Mitt Romney & the GOP meet George McClellan UPDATE: Via Mike of Granite Grok

I’m your dad, it’s my job for it to be my fault

Doc­tor Who Father’s Day 2005

“no one but McClel­lan could have hes­i­tated to attack.”

Gen­eral Joseph E. John­ston April 1862

For over a year I wrote piece after piece with the tag line

“Ride right through them, they’re demor­al­ized as hell”!

chron­i­cling in piece after piece with infor­ma­tion to back it up of democ­rats run­ning away from Barack Obama.

with the elec­tion over and Barack Obama re-​elected I’m sure quite a few peo­ple are ques­tion­ing this, but the facts from the last two years haven’t changed.

Glenn Reynolds said over and over again, “Don’t get cocky” but I think he fun­da­men­tally mis­un­der­stood me. There are two sen­tences in that mes­sage I was giving.

“They’re demor­al­ized as hell” was a state­ment of the left’s con­di­tion. That was an objec­tive fact. Barack Obama drew mil­lion upon mil­lions less votes than in 2008. His mar­gin of vic­tory was a full 5 points smaller than the last time around. Plenty of peo­ple were con­vinced Obama is no longer the one.

But it doesn’t mat­ter if they are Demor­al­ized as Hell if you don’t Ride Right Through Them.

Which brings us to Mitt “McClel­lan” Romney.

There were two dif­fer­ent Mitt Rom­ney on the cam­paign trail.

There was the Mitt Rom­ney that wanted to be loved, the Mitt Rom­ney that didn’t want to attack Barack Obama. The Mitt Rom­ney that didn’t want to push back against the media, the Mitt Rom­ney that didn’t want to defend the Con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples that he sup­pos­edly had. He was more con­cerned with being liked than attack­ing. Unfor­tu­nately while this gives you points for sports­man­ship, George McClel­lan was uni­ver­sally loved by his troops it doesn’t give you vic­tory on elec­tion day.

And then there was the Mitt Rom­ney of the pri­maries. The Mitt Rom­ney that was will­ing to play hard­ball against his GOP foes, who was will­ing to con­front them, attack them and go after them. That was the Mitt Rom­ney who had no prob­lem play­ing with the rules at state and national con­ven­tions to lock out Ron Paul vot­ers who had learned the rules and played by them and then tossed them aside. This Mitt Rom­ney and his team played hard­ball with con­ser­v­a­tives fig­ur­ing “Where are you going to go?”

They went home and stayed there on elec­tion day. More than three mil­lion of them, less than the num­ber that aban­doned Barack Obama but still McCain vot­ers stayed home by the Millions.

If those mil­lions show up, Mitt Rom­ney is plan­ning his tran­si­tion, the democ­rats knew it too, on Tues­day the Media for the entire morn­ing was wear­ing long faces for a very long time. They couldn’t have imag­ined that Repub­li­cans would stay home twice in a row.

…but they did.

I couldn’t imag­ine it either. I was sure given the voter ID num­bers from Gallup & Ras­mussen Sil­ver was wrong, I mis­in­ter­preted his results. It wasn’t a ques­tion of the Dem base show­ing up, Mil­lions deserted Obama, but his poll instead was a warn­ing that the GOP base was stay­ing home. As I said in a rough draft of my final pre-​election commentary.

Or let’s put it this way. If the Union army spent its entire time march­ing in the North to this tune…

…instead of this march­ing south to this one…

…we would be two dif­fer­ent coun­tries right now.

Barack Obama is the only two term pres­i­dent in his­tory to win a sec­ond term with fewer votes than the first time around. We can pussy foot around it but the blame is Mitt Romney’s he alone could have over­ruled his advis­ers and cho­sen to attack. He could have given the Ron Paul sup­port­ers their pride, he could have defended con­ser­vatism instead of ignor­ing it.

Some might think it’s unfair to blame him, but Mitt Rom­ney spent years of his life and begged thou­sands of peo­ple for mil­lions of dol­lars to be the standard-​bearer of the party and with that role comes respon­si­bil­ity for the results.

Mind you the blame for putting him in that posi­tion can be shared by all those who decided that nom­i­nat­ing a mod­er­ate Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor who never attempted to grow the party in his own state dur­ing his time in office was a good idea, but once he was nom­i­nated the choice was no longer between Mitt Rom­ney and a strong con­ser­v­a­tive but Mitt Rom­ney and Barack Obama and given that choice the only thing to do was to fight like hell for Mitt as the standard-​bearer of a con­ser­v­a­tive party.

If only the repub­li­can estab­lish­ment felt the same way about those who sup­port the party.

Update: Fixed video and added Dr. Who quote because…it’s a Doc­tor Who quote

Update 2: Speak­ing of not ral­ly­ing the troops…

I should also say, this is the first I’ve heard that this project even existed. No one told me about it.

This is project ORCA that turned out to be a beached Whale, I had not heard of it either. Per­haps instead of rely­ing on some­thing like this there was another alternative?

It is the Chris­tians who get out the vote, folks. We are the base of the Repub­li­can Party. We were ignored (and even hated) by the estab­lish­ment. Some will try to say that the ORCA fail­ure is itself to blame. No. It’s that Mitt Rom­ney relied on it in the first place, instead of seek­ing the help of the socially con­ser­v­a­tive base of the party, that he lost. No “mod­er­ate” can­di­date will ever win for the GOP, least of all one who treats us lit­tle peo­ple as if we don’t matter.

And yet what did Lisa Graas do?

I voted for Mitt Rom­ney. I voted for the whole Repub­li­can ticket. I could have done far more than sim­ply vote for him. He never asked. He didn’t want my help. So, he lost.

There are folks to blame for this elec­tion, Lisa Graas is not one of them.

Update 3: Got the fol­low­ing e-​mail from Mike Rogers of Gran­ite Grok:

Great com­ments.

Here’s the thing, and a good rea­son why the Paulis­tas deserve scorn and derision:

The time to take over the GOP (state by state) or set up a real third party (let’s call it the con­ser­v­a­tive party, like NY state), is NOW, after a his­toric elec­tion that demon­strated the inept­ness of the “Wiz­ards of Smart”.

The time NOT to talk about and vote for a third part can­di­date, or stay home and pout about rules that work against you is DUR­ING an his­toric elec­tion, when one of the evils is immea­sur­ably worse than the guy you can’t quite warm to.

If we suc­cess­fully set up a con­ser­v­a­tive party, and win some seats, we can choose to align with Repub­li­cans or even endorse their can­di­date as a tac­ti­cal mat­ter on a vote by vote basis.

What say you?

Sounds good to me.