E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSAs Mitt Romney's long, hard-fought race for the presidency came to an end, the campaign faced a stinging loss – and at one point even cut out the audio on broadcast screens in the campaign's election night ballroom as the results poured in. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.
As Republicans sort through what went wrong for former Republican nominee Mitt Romney on Tuesday, they might look back ruefully at four words that became forever associated with the GOP nominee: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
There are varied reasons for President Barack Obama's re-election to a second term, from changing demographics to superior campaign organization and beyond. And Obama's broad margin in the Electoral College meant that no single state was responsible for his victory over Romney.
David Goldman / AP
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney arrives to his election-night rally, Wednesday, Nov. 7, in Boston.
But as Republicans begin to pick through the aftermath of Romney's loss, Romney's struggles to address his opposition the 2009 rescue of General Motors and Chrysler stymied an effort to gain a foothold in Obama's Midwestern "firewall," and turn his attention to other key battleground states.
Related: Romney's chances in Ohio tied to softening auto bailout stance
It was an issue with which Romney struggled for the duration of the campaign, as Obama traipsed across Midwestern states, hammering away against his Republican opponent on the issue, while touting the resurgence of GM and Chrysler following the billions in aid provided to the companies.
A strong majority - 60 percent - of voters on Tuesday in Ohio said that they had approved of the auto bailout, and Obama beat Romney among those voters by a healthy 73 to 25 percent difference.
In Wisconsin, another state that composed Obama's firewall (along with Iowa), a majority of voters - 53 percent - said they had approved of the bailout. Obama bested Romney among those voters, 79 to 20 percent.
Republican political strategist Mike Murphy joins Chuck Todd to talk about Mitt Romney's struggle to court the popular vote.
Those numbers suggest that Romney's effort over the past year to recast his opposition to the bailout, put bluntly, failed.
Romney's New York Times op-ed opposing then-President George W. Bush's efforts to extend aid to the troubled automakers came just weeks after the 2008 election -- four years ago next Saturday, to be exact.
And while it's unlikely that the former Massachusetts governor himself wrote the provocative headline that would stick with him through his 2012 campaign, he wrestled and struggled with the issue throughout his battle with Obama.
Even in the primaries, Romney's conservative challengers argued it was callous for him to have supported the Wall Street bailout while opposing the auto rescue, especially as a native son of Michigan whose father ran a car company when Romney was young.
Romney reasoned that the managed bankruptcy endured by GM and Chrysler was actually his idea in the first place. And then he pivoted to argue that bondholders and dealers were shortchanged in that process, to the benefit of autoworkers' unions, which had backed Obama in 2008.
But neither of those arguments seemed to resonate in the long term, prompting Romney in the closing weeks of the campaign to address his deficiency with a deeply misleading pair of radio and TV ads stoking fears that Jeep was planning to move production from the U.S. to China.
Those ads were ostensibly an effort to make gains with swing voters in the outlying areas surrounding Toledo, the home to a major Jeep production facility.
But Obama carried Lucas County, which includes Toledo, last night by the same margins as 2008. The president also carried nearby Ottowa and Wood Counties (albeit by a slimmer margin than '08), despite Bush having won both in 2000 and 2004.
Leave a Comment:
If auto industry was being treated the way as Romney suggested, would one think what kind of consequences would cost USA auto industry as a whole?
What would Romney's suggestion benefit to foreign auto industry?
I actually felt bad for Romney during his concession speech. He clearly had been crying and looked like a man defeated.
Cappy I felt bad for him but his speech was finally completely believable and honest. I am by far not a romney fan. But If he Ran his campaign the way he gave his last speech the outcome would have been much much closer if not a win. He will probably never realize that when you portray honesty amd compassion that is genuine people listen. Romney is soley responsible for his loss on more than one front.
If there were *ONE* Thing to blame on Romneys loss -- it would be the value of a VIDEO CLIP !!
You know, that technical way thats essentially been around for about FIFTY OR SIXTY YEARS that RECORDS WHO SAYS What and WHEN, and WHERE!
A candidate can run, hide, lie, flip-flop, ignore, Etch-a-Sketch across the land, but as hard as they try -- iN THEIR OWN WORDS will surely follow them all the rest of their days !
And yet, while it would SEEM that Romneys political asperations have now been verifibly for-ever crushed, It does make one wonder if he'll try yet again in 2016?? Even though Ann Romney said:" If we lose, we are not running again". I would ask that if we can get that in writing, notorized even, but that wouldn't make any difference to either of them anyway. Perhaps not even to the GOP either. Since they have their own view of REALITY!
No president has been re-elected with unemployment above 7 %, blah,blah,blah.
