"...Well, What Ya Got Here Is A Cassette Deck That Yer Tryin' To Play Yer BlueRay In...."

The outcome of the 2012 presidential election is good news.

But not for, depending on the color of your particular political stripe, the conclusion to which you might be immediately tempted to jump.

More in a moment.



(YahooNews)(NOTE: BOLD lettering added by original author of the news piece)

Losing is never a great way to increase your popularity. But to an unusually vocal degree, Republicans are going out of their way to show Romney the door.

A week and a half ago, Mitt Romney was the king of the Republican Party, drawing big, genuinely enthusiastic crowds to his presidential rallies and basking in glowing press from the conservative media. Now, after a landslide loss and post-election comments blaming his crushing defeat on "gifts" President Obama had doled out to young and minority voters, "Republicans are essentially coming together in a collective 'go away, Mitt,'" say Benjy Sarlin and Evan McMorris-Santoro at Talking Points Memo. "For conservatives and Republicans trying to make the GOP friendlier to those groups, Romney's comments have not been well-received. To say the least."

 

Romney is still in shock over his loss, and wants to keep on "rehashing why he didn't win" — blaming the voters, not his campaign — while Republicans are clearly trying to "move on as quickly as possible from an election that badly exposed their weaknesses," says Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. And since Romney embodies just about everything his party is trying to ditch — namely, "the stereotype that it is of, by, and for white, affluent men " — you can't blame the GOP for telling its failed nominee: "Thanks for playing. Now go away." The problem for Republicans is that "Romney has no motivation to toe the party line now," and no incentive to shut up.

But it doesn't really matter what Romney says now, says Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast. His losing campaign already irreparably — and unforgivably — damaged one of the GOP's sacred cows: Trickle-down economics.

Yes, Romney "killed Reaganomics." Voters had a stark choice between Obama's pledge to raise taxes on the rich while keeping middle-class taxes the same and Romney's central promise to cut everyone's taxes by a fat 20 percent.

There was a time when a promise of a 20-percent tax cut would have ended the whole conversation in Romney's favor. But all it accomplished this time was to raise questions — legitimate and never answered — about how he was going to pay for it. Romney had nothing to say to the middle class beyond cutting taxes and watching the magic happen. But voters have stopped believing in that magic. Some conservatives understand this. But it's literally three or four people right now.... The rest of the Republican Party is still in fantasy land.

 

Hey, let's give Romney some credit here, says Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. He's already managed to do something that's eluded Obama for four years: "Uniting the country across party lines." Of course, what's uniting everyone's is the belief that "he's someone who should leave as soon as possible and not say anything publicly again." But even there, Romney's hardly the first losing candidate to be thrown down the memory hole by his own party. Michael Dukakis? Bob Dole, anyone? The part of this that's amusingly unique to Romney is that a candidate who "was never more than a tolerated transplant among professional conservatives" is being drummed off the national stage by the GOP "precisely because he's continuing to make the kind of makers-and-takers type statements you might hear on a particularly feral and untethered right-wing blog."


First, I'm not entirely sure that the outcome constitutes the "landslide" that the author labels it in the second graph, so, I'm swallowing the whole of what he/she has to say with the obligatory grain of salt.

That said, though, I think there are a couple of key observations made that relate to my own opening assertion that the results of the election constitute good news.

Primarily that "......Republicans are clearly trying to "move on as quickly as possible from an election that badly exposed their weaknesses," says Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. And since Romney embodies just about everything his party is trying to ditch — namely, "the stereotype that it is of, by, and for white, affluent men..... "

When it comes to a preferred position, I would, if pressed, freely admit that, as a rule, I tend to find my feet on the liberal side of the line betwen liberal and conservative.

Although, I would always feel compelled to add to any admittance the assertion that I've never really been much for the whole "one side or the other" way of doing business, believing that life's issues are far too complex for them to boil down to a strictly "either/or" choice.

Unless, of course, a particular issue clearly belongs in the common sense folder in which case common sense would prevail.

Notwithstanding the amusing human paradox that common sense often seems neither common nor sensical.

But, I digress. And meander a bit.

The good news that comes from this election is that while the change that many were wanting will, obviously, not occur, change, in another form, will, in fact.

Occur.

That being that the old, traditional, once tried and true, but now no longer viable, practical or, more fundamentally, relevant way the Republican Party did business will evolve into a more viable, practical and relevant alternative recipe to whatever the Democrats are cooking up at any given time.

Spirited, passionate, even emotional, but, at its core, loyal opposition is a bedrock upon which this country was founded and has continued to survive/flourish through two plus centuries of its existence.

And all of the rambling rhetoric in the world (present dissertation included) can't alter the fact that our progress as a country and civilization always hinge on a couple of very simple premises.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If it is broke, fix it.

And...

Out with the old. In with the new.

A lot of people would have preferred seeing that last one defined as a change in the hands opening the "OCCUPANT" mail at 1600 Pennsylvania come January.

And they are, for the moment, feeling like they were robbed of the change they expected.

Not yet realizing that what they got, instead, was the change that they needed.