J. Christian Adams:
We learned last night that the punditry’s “GOP autopsy” after the 2012 Mitt Romney loss was dead wrong.
Also called the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” the autopsy scolded the party, insisting that new immigration policies and racial pandering were necessary to win future elections. Naturally, such policies would have been a growth and opportunity project for the consultants who would be paid to create them.
Had Jeb Bush been on the ballot yesterday, and had he followed the autopsy recommendations, Hillary Clinton would be president.
Any candidate following the autopsy’s recommendations of pandering to racial identity politics would have lost precisely in the states that gave Trump his win: Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The autopsy suggested that Republicans adopt immigration policies such as amnesty and amnesty-lite to appease Hispanic voters. It suggested other ventures into racial identity politics, expressly claiming that Republicans could never win again if they didn’t sound a lot more like Democrats.
Instead, Trump marched along a path to the White House Republicans can implement for another generation: fight for existential cultural issues that appeal in working-class areas like Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and Macomb County, Michigan. There weren’t Latino votes to be had in the counties that gave Trump the White House. Racial identity politics aren’t necessary for Republicans to win anything. But appeal to blue-collar voters in rural counties who feel alienated by damage the institutional Left unleashed on the America they grew up in, and you win the White House.
Trump’s winning path rejected the Black Lives Matter movement. It did not treat it as credible.
The GOP autopsy report recommended exactly the opposite.
Naturally, it had been written largely through rose-colored Jeb! glasses. Sally Bradshaw, one of the five authors of the autopsy, was so offended by Trump’s approach that she promised to vote for Hillary Clinton. She probably assumed she’d be voting for the winner — she assumed her autopsy was right.
Thankfully, we learned last night the autopsy was wrong, dead wrong. That cannot be repeated enough today.
We also learned other things last night.
We learned that the reactionary and rabid “Never Trump” movement might have been morally defensible in some hearts, but was an enormous strategic blunder.
Nobody looks sillier this morning than the turncoats who claimed to care about the federal judiciary and about reversing the damage and lawlessness the Left has caused, yet refused to vote for Trump. Except maybe Sally Bradshaw.
The other winner last night was conservative New Media.
Never again should anyone in the Republican party take the New York Timesseriously.
Trump gave them the finger — and won. Compare this with four years ago, when Mitt Romney wouldn’t even appear on conservative talk radio.
I see the usial little spoiled brats in the gay bay area and southern mexifornia threw their little temper tantrums like all spoiled little brats do when they dont get their way
The politicized IRS had audited Donald Trump every single year for more than the last 10 years.
His businesses are going into a blind trust and being turned over to his sons and daughters.
He is going to work for the American people for $1/year.
Will the IRS STILL go after him?
When will they drop their case.
maybe the irs under Trump should audit all the media channels in this country.