Getting It Good And Hard
Posted on November 15, 2012
H.L. Mencken
It was H.L. Mencken who said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Plenty of people got what they deserved in this election.
Mitt Romney proved yesterday in a conference call that he got what he deserved.
Romney blamed gift-seeking minorities for his loss on Election Day, proving that he had absolutely no clue as to why he lost the election.
There are like 10 minorities in all of Iowa. Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont, Ohio, all have relatively few minorities in their populations. Romney lost them all.
He lost because he was a crappy candidate. He lost because his campaign was a disaster. He lost because he wouldn’t release his taxes, because he flip-flopped on plenty of issues, because he didn’t put forth a positive message, because he automatically wrote off 47% of the population, because he couldn’t connect with middle class voters, because he wasn’t really a conservative and he wasn’t really a moderate, because he couldn’t explain in 10 seconds why he had a plan to save the auto-industry, because, because, because.
He deserved to lose because he couldn’t even beat John McCain’s total.
Barack Obama deserved to win. Now, he isn’t a very good President. We all know that in our bones. We all know that he probably won’t be able to get a deal on the fiscal cliff because he is not much for negotiating.
But that man knows how to run a campaign. He knows how to beat weak candidates like Mitt Romney, John McCain, Alan Keyes. He knows how to beat strong candidates like Hillary Clinton.
He can’t govern, but he can campaign. And his campaign theory, which turned out to be correct, was to make the election a referendum on Mitt Romney. The election that was supposed to be referendum on the incumbent became a referendum on the challenger. Who knew?
The Hispanic jobless rate is now up to 28%. The African-American jobless rate is above that. Blacks and Hispanics voted for Obama because they liked the fact that he was one of them. But their vote won’t help them get a job. Obamanomics are likely to continue to strangle economic growth. They got what they wanted in Obama and now they will get it good and hard from Obama.
A bunch of business leaders went to the White House to tell the President to do something about the fiscal cliff. His reply is pretty predictable: He wants to raise your taxes. The business community needs to get off their hands and start really getting engaged in grass roots politics. Labor understands this. Evangelical Christians understand this. Pro-life and pro-abortion activists understand this. Why doesn’t the business community get this?
The American people voted for the status quo in this election. They are going to get it good and hard.