President Obama Wins Re-Election, Republicans Need To Reflect

President Obama - photo by pennstatelive

Congratulations to our 44th President, Barack Obama, on winning re-election over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. At about a quarter after eleven Eastern on election night Obama was projected the winner of Ohio which took his electoral vote count to 274 (270 needed to win). It should be noted that all the networks called Ohio around the same time including Fox News, but pundits on the conservative news channel still refuse to accept that Obama won Ohio (over 30 minutes after it was called), and as of publishing, the Romney campaign has yet to concede.

I also want to congratulate Elizabeth Warren in defeating Scott Brown to become Senator of the great state of Massachusetts.

As for the Republican Party, the GOP going forward needs to find a different path to victory. They cannot rely on the white vote alone. I say this not as a partisan but as someone who believes it’s a bad thing for one political party to gain too much power. Hell, I’ve made it known in the past that I don’t even like political parties.

I think many Republicans don’t recognize that their path to victory in presidential elections has been shrinking over the past two decades. We don’t know who won the popular vote yet, but assuming Obama wins the popular vote tonight that will mean a Republican has only won the popular vote in a presidential election once since 1988 (Bush, 2004). The current Republican social agenda makes it difficult to win a national election and it makes it impossible for Republicans to win Reagan-style landslides. But it seems many Republicans think the answer to their political woes is to go even more conservative in the next election, and this only makes things worse.

When you have a state like California with 55 electoral votes (most in the country) which is guaranteed to never go Republican with the current Republican social agenda, that’s a serious problem for the GOP. Republicans cannot believe starting out each presidential election down 55 electoral votes is a good recipe for success. And this is a problem for the Republican Party not just in California but in many high population states like New York and New Jersey. So I think the Republican Party, regardless of the fact that they maintained a strong majority in the House, need to do some reflection post-election.

UPDATE: At 12:50am, MSNBC reports that Mitt Romney has phoned President Obama and congratulated him on winning re-election.

photo by pennstatelive

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