out of retirement to run-Thompson- and two more who had lost in 2010-McMahon and Raese(?!?) All three lost.

Jay Rockefeller´s seat is up in 2014. If John Raese wants to run again would someone please go up to West Virginia and put him out of our misery?

I beg to differ: I think this was the result of ill informed voters. Face it: Akin fell for a ´When did you stop beating your wife´ question and Mourdock was in the crosshairs because he pointed out, as Indiana Treasurer, that the Obama (illegally) run bankruptcy of the auto companies stole money from the Indiana pensioners. These were as made up and fake a setof complaints as the one about the Dominican brothel patron Donk was real.