I didn't get to write much over the last two days because I was the anchor for the Election Day prime time coverage on Wide Awakes Radio and spent a LOT of time preparing for that as well as doing interviews with other hosts. I still have a LOT more to say, but these are my first general impressions...The GOP was plagued with three major problems. As I see it, those problems are arrogance, deafness, and a lack of teamwork. Let me explain...
Arrogance
You can't talk about arrogance and not start with the Bobs... I knew we were in serious trouble in this state when the Ohio GOP failed to turn on Governor Bob Taft when he plead "no contest" to ethics charges and then decided to stay in office so that every story involving the governor could include CoinGate. Thanks, Bob, that really helped the party out a lot! Bob Ney, thanks for really sticking in there until the last minute to drop out of the race because you decided to pull the Taft Manuever. That masterstroke of "annointing" Joy Padgett was pure genius too! And let us come to the archetect of this Titanic disaster, Bob Bennett...Bob, all you needed to do was do the right thing, but you couldn't...and for that, Ohio is going to suffer. Thanks, Bob, for showing what party "leadership" really means.....
Moving on...
I think that the 72-hour program was a wonderful idea and a smart innovation, but relying on one campaign tool to pull it out is not smart at all. We had all this "science" telling us that we could wait before seriously campaigning. Even more "science" telling us where we needed to campaign. The arrogant presumption that all Republicans needed was an "R" after there name is what did us in...
Deafness
That the Ohio GOP was in trouble should not have been a surprise to anybody, a number of bloggers who are now a part of the SOB Alliance told them all about it on a daily basis back when the Ohio GOP blog actually took comments...
I still think Party officials need to connect with the people more than they do. Sure, they get out and visit all of the county headquarters and they do keep in fairly good communications with the right political people. BUT, they haven't a clue about what the average Joe Voter in this state thinks... Near as I can tell, they live in a world of "science" and statistics. Perhaps I beating up on my friends in the Ohio GOP a bit too much here; but I really think that if they are relying on "official" word from the county party structure and not paying attention to the populace itself, they are not doing the party any service.
The only poll that matters is on election day...perhaps now our friends in the Ohio GOP will hear us: it is time to clean house. The Old Guard, which is corrupt to the core, needs to go...
Lack of Teamwork
Up to this point, I have been fairly critical of politicians and party officials. Now we must turn our eye to the various "coalitions" which make up the "big tent" that is our party. We need to face some facts and one of those facts is that the "moderates" can't win without the conservatives. And equally important, the conservatives can't win without the "moderates" in this state. We have to work together to defeat liberalism. Teamwork is what was required, and quite frankly it wasn't there. There were "moderates" who failed to support Ken Blackwell for Governor and there were conservatives who failed to support Mike DeWine. Guess what? They both lost...because we failed to work together as a team. Infighting cost us an election last night and the hard left picked up a Senate seat and will drive our business economy to the bottom of the list...
The time for this nonsense is during the primaries. Once those are over, our coalition has to get to work for ALL the candidates or the fight against liberalism in this state is LOST.
Special note to my friends in the Ohio GOP: Can we now agree that the "big tent" is now too big? Can we define some principles by which we stand as a party? Or shall we continue on thinking we have some divine right to govern in the state of Ohio?
Final Thoughts
All was not lost last night. We suffered some devestating defeats, but I think we still maintain control of the Ohio Legislature. (When the top two candidates announced they've conceded 15 minutes before results are posted to the public, I didn't bother to look in on the rest of Ohio results...why bother? I figure, if we lost, someone would have conceded.............)
Much more to come after I get a chance to pour through the numbers and make comparisons with what I was seeing before the election...
