Depending on what it is you're thinking of in terms of what the GOP was saying... quite a lot of it was mildly terrifying to many of us, as well. (At least a majority of us, ha!)
The essential problem (from my perspective as a moderate and unaffiliated voter) is that the GOP has tacked hard to the right, in part because of how the candidate selection process is set up, partly because a lot of folks are seeing certain tides shifting in the US, especially demographically, and they themselves are deeply terrified of those changes. For instance, for the first time in who knows how long, contraception was actually on the table as an issue, at least in the GOP candidate selection process.
A lot of us were puzzled at best, terrified at worst. And that wasn't the only issue like that, just one of the more bizarre. (And I can go into why it happened, I think, but I'll spare you unless you're truly curious.)
Lots of discussion over here of the elephant in the room - the coded phrase in US politics is, I think, demographics - i.e. the changing makeup of the US electorate and the perception on the GOP side that they had to go in hard on their base and hence abandon huge swathes of the US population wholesale. Don't know if that's true, certainly know that the sheer carpet-chewing awfulness of some of the Republican contenders in the primaries was terrifying. No doubt that pushed Romney to the positions he espoused during the primaries and the convention and made it very difficult for him to craft an appeal to the broader electorate
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Yeah, "demographics" was a big hit here, so to speak, as well. Some commentators actually came out and said, "Romney needed the white share of the electorate to be larger." And that is basically the name of the game. As I expected at the time, I think the 2010 Tea Party shift was the last great hurrah of the aging white male voter. Not only did Obama win, but nearly every politician who said something appallingly stupid about rape (for instance) was sent packing. Same sex marriage was four-of-four in their referenda and pot legalization won all or nearly all of its. And this was all in spite of a massive GOP push to make it harder for minorities, especially, and the young to vote
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The essential problem (from my perspective as a moderate and unaffiliated voter) is that the GOP has tacked hard to the right, in part because of how the candidate selection process is set up, partly because a lot of folks are seeing certain tides shifting in the US, especially demographically, and they themselves are deeply terrified of those changes. For instance, for the first time in who knows how long, contraception was actually on the table as an issue, at least in the GOP candidate selection process.
A lot of us were puzzled at best, terrified at worst. And that wasn't the only issue like that, just one of the more bizarre. (And I can go into why it happened, I think, but I'll spare you unless you're truly curious.)
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