Bush, Akin, and Sandy

Republicans and conservatives looking for reasons why Mitt Romney lost the election might consider the trio of Bush, Akin, and Sandy.

Barack Obama spent so much time during his first term dodging responsibility and blaming George W. Bush – often falsely - for whatever was going wrong in the country that it became something of a national joke. Still much that went wrong in the last dozen years  really was Bush’s fault,  and that may include Romney’s losing the election to Obama. Polls showed that a majority of Americans thought the economy was in bad shape, and the country was heading in the wrong direction. However, polling of voters also showed that a higher percentage of voters blamed Bush for the mess, even after almost four years of Obama’s administration, than blamed Obama. This suggests a quite unusually high  residue of hostility toward Bush. It seems to be almost a parallel to the 1930’s when, despite years of continuing depression under Roosevelt, voters continued to blame Hoover for their troubles and reelected Roosevelt in both 1936 and 1940. Republicans and conservatives looking for reasons for Romney’s defeat should consider that a main reason might be that he had to run with George Bush hanging around his neck. (Even  the odd business of  so many voters telling  exit polls that Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy influenced their decision may have been an echo of the dissatisfaction over Bush’s politically maladroit handling of Katrina. ) Bush’s legacy of unnecessary wars, increased spending, ballooning deficits, a greatly expanded federal government,  a vigorous  embracing of the social agenda of the religious right, infringement of civil liberties, and an appearance of bumbling, tone deaf political ineptitude, all capped by a once in a generation financial crisis may have been too much for his party to live down.

Then there were the social issues, well symbolized by Todd Akin, the Republicans’ candidate for the senate in Missouri, but by no means restricted to him. The case of a couple of Obama voters I know illustrates the situation well. They are professionals in their mid-thirties. She is a successful physician, and he is an administrator at a university. They have two children. She is an at least partial libertarian whose favorite economist is Thomas Sowell. He is a gun owning moderate with a number of libertarian sympathies. They are the sort of self supporting people with bright economic futures who are among those most threatened by Obama’s policies. Romney should have had to contend only with Gary Johnson for their votes. Yet they voted for Obama, or to be precise, they used a vote for Obama as a vote against the bigoted, dogmatic, ignorant, anti-science yahoo-ism they see as endemic in the Republican Party. They have mentioned gay rights, women’s choice on abortion, statements by various Republicans about America having been founded as a Christian nation with religious freedom restricted to choice among various Christian sects, claims  by some Republicans that states have a right to ban contraceptives, and of course Akin’s notions on avoiding pregnancy during rape as examples. Their objections seem almost as much aesthetic as political, since their concerns and irritation are not limited to proposals that have even a small chance of being enacted. There is evidence that they are not atypical but rather representative of many  people who voted against their interests and better judgment on economic and geopolitical questions because they could not accept what the Republicans were saying on social issues.   These people, many of whom are too young to remember the Cold War or the economy of the 1970’s, seem less likely than their elders  to hold their noses on the social issues and vote for Republicans because they are better on the economy and national defense.  They are people Republicans will need to  win elections, and it will take a some changes to get them.

Finally there was simple bad luck. Polls showed that many voters said  their decision was influenced by Hurricane Sandy, and most of them voted for Obama. One may object that only a fool would base his vote in a presidential election on photo ops after a hurricane, but that seems to be what happened. It is likely that by late October the differences between the policies, records, character, and ideologies of the two candidates had been displayed  clearly and obviously enough that most people who  thought about those things probably had made up their minds or at least decided the tradeoffs and criteria upon which they would make up their minds. That left the battle over turnout and the feelings vote. Sandy seems to have helped steer a good part of the feelings vote to Obama. There is nothing for Republicans to do about that except hope for better luck next time.