Juicy piece in Politico Monday morning about how social conservatives aren't about to roll over and accept gay marriage. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum chimed in with the usual "we lost because McCain and Romney were moderates" nonsense, but buried in the piece was this nugget from Gary Bauer.

Social conservatives are particularly — and understandably — bothered that the elites rarely want to discuss the elephant in the room: that the party’s economic policies don’t necessarily appeal to the the rank and file, who vote Republican because it is the party of traditional values.

“If we gave our voters an accurate portrayal of our ideas, that we want to cut the rate of growth on Social Security, give tax cuts to billionaires and then the values issues, the values issues would be more popular than the economic agenda of the current Republican Party,” said Bauer, citing particularly those Mass-attending Roman Catholics who have fled the Democrats.

Bauer added, “I would caution the donor wing of the Republican Party that is driving a lot of this: If they think social conservatives are the only thing preventing Republicans from winning, they’ll learn that their economic agenda will go down the tubes along with the Republican Party’s prospects.”

Couple of interesting things here.

One, Bauer is accusing the Republican Party of basically lying about it's economic agenda. They've tried to gut social programs under the ridiculous guise of "saving them." Well, Bauer just said, no: they want to cut those programs to shovel free money at billionaires, and that's exactly what the Ryan budgets do.

The second thing is Bauer is right on the unpopularity of this agenda. Most voters don't want Social Security cut, or Medicare for that matter, but they overwhelmingly favor raising taxes on rich people.

Beltway Republicans have convinced themselves that all they need to do is stop bashing gays, immigrants, and women -- and that will fix all their problems. But this analysis totally ignores the fact, as Bauer pointed out, that Americans just aren't buying trickle-down anymore.

Every Friday until the end of the year, we're counting down the stupidest right-wing tweets of 2012. Next Friday, we'll post all the contenders so you can vote on the stupidest. So far, we've heard from Nooners, Eric Cantor and John Hawkins.

And today, the Anchor Baby.

It's arguable that Mitt Romney lost election the moment his now infamous remarks, in which he basically called half the country freeloaders and victims who want free stuff, went viral. Even most Republican pundits were appalled, and saw right away that serious damage had been done.

But to the True Believers like the Anchor Baby (and others) -- this was a clarifying moment, one to be embraced. Victory was surely around the corner -- calling half the country parasitic victims is electoral gold! As I wrote at the time,

It's almost as though Malkin and her ilk really believe that the GOP's path to victory is to win 140% of the wingnut vote.

Pretty much.

Memo to Republicans: please keep heeding Michelle Malkin's advice. Thanks!

This was entirely predictable, but still hilarious.

“The moderates have had their candidate in 2008 and they had their candidate in 2012. And they got crushed in both elections. Now they tell us we have to keep moderating. If we do that, will we win?” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Family Leader. Vander Plaats is an influential Christian conservative who opposed Romney in the Iowa caucuses 10 months ago and opposed Sen. John McCain’s candidacy four years ago.

Never mind that Romney didn't campaign as a "moderate" on a single issue--not one. Ignore that he picked right-wing darling Paul Ryan as his running mate. And forget the fact that Romney surged after the first debate, when he Etch-a-Sketched himself lots of moderate positions.

Nope, Romney/Ryan lost because Romney was insufficiently wingnutty. That's the ticket!

“It was the one time we actually contested ideas, presented two viewpoints and directions for the country,” he [Ted Cruz (R-TX)] said at the Federalist Society’s annual dinner in Washington. “And then, inevitably, there are these mandarins of politics, who give the voice: ‘Don’t show any contrasts. Don’t rock the boat.’ So by the third debate, I’m pretty certain Mitt Romney actually French-kissed Barack Obama.”

So, Ted Cruz thinks Romney lost the election because he agreed with him too much during the foreign policy debate? Delusional.

The way politics works is, if don't know why you're losing, you'll just keep losing. So keep it up, guys.

