The GOP Debacle 2012 - Two Views

We all know how the election ended. President Obama was reelected with 332 Electoral and 62,085,892 Popular votes (51%), beating Challenger Mitt Romney who won 206 Electoral and 58,777,012 Popular votes (48%).

The big story, as told by CBS, is how the Romney Campaign got it so wrong.  They really did think they were going to win:

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks - not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan - bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time - poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats - and that would translate into votes for Romney.

Didn't happen, of course. But why not?

Politico has some answers:

Across the [GOP]’s campaigns, committees and super PACs, internal polling gave an overly optimistic read on the electorate. The Romney campaign entered the last week of the election convinced that Colorado, Florida and Virginia were all but won, that the race in Ohio was neck and neck and that the Republican nominee had a legitimate shot in Pennsylvania.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee consistently had a more upbeat assessment of races in North Dakota and Montana, among others, than their Democratic counterparts. One GOP poll even showed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock holding even with his opponent, even as public polls showed the embattled Republican hemorrhaging support. A Republican poll taken by Susquehanna Polling and Research showed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith leading Democratic Sen. Bob Casey by 2 points a few weeks before the election; Casey won by 9 points.

Back to CBS. The piece lists the miscalculations the GOP made regarding their poll data:

1. They misread turnout. They expected it to be between 2004 and 2008 levels, with a plus-2 or plus-3 Democratic electorate, instead of plus-7 as it was in 2008. Their assumptions were wrong on both sides: The president's base turned out and Romney's did not. More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008. And fewer Republicans did: Romney got just over 2 million fewer votes than John McCain.

2. Independents. State polls showed Romney winning big among independents. Historically, any candidate polling that well among independents wins. But as it turned out, many of those independents were former Republicans who now self-identify as independents. The state polls weren't oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans - there just weren't as many Republicans this time because they were calling themselves independents.

3. Undecided voters. The perception is they always break for the challenger, since people know the incumbent and would have decided already if they were backing him. Romney was counting on that trend to continue. Instead, exit polls show Mr. Obama won among people who made up their minds on Election Day and in the few days before the election. So maybe Romney, after running for six years, was in the same position as the incumbent.

That's one view - reasonable, logical and supported by, you know evidence.

But never mind all that, Joseph Farah over at World Net Daily has the real reason why Romney ended up 116 Electoral and 3,309,000 Actual votes down.  It was VOTER FRAUD:

I also know that the reigning ethos of this movement represented so ably today by Obama is this: “By any means necessary …” It was first articulated by Jean Paul Sartre in his play, “Dirty Hands.” But it became popularized as a slogan of the revolutionary left by Malcolm X.

What it means, in short, is that the ends justify the means. It means violence is fine in achieving a worthwhile objective. It means lying, stealing, cheating and all those other bourgeoisie “sins” are appropriate means of furthering the cause.

Is there any doubt in your mind today that this is now the reigning ethos of the Democratic Party and its various tentacles and allies?

There is no doubt in my mind.

And that’s why stealing the vote is not only an acceptable practice by these people, it is a moral imperative in their twisted worldview.

Am I suggesting that the recent presidential election was stolen through voter fraud and manipulation?

Without a doubt.

While he writes that he has "plenty of anecdotal evidence" to support his view that 5% of the Democrat's support is attributed to fraud, he only offers us 4 examples.

None of which actually make much sense as evidence.  Let's take them one by one:

1) In Ohio, the voter rolls are "bloated" meaning that in some counties there are more people registered to vote than there are actual voters.  This, to Farah, is evidence of voter fraud.  What he leaves out of his quotation from his source material is these paragraphs:

The research found: more than 1.8 million dead people listed as voters; about 2.75 million with voter registrations in more than one state; and about 12 million voter records with incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them.

The latter category is where you’ll find most of Ohio’s 1.6 million inactive voters.

“For the most part, these are individuals who have already had mail returned to the board of elections or have filed a change of address with the U.S. post office,” said Husted spokeswoman Maggie Ostrowski.

Yet they are still officially registered to vote in Ohio and can cast a ballot if they provide a valid form of identification and their signature matches the one on file.

Bloated voter rolls in Ohio? Doesn't matter.

2) Michigan.  Farah wonders who Obama won so handily when the polls showed the two candidates in a virtual tie." Because they didn't. Take a look at Nate Silver's listing of the Michigan Poll data. Or Real Clear Politics. Nowhere in there is there any indication of a "virtual tie."

3) James O'Keefe and Project Veritas.  This doesn't even require a response.

4) WND's investigation that "demonstrated conclusively" that the Obama Campaign was taking illegal contributions via its website.  While I have no idea how this proves Voter Fraud, it did show that WND itself committed fraud by donating to a political campaign in someone else's name.

No limit of teh crazie over at World Net Daily.