Well I guess right wingers an Fox News can't make that statement anymore.
@Jason
All it does is prove just how toxic their candidate was. The guy was radioactive and the conservatives on the vine refused to see it. Oh well, some things we just can't fix.
I find it highly ironic that Obama is lauded for bailing out the auto industry, while Romney opposed it, yet is it Republicans who are accused of being in the pockets of "big business". What the hey-hey do you think the auto industry is?
Big Auto should have been allowed to fail. When the government props up an industry, it feels good in the now, because they can crow about "saving the American dream". In the long run, though, it enables the irresponsible behavior that got that industry into a failing state in the first place, vitually guaranteeing that there will be continued need for government support. Eventually, it just comes to seem normal, like how we spend incredible amounts of money year-in and year-out "supporting" farmers, and no one even remembers that it doesn't have to be that way. So, it is a short-term warm-n-fuzzy, combined with a long-term government dependency. That's Democratic fiscal policy in a nutshell. It's just so sad that people continue to buy it.
Every time the government has gotten out of an industry, allowed it to succeed or fail on its own, the industry has gotten better. The evidence is so overwhelming that it is mystifying that people continue to ignore it.
Generally, I agree with that concept. But at the time when the economy was sliding down a cliff, something had to be done to save those manufacturing jobs. And had the US auto industry gone under, I'm sure you would be saying "The US auto industry went belly up under Obama! All those good, hard working Americans are unemployed because of him!"
someone tell me what the "US AUTO INDUSTRY" is?.....70% of GM cars are built overseas........
Mcpaddywack
Please supply us with a link that will verify what you say. That sounds absurd on it's face. I want to see if you can back it up.
if I was a Republican supporter, you might have been right. But I'm not. (Not a Democrat, either.)
I don't think there was ever actually any danger of the auto industry going under. Specific companies might have failed, but that's the way it is supposed to work. The employees of those companies would have found jobs with other auto companies, as the demand would still be there; or else they would have moved into a different line of work. Again, that's how it is supposed to work.
Trying to "save jobs" is missing the entire point of how economies function and achieve efficiency. Jobs are not an end-product of economic activity, they are a by-product of it. Adding government money causes the value of a job to be artificially inflated, meaning it will last longer than it would otherwise. This has several adverse effects: one, the person in the job, once it finally ends, will likely not find another one with the same inflated value (unless the government is funding that one, too; see my point above about "continued need for government support"). Two, work will continue to go into the job past the point when it would be more efficient to move it elsewhere. Both these things are undesireable.
"In Wisconsin, another state that composed Obama's firewall..." Tell tyro writer Michael O'Brien that the word he means is "comprised," not "composed"; also it's Ottawa County in Ohio, not "Ottowa." Reporters are supposed to be accurate.
John Mccain Had 59 million votes, romney has 57 million. Mccain had more votes than Romney. Now thats funny.
What happen to all that so called enthusiam the republican party had for Romney. Fox News said converatives were fired up and tired of Obama, well I guess the country is more than Idiot Conservatives... Suckers!!!
The republican party is over as we know it. The demo situation is only going to get worse for them. They can't get a president elected with their base anymore so it's game over. They can try and tie things up for the next four years but this will only lead to more alienation and would give away 2016. In other words suicide for the party. They have the next four years to show they can work together and appeal to a much broader voter base or the party is toast. This far right swing we have seen is over if they want to survive. 'bout time.
I don't see how those republicans can think they will ever have a chance in the future! After all, the president got 50% of the vote!
That's very much an over simplification of the election proccess. If you want to simplify then look at it this way. They did a great job turning out their base but it's not enough anymore and is shrinking by the year. If they want to seat another president they have to change or keep shrinking. Which is nothing new. Parties evolve or die. They swung way right, alienated everyone but their base and just found out that old white guys are dying faster then they thought. again, 'bout time.
They will have to give their pledge to Grover Norquist. Everybody on the vine should go to john Boehner's website and tell him that there was a mandate to raise taxes on people making over 250k/yr and to give up his pledge to Grover Norqiust and pledge to the American people that the republican party will actually work with the democrats and resolve the problems we have right now. I have already done that twice. Every time boehner makes a stupid statement like he did yesterday about not being a mandate to raise taxes we need to call him down for his actions.
"Romney never overcame the bailout opposition"... or the blatant flip-flopping on issues, or his refusal to release 12 years of tax statements, or his statements in the "47%" video, or his selection of "Lyin Ryan", or this history with Bain, or the perception from the outset that he was not really what the GOP wanted in a candidate but was the default candidate for the GOP candidates were such extreme wingnuts (except I did find Huntsman reasonable but he just never caught on with the far-right/evangelical members of the GOP, probably because he was intelligent and reasonable).