Palin/Cruz 2016!

Mitt Romney ran one of the most racially charged campaigns we've seen in a very long time. Now if we add in his racist surrogates then it becomes the most overtly racist campaign evah! And he took eight days to reflect on his presidential loss so I figured he might tone it down a bit after the adrenalin of months of campaigning wore off and the depression starts to set in.

Boy, was I wrong:

Saying that he and his team still felt “troubled” by his loss to President Obama, Mitt Romney on Wednesday attributed his defeat in part to what he called big policy “gifts” that the president had bestowed on loyal Democratic constituencies, including young voters, African-Americans and Hispanics.

In a conference call with fund-raisers and donors to his campaign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday afternoon that the president had followed the “old playbook” of using targeted initiatives to woo specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.”

“In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, contrasting Mr. Obama’s strategy to his own of “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.”

After eight years of being fleeced by the Bush administration, it appears the American people aren't as dumb as this inhumane man. It appears he did watch BIll O'Reilly's show even though he declined to go on it and reiterated almost everything O'Reilly said. BillO kept it real simple when he said that Americans just wanted 'stuff', but Romney gets very specific in his claims.

What's funny about this is that in his attempts to denounce President Obama he actually makes a good case why all these things are great for the middle class. And he wonders why he couldn't reach so many Americans.

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.”

Heaven forbid that even as Obama struggled in his first four years he did manage to get some good things out there. College loan assistance: check. Help with contraceptives: check. Health care for young adults: check. Now he gets to da Blacks y Latinos.

The president’s health care plan, he said, was also a useful tool in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus.---But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

President Obama was always going to win the black vote even if he wasn't black, and Hispanics will never vote for a party that portrays them as stupid f*&king illegal moochers that need to be shot crossing the border. And we know which party that is, and continues to be.

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[H/t David]

Here's Paul Ryan, in a single sentence, explaining why he and Mitt Romney lost to the black guy.

"I think the surprise was some of the turnout, especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race."

Yeah, it wasn't the fact that a majority of Americans rejected Romney/Ryan's and the GOP's policies, it wasn't the fact that most Americans thought Obama/Biden deserved a second term -- it's just that those "urban" people -- well, you know how they are.

I also love it when he says he and Mitt ran a "great campaign." There's that soft bigotry of low expectations again.

Everyone gets a medal, Paul!

After the GOP's third drubbing in the past four national elections, right-wingers are still clueless about why they keep losing. One of the most common theories -- offered by the likes of El Rushbo and Bill O'Reilly -- is that the majority of the country are freeloaders who want "stuff."

“It’s a changing country, the demographics are changing,” O’Reilly said. “It’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.”

And El Rusbho:

Romney's recipe was the old standby: American route to success, hard work. That gets sneered at. I'm sorry. In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins?

This is basically Mitt Romney "47%" argument -- and Paul Ryan's "makers vs. takers" theory.

But there's a logic problem here, because right-wingers are also convinced that one of the main reasons George W. Bush and the GOP lost so badly in ''06 and '08 was "spending":

And by "spending" -- let's be clear. She's not talking about defense or homeland security -- she means welfare, or as O'Reilly put it, "stuff" for non-white people. And this "spending" explanation is was constantly cited by Teabaggers back in '09 and '10.

But both can't be true.

If George W. Bush and the GOP were rejected by the American people for giving out too much "stuff" -- then Obama shouldn't be winning elections by doing the same.

The fact is, it's just laughable to assert that George W. Bush was hugely unpopular when he left office -- and still is -- because he was too generous to working people. I have yet to see an exit poll from 2006 or 2008 that supported the claim that people were voting Democratic because of Republican "spending."

The real problem for the GOP is that George W. Bush's economic policies were indistinguishable from Mitt Romney's and Paul Ryan's -- tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and deregulation for businesses -- and he had the worst economic record of any post-WWII president. Most people's lives got worse, not better.

