Will GOP leadership get the message or stay the course of the hard right after President Obama's Huge Win Last Night?

My first time voting for a Democrat for President was a success as President Obama won handily not only in the electoral college but in the popular vote proving conservative pundits wrong.  A strong message was sent by voters to the Republican Party that going hard right is not going to win national elections and becoming the all white party is a huge mistake.  The question is whether or not the GOP will learn the lesson.  Senator John Cornyn last night calls for 'period of reflection and recalibration' for Republicans as the Hard Right Tea Party Senate candidates that wanted to redefine rape went down in flames.  Shame Senator McConnell couldn't have said similar words as his statement was defiant not congratulating the President on his win or offering an olive branch.

Now we are starting to hear from conservative pundits that the GOP lost because Romney was a Massachusetts liberal.  How can Republicans/Conservatives be so stupid?  Many of us were saying that when Romney ran and the hard right started supporting him.  The RNC went all in for Romney and the GOP/Rove/Morris/Fox News kept lying about Obama to the stage a group of us joined Republicans for Obama as we could not take the lies any longer refusing to be part of a group that supported a man who thought 47% of us were worthless.

If the GOP continues going to the hard right, you can put a fork in them for national elections.  The days of the white voters being the determining factor are coming to a close especially when you realize that a lot of white women won't vote for Republican Neanderthals.  White male blue collar works in the old 'rust belt' states stood up for Obama against Romney.  The unions didn't make the huge monetary contributions to candidates but they provided something more tangible -- boots on the ground.  In states that Obama won, his campaign turned out the volunteers in big numbers, his donations were fueled by small donors who bought into his campaign, and his message was heard loud and clear as he stood on his record saying there was more to be accomplished.  Many liberal leaning pundits thought he was giving the wrong message but in the end the Obama strategy was correct.  The American people were willing to give him four more years to get the job done.  This time if the Republicans obstruct, they will be out on their ears in 2014.

Romney had the huge donors who spent over $1B, but he had to hire people to make calls and door knock, had very few small donors relying mostly on the wealthy and little GOTV in operation as Rove and company thought they could buy this election with negative ads that lied and little ground game.   The American people said NO to a candidate trying to buy an election and to vote suppression.

GOP is now trying to blame the hurricane and Gov Christi, but they are wrong IMHO.  The day Romney lied about Jeep moving everything to China which was repudiated by Chrysler and General Motors, was the day he lost the rust belt states.  Romney doubled down keeping up with the lies and even made a campaign ad which ran in the 'rust belt' states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.  The worst part was seeing Republicans I trusted spring to Romney's defense on Jeep.  Finally Ohio Governor Kasich broke with Romney on Jeep but Senator Portman doubled down along with others.

Rudy Guiliani made an absolute fool of himself in the end calling for the President Obama to resign, be impeached, or voted out for his incompetence over Libya and his response to Hurricane Sandy which made no sense but he lost it completely and with it the respect of a lot of us who had worked for his 2008 election.

I have included this email below from MSNBC this morning that breaks down the demographics and shows just how bad off the Republicans are in the future if they don't change.  They had better look to Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio where voter suppression didn't work.  Cutting voting hours to help Romney or making it hard to get a voter ID, only added to the disgust of many minorities but also to life long Republicans like me.  The very idea that Rick Scott cut voting hours so drastically should get him kicked out of office as the Florida Governor in 2014.  Americans want voting laws that encourage people to vote -- no one should have to stand in line for 7-8 hours to vote.  Anyone involved in this voter suppression we witnessed should be charged IMHO.

The whine coming out of Karl Rove last night was actually funny as he couldn't believe Fox News had declared Ohio for Obama.  Rove went into a meltdown talking about his numbers, his numbers when it was Cleveland and Cincinnati where votes which were still out -- no way was Romney going to win in either county.  Rove was demanding that Fox News pull back their call of Ohio for Obama, but they refused.  Then there was the right wing media:

Right-Wing Media React To Obama's Re-Election: War, Impeachment, Revolution

It is time the GOP wake up and realize that they need to be reaching out to minority voters or in the years ahead they are going to be the real minority party left with a bunch of neanderthal ideas trying to go back to the 1950's.  Whether that hard right Tea Party and social conservative coalition wants to admit it, they lost big last night.  Only a matter of time, until AZ, TX, and GA start turning blue with their large minority populations.  GOP either changes and embraces the change or they can be stubborn like Minority Leader McConnell and start demanding.

The question is, "Will GOP leadership get the message or stay the course of the hard right?"  When you read the demographics of voters in the email below, they had better wake up or the GOP as we know it will go down in flames as the hard right party of white male Neanderthals with a bunch of wealthy donors who were repudiated even if they won't admit it today.  The American people in fairly large numbers are sick and tired of social issues at the National level, but social conservatives cannot seem to get it through their heads that the majority of Americans don't care about the hard right positions -- they are in the minority on those positions no matter what they say.

When you read this email about demographics, it says it all.  America has now become a true melting pot. The Republican Party to survive needs to embrace the change not throw them under the bus.  We have a whole generation of young people who will add a lot to America if given the chance and embraced.  President Obama is correct -- Time to Move America Forward!

First Thoughts: Obama's demographic edgeWednesday, 07 November 2012 06:12:44 PST 

Obama’s demographic edge… And the GOP’s demographic dilemma… Breaking down last night’s results… Do status-quo election results = status-quo governing?... Obama’s swing-county swagger…His tactical dominance…  And lots of history was made last night.  

By NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Brower 

*** Obama's demographic edge: Yes, the auto bailout mattered in Ohio. Sure, Hurricane Sandy helped the president. And, yes, the economy was the No. 1 issue. But make no mistake: What happened last night was a demographic time bomb that had been ticking and that blew up in GOP faces. As the Obama campaign had assumed more than a year ago, the white portion of the electorate dropped to 72%, and the president won just 39% of that vote. But he carried a whopping 93% of black voters (representing 13% of the electorate), 71% of Latinos (representing 10%), and also 73% of Asians (3%). What’s more, despite all the predictions that youth turnout would be down, voters 18-29 made up 19% of last night’s voting population -- up from 18% four years ago -- and President Obama took 60% from that group. The trend also played out in the key battleground states: The president won about 70% of the Latino vote in Colorado and Nevada, and he won 60% of it in Florida (a high number given the state’s large GOP-leaning Cuban-American population). On Monday, we wrote that demography could determine destiny. And that’s exactly what happened. While the campaign’s turnout operation deserves all the credit for getting these voters to the polls, the most significant event of this presidential contest might very well have been the 2010 census. 

*** And the GOP’s demographic dilemma: Obama’s demographic edge creates this dilemma for the Republican Party: It can no longer rely on white voters to win national elections anymore, especially in presidential cycles. Indeed, according to the exit poll, 89% of all votes Mitt Romney won last night came from whites (compared with 56% for Obama). So the Republicans are maximizing their share with white voters; they just aren’t getting the rest. And come 2016, the white portion of the electorate will probably drop another couple of points to 70%. Politico’s Martin puts it this way: “Battling a wheezing economy and a deeply motivated opposition, Obama still managed to retain much of his 2008 map because of the GOP’s deficiencies with the voters who are changing the political face of once conservative-leaning Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada. Republicans face a crisis: the country is growing less white and their coalition has become more white in recent years. In 2004, George W. Bush won [about 40 percent] of Hispanics. Four years later, John McCain, the author of an immigration reform bill, took 31 percent of Hispanics. And this year, Romney captured only 27 percent of Hispanics.” 

*** Hard for the GOP just to turn to the Midwest: Now Republicans might argue, “Look, we can win back the Midwest -- Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin.” Yet those account for 34 electoral votes. But the Sun Belt states where Obama campaigned and which have more diverse populations (Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia) have a total of 57 electoral votes. And then there are Arizona, Georgia, and Texas. Do those states come into play in 2016? What about 2020? Come 2016, you could argue that Arizona and Georgia become for Democrats what Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania are for Republicans -- just slightly out of reach. 

*** Last night’s results: The morning after, here are the results (so far) from last night: Obama holds 303 electoral votes and Romney 206. (NBC News has yet to call Florida and its 29 electoral votes, but Obama leads there 50%-49%.) In the popular vote, it’s Obama 50%, Romney 48%. Also, Democrats have held on to their Senate majority and might add to it -- with undecided races in Montana (where Democratic incumbent Jon Tester leads 48%-48% with 77% in) and North Dakota (where Democrat Heidi Heitkamp is ahead by about 3,000 voters with 93% in). But Republicans held on to control of the House, holding 237 seats vs. 197 for the Democrats, plus-minus four seats. 

*** Does status-quo control = status-quo governing? So in the end, we got a status-quo result -- with Obama holding on to the White House, Democrats keeping control of the Senate, and Republicans maintaining their grip on the House. But here’s the question with the “fiscal cliff” negotiations coming up: Will the governing be status quo, too? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released this statement last night: “To the extent [Obama] wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way. That begins by proposing a way for both parties to work together in avoiding the ‘fiscal cliff’ without harming a weak and fragile economy, and when that is behind us work with us to reform the tax code and our broken entitlement system.” And House Speaker John Boehner makes a statement on the “fiscal cliff” negotiations at 3:30 pm ET. But who holds the mandate here? The GOP? Or a president who waged a national campaign on raising taxes for the wealthy, and who won? And here’s another question: Do Boehner and McConnell take advantage of the lame duck to compromise? 

*** Obama’s swing-county swagger: Turning back to last night’s presidential contest, Obama beat Romney in almost all of the swing counties (won by Bush in ’04 but by Obama in ’08). Indeed, Obama won three of four swing counties in Florida (Hillsborough, Pinellas, Osceola), four of six in Ohio (Hamilton, Wood, Ottawa, Sandusky), 11 of 14 in Virginia (including Loudon, Prince William, and Henrico), and all six in Colorado (including Jefferson, Arapahoe, and Larimer). And despite losing North Carolina, Obama may have proved that the state is changing, becoming more “Mid-Atlantic” but not quite all there, as Charlie Cook has said. Obama won nine of 13 swing counties in the Tar Heel State (including the large counties of Wake, Forsyth, Cumberland, and Buncombe). 

*** And his tactical dominance: But it was more than winning the swing counties for Obama; it was tactical dominance. Romney made inroads all across the country from previous GOP performance. What happened, however, was that the Obama campaign exploited the census and changed the margins. The best example of this was in Florida. 

*** Making history: Finally, it was an historic-making election. With Obama’s re-election, we now have the first time since Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe that Americans have elected three two-term presidents in a row… Tammy Baldwin will become the Senate’s first openly gay member… The Senate will have at least 19 female members -- the most ever -- and there’s a chance that number could increase to 20 if Heitkamp wins… Maryland and Maine became the first states to approve of gay marriage at the ballot box… And initiatives to legalize marijuana passed in Colorado and Washington state.