A few thoughts on the election

I don't write much very often, and I doubt if anybody would read it anyway, but I'm in the mood right now so will post a thought or two about the election.

It is fun watching the Republicans trip all over themselves to try to figure out what they did wrong - too conservative - not conservative enough. Karl Rove is being put through the ringer by the millionaires who poured lots of money into his super-PAC and for which they got very little in return. But my own thinking is that they've got it all wrong.

Some folks who vote (hand raised here) are liberals and will always vote liberal. I won't go into all of my reasons, but let's just admit that there is a fairly good size of the electorate who will vote the same as I.  Then there are those who will vote conservative lines - and they always will. Again, I won't characterize the reasoning behind that position at this point but there are probably about as many of them as there are liberals.

But in the middle are a whole bunch of folks who are not news junkies - who can barely describe the issues and they really don't care. They catch a little bit of news now and again, but the way they vote is based on how they perceive the candidates from brief glimpses. They will vote, if they vote at all, for the guy they think they like better. Remember in 2004 when W was running for re-election and the question of choice was, "Who would you rather have a beer with?"

I do believe that these are the folks who make the difference in the election, and I also believe that Romney didn't come across as that good ol' boy that you'd like to have a beer with. He came across as above the common man, "haughty" is the word I've been using, and so the vote went the other way. (The 47% remarks were just a part of that haughty attitude.)

And so the Republicans can claim that they lost because of the minorities, or because Romney wasn't conservative consistently enough, or whatever other excuse they want to throw around. But in my mind, Barack was just more likable.

And these thoughts lead me to this conclusion - don't believe all the tripe you see on the 24-hour news outlets, or see coming from the mouths of Republicans. The Republican party is not dead. If, in 2016, the Democrats don't put up a likeable enough candidate, they will lose. It's not the issues that matter. We shouldn't be cocky, and we shouldn't gloat.

Just my thoughts and I haven't seen them expressed elsewhere, so there you have it.