And when Republicans told them it got worse because the government was handing out too many free goodies -- they didn't believe them. Nor did they believe that all we had to do was shovel more free money at the "makers" in the form of lower taxes -- and all our problems would be solved.

As long as Republicans keep deluding themselves about why they keep losing elections, they will keep right on losing.

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I wrote a piece the other day titled Dr. Strangehammer's Ugly Conservative Bile-Filled Rant in which FOX News' resident conservative claimed that President Obama won no mandate and the Republicans would not have to work with him.

Krauthammer: I think the real story here is that Obama won, but he’s got no mandate. He won by going very small and very negative and we are left with a country exactly where we started, but a little worse off. The Republicans are in control of the House, probably a little bit stronger they are not going to budge. There’s no way in which after holding out on Obama for two years they are going to cave in. And Obama doesn’t have really anywhere to go.

If he gets the majority of the popular vote it’ll be very small if there’s any and even in the electoral it’s going to be a rather small majority particularly if Virgina and Florida go to Romney. So this is not a mandate either in the numbers or the way he campaigned.

Obama won a big EV and Democrats won more House and Senate seats while Obama has increased his win by clearly outdistancing Romney in the popular vote by a wide margin, but let that alone for now. Let's say Obama won by one vote and one EV vote. What would Dr. Strangehammer have said if he was a Republican that won? Here's an article he wrote soon after the 1988 election was over on November, 14th and George Bush was the winner. (h/t Snig)

A Mandate To Govern Is A Matter Of Majority

The "mandate'---nonsense has been going on nonstop since election night. Every half-hour, one maven or another declares that George Bush won the election, but no mandate. The insistence on this point is curious, since Bush never asked for a mandate. In fact, he never even presented an agenda. He held a referendum on the status quo and won in a walk.

Bush's only promise was more of the same. And as Eisenhower made clear in titling the first volume of his memoirs, mandates are for change. If you want reform or revolution, you need a mandate. If you promise continuity, you need only a majority.

So why the fuss about mandates? It is a preemptive attack on Bush's legitimacy.When Democrats defiantly declare that they refuse to give Bush the mandate he never asked for, they are not being tautological. They are being acutely political. It a high-sounding way' of saying that Bush may have won on paper, but because he won in a way of which one disapproves, he is not entitled to the full powers of the office.
Congressional Democrats may be in no mood to listen to President Bush. They have the perfect right not to listen. But mandate talk is a subtle way of saying that they have a duty not to listen.
It is a way of saying: We are authorized to resist President Bush not just by the nature of our congressional vote, but also by the nature of his presidential vote, correctly understood.

Incorrectly understood. The founders said nothing about a president needing a mandate in order to exercise his executive functions, only a majority of Electoral College. That was John Kennedy's view, too.

After winning election by the smallest popular margin in history, "he rejected the argument that the country had given him no mandate," wrote Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy aide and sometime Dukakis speechwriter.

"Every election has a winner and a loser, he said in effect ... a margin of only one vote would still be a mandate."

The point is that for a mandate to govern you need only a one-vote majority. A mandate for change requires an agenda ratified by a landslide. But that has only happened three times since World War II. In 1952, Eisenhower won a mandate to end the Korean War. In 1964, Johnson won a mandate to launch the Great Society and keep the country out of war. (He batted .500.) And in 1980 Reagan won a mandate to rearm and cut taxes.
Compared to the norm, Bush's mandate to govern is as firm as that of any postwar president. You know something is suspect when you realize that the same people expressing such retroactive admiration for, Reagan's mandate and faulting Bush for not having the same are usually those who opposed every element of Reagan's mandate when he tried to enact it.

