It's no longer Santa, it's turnout!!

[ms maggie]

So immediately after the election, the usual suspects (Fox, Limbaugh) start on how the reason for the loss is that too many Americans want free stuff.

Then, mysteriously, all that talk dried up. Simultaneously, almost like it was coordinated....(hey guys: remember how well that 47% went over???)

Now the story is that the Repubs didn't turn out their voters.

Now see what this shift does: it gets away from a POV argument--and one that might be a little too revealing about the mindset of the far right--and lands on a tactical shortcoming, which is so much easier to swallow!

The script now is that the Repubs/Romney failed to turn out 3 MM voters who voted in 2008 while the Obama machine excelled at this. Now we know the far right is arithmetic challenged, but think about how incredibly stupid someone has to be to swallow this.

First, the split of party identification was the same as in 2008

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/0...big-challenge/

Clearly, conservatives lost that argument last night, at least in large part, as John Ziegler wrote in the immediate aftermath. That was borne out by the final calculation in the exit polling as well as the vote itself. The partisan split in the electorate was 38/32/29, nearly identical to 2008. We argued that Barack Obama and Democrats couldn’t win a base turnout election again, but they did, as evidenced by Mitt Romney’s five-point win among independents, 50/45. Romney even lowered the gender gap from an Obama +14 in 2008 to Obama +4 in 2012, but that clearly wasn’t enough to overcome what now looks to be a significant realignment four years ago towards Democrats and not an anomaly.

And voter turnout was about 9MM less than 2008. Back of envelope math says ok, the R party identification is about a third, so their no-shows are roughly 3MM. In other words, their turnout proportionately took the same hit as Dems and independents.

Logic be damned. Think they will stick with this story--it allows them to ignore the larger issues. Bravo.

[reg_indy]

Its Republican math, or to quote Megyn Kelly:

'Is this just math you do to make Republicans feel better'

[lookoutbelow]

The Republican slogan continues to be "It's not me, it's you." As in, our ideas are sound, the problem is a majority of the country is too stupid to understand our genius. Until Repubs start looking inwardly, they will continue to lose presidential elections.

Note to Democrats: don't get too full of yourselves. Remember 2010.