I felt Romney was a terrible choice for the Republican party. Then again, who wasn't? The party is going through a schism and while they were trying to retain their command on the population so that they have a chance of winning an election they needed some well tailored candidate that could attract the new vocal extreme conservatives and provide a level of moderation. Of course that's kind of hard to do and while everyone felt that Romney, a strongly moderate republican, would be the most likely person to beat Obama under normal circumstances.

With right extremism they risked loosing the election so the Republican party fought hard to find another suitable candidate. After that not panning out it went back to Romney, but in order to appease the new constituency Romney had to "appear" more conservative than he actually was. Which is why he ran a campaign full of lies, ambiguity, and switching positions. It was a rough campaign but it kept the extreme right around, but not enough of the moderate in order to win the election as that group became more disgusted with the way the campaign was run.

Essentially the Republican party prevented the emergence of a conservative third party, the Tea Party. While still a pseudo party, they never really formed in the way they could have in the Republican party wasn't holding on to their constituents for dear life. The thing is though, the Republican party could very well be on its way out anyway, especially after loosing this election. Sometime, maybe not next election, maybe not the election after that, but there is a good chance that Texas will become a Democratic state and that will make it ever so difficult for a Republican to be elected as president. While that in itself won't destroy the party per se but it will shift the political climate. Unless the Republicans adapt to the new demographic of the country, of course. There still is the extreme right movement though, and there might still be a chance for a sustainable multi party situation.

Of course things could always change with the democratic party and there is always the factor of large sums of money in our election process.

The democrats will keep benefiting from the rise of the latinos but you have to be realist, the next democrat candidate probably won't be black so he will not do as well with black americans, they will probably vote in fewer number and they are unlikely to favor the next democrat as much as they did Obama ( he got 93% of the black vote). That will not be an issue in the western states like Nevada, Colorado or New Mexico where the black vote is small but that should put Ohio and Virginia back on the map... One fix of course would be to have Hilary as a candidate as that would increase democrats leads amongs women and the Clinton are generally well regarded amongst the black community...

As long as the republicans have to go to the right to win the primaries they will have trouble putting forward a candidate capable of winning the national election. One fix for them could be to move more moderate states ahead in the primaries to help moderate candidate win those.. ( having North Carolina so early kills moderates).  But generally I think going to the right is a mistake, in the end right wing folks will still vote for the republican candidate over the democrate and those you have to convince are the youngs and the latinos and the women, 3 groups that generally do not like right wing social ideas...

I am very liberal on social issues and more moderate on the economy but I have to admit I heard interesting things from republicans analysts today after the election.

They were commenting on the fact that republicans claim they are against big government but at the same time they are for it when it agrees with them and that is quite true.

If you don't want government to control so much of the economy, why would you want it to tell you who you can marry and or whether you can take contraceptives or not ? It does not make a lot of sense...

I felt Romney was a terrible choice for the Republican party. Then again, who wasn't? The party is going through a schism and while they were trying to retain their command on the population so that they have a chance of winning an election they needed some well tailored candidate that could attract the new vocal extreme conservatives and provide a level of moderation. Of course that's kind of hard to do and while everyone felt that Romney, a strongly moderate republican, would be the most likely person to beat Obama under normal circumstances.

With right extremism they risked loosing the election so the Republican party fought hard to find another suitable candidate. After that not panning out it went back to Romney, but in order to appease the new constituency Romney had to "appear" more conservative than he actually was. Which is why he ran a campaign full of lies, ambiguity, and switching positions. It was a rough campaign but it kept the extreme right around, but not enough of the moderate in order to win the election as that group became more disgusted with the way the campaign was run.

Essentially the Republican party prevented the emergence of a conservative third party, the Tea Party. While still a pseudo party, they never really formed in the way they could have in the Republican party wasn't holding on to their constituents for dear life. The thing is though, the Republican party could very well be on its way out anyway, especially after loosing this election. Sometime, maybe not next election, maybe not the election after that, but there is a good chance that Texas will become a Democratic state and that will make it ever so difficult for a Republican to be elected as president. While that in itself won't destroy the party per se but it will shift the political climate. Unless the Republicans adapt to the new demographic of the country, of course. There still is the extreme right movement though, and there might still be a chance for a sustainable multi party situation.

Of course things could always change with the democratic party and there is always the factor of large sums of money in our election process.

Old meme is old, but good GOD, it's deserved.

Well, crony capitalism is a form of capitalism. And Obama isn't going to do anything to change it. So he's right, even if he didn't mean to be.