In essence Charles Krauthammer has told America that Obama has won the election and he has the right to govern as he campaigned on. Obama did not run on a change meme, he ran on raising taxes on the wealthy and 250K is the marker to be used, immigration reform, women's rights, LGBT rights, saving Medicare and Social Security from the destructive Republicans hands, health care and ending the two wars. What Conservatives have been doing since election night is to try and delegitimize Obama's win again. Strangehammer made the case in 1988 against Democrats and so it should apply to 2012 that the GOP has an obligation to work with the president and not the other way around.

So Charles, what say you to yourself?

UPDATE: Alex Seitz-Wald writes this about Dr. Strangehammer on Nov.7th:

The lack of a mandate, according to Krauthammer, comes from two things: Obama’s negative campaign and his small margin of victory. So what would a real mandate look like? Krauthammer helpfully explained on Fox News Sunday the weekend after President Bush was reelected in 2004:

I think it was a huge issue that the president was weak in his first term. He had less of the power and strength and capital, as he speaks of, than he does today. And now that he’s been elected with a large majority, or a significant majority, and with a mandate, I think part of that mandate is to get the right judges, by his likes.

Bush won with 286 electoral votes to John Kerry’s 252, and with a 2.4 percent margin in the popular vote. Obama currently has 303 electoral votes to Romney’s 206, and he’s likely to add to that the 29 votes from Florida, which hasn’t been called yet, for a grand total of 332

Why were wingnuts convinced that Mitt Romney was going to win the election last night when all the polls said otherwise?

Let's count a few ways.

The Scott Walker recall failed!

Sarah Palin had this to say after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was declared the winner of Tuesday’s recall election: “Obama’s goose is cooked.”

Republicans don't like Obama because of the Recovery Act!

He alienated most of what little Republican support he had with the Stimulus Bill.

Obama lost the first debate!

Mitt Romney won Round 1 decisively. Wednesday’s presidential debate marked the beginning of the end for President Obama.

There were lots of Romney lawn signs everywhere!

There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm. The Democrats do not. Independents are breaking for Romney. And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same. From tony Northwest Washington, D.C., I hear the same.

Lots of Republicans ate at Chic-fil-A and saw the Breitbart movie!

I've written here before that politics is all about showing up. And in recent months, people on the Right have been doing a lot of showing up. They've showed up at Romney-Ryan events in unprecedented numbers. They made Dinesh D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America" a huge hit despite a virtual blackout from traditional media. They stood in line for hours at Chick-fil-A restaurants to buy chicken sandwiches in response to politicians' bullying. They packed houses at the "Hating Breitbart" premiere.

Because of abortion!

On November 7, we may well look back at this week’s events and see that this was the week that President Obama lost the presidency — because of the abortion issue.

Because he made the Catholic bishops mad!

President Obama just may have lost the election. The president signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that says that under ObamaCare, Catholic institutions—including charities, hospitals and schools—will be required by law, for the first time ever, to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures.

The polls are all biased!

“Despite the pattern of skewed polls, most of them commissioned by the mainstream media, the overall electoral landscape is looking more and more favorable for Romney.”

He's losing the Jewish vote!

Obama has been weak in his support of Israel. Many Jewish voters and big donors are angry and disappointed. I predict Obama's Jewish support drops from 78% in 2008 to the low 60’s.

Romney's lead with independents!

Given all the available information – Romney’s lead among independents, the outlier nature of the 2008 turnout model, the elections held since 2008, the party ID surveys, the voter registration, early voting and absentee ballot data – I have to conclude that there is no remaining path at this late date for Obama to win the national popular vote. He is toast.

Wingnuts' consistently spectacular wrongness is truly something to behold, is it not?

Unless I'm mistaken, there is no constitutional legal right to ride roller coasters, so there's that.

But it's just amazing that clowns like Podhoretz don't understand that waiting in line for hours on end to vote might be a wee bit of a problem if, say, you get paid by the hour, and your boss doesn't give you time off.

Guess you wouldn't if you were bequeathed a wingnut welfare gig by your dad.

It's tough out there for a white male wingnut.

Is there anything more pathetic than right-wing victimhood? Anything?