Is that all? People are so sensitive!
People can't stand a LIAR. Especially one who's in the highest office of the land. Just ask Richard Nixon! Romney is simply a "vulture capitalist" and he cares little for us. His "47% comment" was NOT a mistake. He really believes that. He just never dreamed he'd be caught actually saying the truth of what he really believes about us "little people". Ha! LOSER! Just as President Obama said, "Don't bet against the American people!"
He was saying that 47% would not vote for him anyway so he would not campaign to them. He was right. He would be wasting his time trying to convert Warren Buffett or probably David Dobson, both part of the 47%.
His biggest problem was not knowing how to deal with the media who twisted what he said, claiming that they knew better what he meant than he did. The media lives on soundbites, not the truth. The truth is boring, soundbites can be made into a controversy by anyone.
Oh yeah. Clearly Warren Buffett is one of those people who "won't take responsibility for their lives" (Romney's words, not mine). Why do you think "twisting what he said" would have any bearing on things? Hell, nothing that Romney said lasted longer than 24 hours anyway as he changed his mind more often than a dancer changes socks. Romney was simply a bad candidate. More than half of the Republican party knew that from the git-go but they nominated him anyway. He got beat because he was the inferior candidate.
After passing over real candidates likes Huntsman because they were not pure enough. You know...pure like a bathroom stall hooker pure.
I'm glad he learned the hard way that saying No just because the President said Yes isn't the way to voters' hearts. The GOP will learn that in even more details two years from now unless they start changing their tune.
Okay maralson, you may gloat over your candidate winning. The great thing about our country is that we can agree to disagree. It is time to rebuild since your guy won. Now when and how will that happen?
Barry has ownership for the economy, jobs and the deficit. How will he handle it now that he no longer will have to campaign? Will he take the road Clinton did in his second term, or will he continue down the road of his first term? He needs to reach out on both sides of the aisle to resolve issues he created.
Will this happen, or do you think he will resort to the leadership he showed during his first term - no real substance in resolution?
And please don't say the Republicans are the only party not to seek resolution.
Will Harry Reid finally accept a budget? It may be more frightening than you may wish to see.
Clinton NEVER had to deal with a Republican party "highjacked" by Tea Party idiots. These people do NOT negotiate. Well, they either will negotiate now or we'll all go over this fiscal cliff together! It can't be this "It's OUR ball and we have to get EVERYTHING we want or else we'll take our ball and go home!"
block and obstruct obama at every turn.....it is our only hope for the future of our once great nation....
Wow!!!! Look at the cry babies with their illegal walstreet practice. $-312.00 today. Tell me they can't move the numbers up or down. You loaded on Romney(no regulations) and lost. We're coming after you Ivy League Wall-street people. Your butts will be regulated by America. Your not going to screw over America anymore. Hedge Funds dudes, coming to see you also. Regulations for all you crooks. We're bringing America back to the American people.
And you are also giving credit to the President for taking wall street from 8,000 in 2009 to 13,000 today, correct?
deb?......you are a complete ahsshole and moron......
If this is the case, the Repubs are missing the mark by a few miles and then some. They have to look at the entire picture, starting with smug and ending with non-committal. Start to finish Romney's campaign was sad at best and chaotically deceptive at worse. Now we are aware of the full spectrum of shenanigans these people aren't ashamed to use. Factcheck .org is our friend. Use it often!
Romney's a tool - just not the kind they use to build cars with. :)
Yup! "Him not too smart!" LOL =)) Rich does NOT equate to Intelligent.
In truth, Romney shot himself in the foot on this auto bailout issue and then went back to reload.
The GOP's relentless assault on women, minorities, the middle-class and poor, the auto industry, and the environment pretty much guaranteed a loss. I'm really surprised the popular vote loss wasn't as steep as the electoral votes.
assault on women???.......moronic.........but hey lib women??.....you can get free abortion from obama....if any of you are pregnant, please abort and do us all a favor....
McWackyPac...STFU! You LOST!
Hardeehardedohardeehardee har!
Oh and Gafaw also!
Jesis H Christos man...get off it. You L O S T!
There are sore losers, like mcpaddywack, and sore winners, like Life Dream.
McWackyPac...STFU Go wack your paddy
IMO, Romney could have gotten past the auto bailout thing had he simply done this: " I was opposed to the auto bailout; I did not think it would work, and I am very thankful I was wrong. " Most americans were opposed to the bailout, and most of Congress was, even Dems. The country would have looked at Mitt as a man who could admit he made a wrong call. Instead, he tried to twist his words, tried to take credit and tried to pretend things that simply were not true. Mitt's fatal flaw: inability to tell the truth. It backfired on him big time.
