AOSHQ: The 2012 Primaries Could Have Been Worse

Ace of Spades, HQ

Quote:

If you haven't totally suppressed your memory of the 2012 primaries, you'll recall that Mitt and Rick split Iowa, Mitt took New Hampshire, and Newt won big in South Carolina. Newt looked to solidify himself as the one and only viable not-Mitt candidate in the race. But, an awful debate performance and a Mitt Romney attack ad barrage sealed Newt's fate[ emphasis added]

Comment:

That must have been about the time that I soured on Romney.  He completely misrepresented what Newt said in the Florida debate, with respect to a Moon base.   As far as the ad goes, it was Romney's style to attack, but strangely enough, he pulled his punches on Benghazi in the general election.  Newt would have pummeled Obama on this.  Santorum too, most likely.

As for the statement that "it could have been worse"--- meh.

Reading through my analysis, I am very pleased with what I wrote at that time.

Update:

It looks like I'm starting to be a little critical of what has been considered stalwarts of conservatism, like Ace.

Here's something else that has gotten my attention on that blog: Liberal Writer: Reports of the GOP's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.

I don't think the GOP has to be pro-gay marriage.*...* You may have guessed my own position has shifted from "I'm against it" to "I no longer care." I think it's a rather undemocratic situation to have so many millions of people be completely unrepresented by either party on an issue of importance to them.

Now, here's the GOP, losing an election that they could have won, and drawing the wrong conclusions from it.  It looks like Ace is doing the same danged thing.

Rather than defend the culture, they are abandoning it because they feel that they can't win with the issue.  Rather than admit their failings in losing what was winnable, they are blaming it on something external to themselves, like "low-information voters", and drawing the wrong conclusions.

It's not the low-information voter, it is a stultifying effect that Romney's attack on Gingrich demonstrated.  Romney attacks something new, which could solve a problem, like NASA's lack of direction, while failing to attack the problem of big government itself.  The failure in attacking big government comes from accepting the other sides' premises.  Gingrich didn't accept the big government premise, he was attacking it.  Yet, somehow, he became the big government advocate.  In the case of the Moon base, the other side's premise which was accepted was that it would take a big government project that would cost a trillion dollars.

Paul Spudis has claimed that a cislunar transportation system ( Moon base ) can be built for about $90 billion.  It is far less than a trillion and would fit into existing budgets.  It would only take a different set of priorities to achieve this---not additional spending.  The numbers have been vetted by none other than NASA's own people in Huntsville.  So, when Romney says it would cost a trillion, he has thrown cold water on something that is a real proposal and deemed it "grandiose" and "zany".  It was no such thing.

So, what we end up is with a guy like Romney, who either doesn't know this or doesn't care.  This is the kind of thinking that has kept America back for the last 40 years in space, and it is not confined to space, I suspect.  In addition to space, there's an invention called a molten-salt reactor that's been around that long too, but hasn't gotten support.

All we need is some new thinking and Romney killed that.  Along with that, he killed the GOP's chances to win last year.

It makes little sense to take the wrong lessons from this defeat, which is to accept even more of the premises of the opposition.

But that may take some new thinking, which is too hard for some people, I suspect.