Why Mitt Romney Lost the Presidential Election

On November 6^th, 2012, President Barack Obama defeated former Governor Mitt Romney by a decent sized margin.  Many political pundits on the right were baffled as to how Mitt Romney could have lost, especially with the economy recovering so slowly, as some Americans feel.   The answer to that comes in two parts.

Aside from Mitt Romney being a bad candidate, it is also due to the Republican Party being so out of touch with mainstream America.

Mitt Romney has taken numerous positions on some very controversial topics.  One day he was pro-choice and the following day he was pro-life.  He was a believer in climate change, then he flip flopped and was no longer a believer in it.  These flip flops would continue to grow across other hot topics that would lead voters to question who he really was and what he believed in.

His economic policy almost mirrored what Paul Ryan had proposed earlier this year.  It was highly unpopular amongst Americans and would bring this country back to economic policies that helped push this country into The Great Recession.  He wanted to slash taxes by 20%, as well as do away with the capital gains tax and cut the corporate tax rate.  At the same time, he would raise defense spending in a time when the Iraq War is over and the Afghanistan War is winding down.  Throughout the campaign, it had been stated – the arithmetic just doesn’t add up.

He also declared that he would first do away with all of Obamacare, and then he flip flopped by saying he would keep parts of it.  Yet, Obamacare is virtually identical to what Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts, known as Romneycare.

Socially, Mitt Romney publicly endorsed candidates that felt women should not have final say over their own bodies.  Senator Todd Akin stated that women would not get pregnant from rape, as their bodies shut down.  Richard Mourdock stated that if a woman does get pregnant from rape, it was Gods will for that to happen.

Throughout the GOP primaries, Mitt Romney repositioned his stance on numerous issues to try and convince the conservative base of the party that he was their candidate.  If we all remember, every month of those primaries, there was a new candidate leading the polls.  This demonstrates that the people and the party were not in favor of Mitt Romney.  To add to that point, his GOP opponents were some of the biggest kooks of the party, but they each represented different areas of that party’s platform.

With the defeat of President George H.W. Bush in the 1992 Presidential Election, the conservative movement within the Republican Party, led by Newt Gingrich, would come to dominate this party and lead it to what is has manifested into today.  We now have a party that feels cutting taxes and raising spending, particularly defense spending, will lead to economic growth – which is false, as it fosters income inequality and dangerous deregulation of the financial sector.

Their platform also wants to do away with abortion by citing religion, which takes women away from having control over their bodies.  The Tea Party and the Religious Right are to blame for what the Republican Party has become – a rich white man’s club of the 1800’s.

They blocked legislation that would have helped create more jobs over the last four years.  If we remember just after President Obama was elected in 2008, Senator Mitch McConnell stated “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  By doing so, the American people are held hostage and those politicians should be legally removed from public office as a result.

The Republican Party of today has become detrimental to the social and economic growth of the United States.  This great nation is supposed to serve as a model for other countries, but this party is pushing the United States back to a time that left many stains on this nation’s history.  How can we serve as that beacon of light when we have a major political party that foster divisions in all aspects of society, whether they are economic or social?

Mitt Romney lost not only by being a bad candidate, but more importantly, he lost due to the Republican Party being out of touch with mainstream America and now needs to do some soul searching to restructure their platform to acknowledge what America has already become in the 21^st Century.