I'm not really sure this man ever KNEW the truth. He seems to think, as many today do, that truth is whatever he wishes it to be.
How true. Mitt showed early on that he had no core principles. In less than ten years he went from someone who would govern to the left of Ted Kennedy to someone would would definitely sign a personhood amendment if placed in front of him....without anyone knowing why the change. Mitt was incapable of explaining why or how he changed, or of telling the truth, or of exhibiting any kind of leadership when Rushbo went off on Sandra Fluke or when his own party went off the deep end with the birther thing and the "foreigner" garbage.
maybe now we will "not see" McCain, Trump, Guiliani, West, etc etc on TV as pundits about this or that..
Name your pick for being on the "TV free zone".................................
What is amusing is watching Cavuto, Morris, Newt, Hannity, and Fox in general come up with all the reasons Romney lost, instead of the obvious....the American people did not want him as President.
Romney had a LOT more to overcome than just his "let Detroit go bankrupt" lunacy. There was his "47% are takers" rant, "my life would be so much easier if I was Hispanic" idiocy, praise of fenced in Chinese sweatshops, record at vulture capitalism at Bain, pathetic legacy as governor of Mass, animal cruelty, bullying of fellow students, foreign tax shelters, $100 million in 401k retirement account, hidden tax returns, binders full of women, car elevator in his mansion, and all the other glaring faults and flaws of this pathetic excuse for a candidate.
yes and you dopey libs voted for feckin' santa claus.........obama sucks still and patriotic americans will block his every move at every opportunity........four suck ass years coming up but what the hell....our nation is in peril..
Mcwack
You and your type are the main reason Mitt lost and your so called party will continue to lose seats at the table.
Much like a moist fart you hang there, stink and are obnoxious but you eventually go away, far, far away.
WHERE ARE ALL THE REICH-WING, GOP TROLLS?!?!?!
I think you are a troll.
When the auto companies pay back every cent they took plus interest like the banks did I will consider buying one of their vehicles.
Yeah, losing over a MILLION jobs would be a LOT better than helping our U.S. Auto Industry.
Chrysler and GM have already paid off their loans.
re-elect obozo 2012, Where is your data that chrysler and GM have paid back every cent they took?
You may want to do some research before you open your mouth and stick your foot in it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/president-obamas-phony-accounting-on-the-auto-industry-bailout/2011/06/06/AG3nefKH_blog.html
that ain't gonna happen....the bailout was a bribe to the UAW....
and you dope re-elect?...GM owes $25 billion......and they are about to go under again....and now that this asswipe obama got re-elected, you can be sure obama won't help them again.....morons
Bailout opposition and nonstop, incessant lying. Though, I'd say it was mostly the lying.
from obama...
McWackyPack....
You are the liar. You are the holier than thou. You are the belittler. You are the shrew. You are the unpatriotic american. You are the demoralizer. You are the small thinker. You are the ....
STFU...and thank you in advance.
.... just go away paddywack .... just like romney will ... just go away .... you are rude and insulting ... soooo happy OBAMA kicked your a$$ ..... sha na na, hey hey, good-bye ....
CONGRATULATIONS PRESIDENT OBAMA !!!!! and they said it would never happen ...... you got em !!!!
bye bye cowpaddy
The Republican party lost because it was and is held hostage by the Tea Bagger,Evangelicals,Hannity,Rush,Trump,Coulter,Hooter's Fox Network,Roger Aisles,Norchrist,Palin,Buchmann,Laura.....
Hang on its going to get ugly. I can see it already, Obama is going to complain he needed 4 more years (total of 8 for some of you government guys if you didn't get it) to turm the economy around. I didnt vote for him, but if wants respect from the rest of us he needs to do these things right now:
cut governement spending
drill more oil in the US
Keep illegals out of the country
Make trade fair overseas - penalize others if they don't (be creative)
give more tax breaks to rural mfg
quit promising things he can't keep
hire more teachers to teach our kids
give more grants to mfg that try to be innovative that create jobs
this can't be that tough can it.......oh i guess it can when you have so many governement guys arguing about how to change a lightbulb
obama is an ass....he was an ass yesterday, he is an ass today, and will be an ass tomorrow......
And you are an ASS now.
oh btw, ha HA ha HA ha HA ha HA ha HA.
loser
You are both asses. Now both of you, SHUT THE F*CK UP
You all didn't complain when Bush wanted four more years, citing, "It's hard work. Hard work." That's all he had to say and he was re-elected.
Mcpaddywick Have ever heard the I-95 song? They wrote it for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZg3ERZENT4 Check it out.