Talking with Henrietta - The Changing Face of America's Voters
Taped on November 8, 2012
With the November 2012 election over, the Republican Party is
left to do considerable soul-searching. Many of the party’s leaders are going
to great pains to explain why Mitt Romney lost his bid to be the nation’s
president. But Romney is giving explanations that even his Republican
colleagues, who supported his campaign, are taking the time to publicly disavow.
If Romney had any sympathy as a loser, then he is quickly
beginning to turn away even some of his ardent admirers. His latest comments
attributing Pres. Obama’s re-election to “extraordinary financial gifts” that
he gave to this country’s ethnic voters, is turning prominent members of his
own party against him. If nothing else, he has made it all too clear that his
earlier comments, claiming that 47 percent of the American population wanted
government handouts, were not misinterpreted.
Before his latest comments about the “gifts” that were given,
some political analysts speculated that the Massachusetts governor ran to the
far right in order to defeat his very conservative opponents in the Republican
primary and to gain the support of Evangelicals and Tea Party members. They said that he was far
more moderate than he appeared in the early stages of his campaign and that he
did not have enough time during the endgame with Pres. Obama to express
moderate views that might have made him more appealing to the voters.
Well, the new statements Romney has made to some of his big
donors to explain his defeat show that he is still keeping his moderate views
under wraps.
I know that losing what one has put one’s heart, soul,
dreams and millions and millions of dollars into can be a bitter pill, and
accepting defeat can be particularly difficult, especially when a resounding
victory seemed right around the corner.
But Romney’s fixation, with identifying and separating the
groups in this country that he considers the givers from the takers, is giving
observers like myself additional insight into who Romney really is.
Since his most recent statements about the gifts that were
given are consistent with some of those he made from the beginning, it’s
becoming more and more apparent that we’ve probably been seeing the real Romney
all along.
Not only might we be seeing the real Romney, but his defeat
and his repeated statements about giveaways might also be giving his fellow
Republicans the freedom to express their real views.
Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal is now saying that the
Republican Party needs to be more inclusive. According to Jindal, "You don't start to like
people by insulting them and saying their votes were bought. We are an
aspirational party," he said.
Even Meghan McCain, Sen. John McCain’s daughter, is on
record as saying that the Republican Party should wake up and that she will
consider leaving the Republican Party if things don’t change.
I don’t personally
recall her saying anything like this during Romney’s campaign.
Well, there is nothing like a big loss to bring out what
people might really think: those who’ve lost and those who supported the
losers. It makes you wonder whether these new views are genuinely held or whether they simply reflect an opportunity that Romney's former supporters are taking to put more
distance between themselves and their failed candidate.
One thing is for sure: Romney was, in fact, right in in his
assessment that there was a coalition of voters who supported Obama. But there
is obvious disagreement over the reasons these groups supported the president.
See what my guests say about this new coalition in my latest Talking with
Henrietta show, The Changing Face of America’s Voters, which is shown at the top of this blog post.
