The Big Election Post-Mortem Pundit Post

Jim Geraghty:

Phil Klein noted that the exit polls indicated Romney won voters 65 and older by 11 percentage points. So one could argue that the Ryan reform proposals weren't quite as politically difficult to sell as some warned, but . . . the Romney-Ryan campaign offered serious reform of runaway entitlement programs. And the American people -- or at least enough people in enough states adding up to more than 270 electoral votes -- rejected it.

I feel a bit like when Jerry Brown beat Meg Whitman out in California: If you really think that the guy with the tired promises of spending more and taxing more is really going to save you, I can't help you.

Jedidiah Bila:

I always hear "We are a center-right country."

No. A center-right country does not elect Barack Obama twice.

Time to re-evaluate.

Peter Ingemi:

We conservatives will have to double our efforts to teach but the results of the next four years under Barack Obama will do that more effectively than anything else.

Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn in no other. Get ready America you are about to have a four-year course and the joys of socialism with a president who no longer has an incentive to pretend he is anything but the radical he has always been.

May you be Happy in the choice you have made because you’re not going to get another one for four years.

John Brodigan:

Meh, we lost.

Romney was the best of our choices in the primary.

He put Paul Ryan on a national stage, and my money is on Ryan being Speaker of the House.

We start off with our best on the bench for 2016.

We held the House. We can take the Senate in two.

Take a break from the Internets tomorrow.

The Republic stands. God bless America.

Monica Crowley:

A very slight majority---but a majority---of the American people KNOWINGLY chose four more years (at least) of high unemployment, anemic economic growth, break-the-bank spending, unsustainable and record-breaking deficits and debt, unpopular and bankrupting socialized medicine, and record numbers of people on food stamps and living in poverty. They KNOWINGLY chose four more years ... of this.

...When Obama came into office in January 2009, he had three main, overarching goals: first, to expand government as fast and as widely as possible; the ultimate objective of that was to expand the number of people dependent of government as fast and as widely as possible; and the ultimate objective of THAT was to leverage it into a permanent Democrat voting majority. If you are getting a constant stream of freebies from a government promising to stick it to the other guy while providing you with cradle-to-grave "security," you are less likely to vote out the guy doling out the free stuff.

Obama had a multi-pronged strategy to achieve those three goals, but two were particularly effective. First, he chose a path of divide and conquer to pit Americans against each other in order to make it easier to slide in his radical redistributionist agenda. He divided us by class, gender, race, and age. He turned the American motto, "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One") upside down. It is now, "Out of One, Many." The American experiment cannot go on as it once did driven by divisions and envy rather than uniting values and common goals.

Jim Geraghty, again:

And just think, Obama thought he inherited a lot of problems back in 2009.

And lastly: me, for what it's worth:

Hurricane Sandy and Crispy Creme Christie didn't lose the election. Racism didn't lose the election. Lack of pandering to various ethnic groups didn't lose the election.

Lack of money didn't lose the election. The choice of Paul Ryan as VP didn't lose the election. Mitt Romney didn't lose the election.

A corrupt Democrat Party and an equally corrupt Vintage Media lost this election.

Folks, whether you are Democrat or Republican, we are set on a course for fiscal collapse.

The math is simple, certain -- and not something with which you can negotiate.

President Obama's debt trajectory of $25+ trillion -- and the Democrats' refusal to pass a budget -- are not matters of conjecture. These points can't be debated.

America just reelected the most fiscally irresponsible government in world history.

No government in world history had ever run a trillion-dollar deficit until Barack Obama and the 110th Congress came along; he has since rung up four such deficits in a row.

No country can survive these levels of debt.

The postmodern Democrat Party and -- most importantly -- old media are responsible for the misery that is to come.

The progressives' plans for unraveling the Constitution have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. If you look at the agenda of the Fabian Socialists, virtually every tenet has come to pass thanks to FDR, LBJ, Carter, Clinton, Bush and now Obama. Unchecked retirement benefits, rampant proliferation of public sector unions, the takeover of the educational system with progressive curricula, the moral decay of America's youth promoted by the likes of MTV, unchecked illegal immigration and Balkanization, "free" health care, "free" welfare and a myriad of other entitlements have set the country on a course for institutionalized dependency and -- I can assure you with mathematical certainty -- a fiscal calamity.

The only question now is: how much economic pain will people endure (Kroger and Darden Restaurants being the latest examples of Obama's "concern" for the lower-middle class) before they reject the doomed policies of the collectivist? Or will a true economic collapse, war, or other unforeseen events first conspire to shred what remains of the civil society?

We're either reliving the New Deal or the Weimar Republic, but I can't tell which.