politics

Republicans will also have to decide if they'll take a chance on losing support of the extreme right base to appeal to voters closer to center - without doing this it will be hard to win a general election, and it will be hard to nominate such a candidate (like Jon Huntsman, Jr) if the primaries are overrun with far rightwingers. Someone like Huntsman, or Mitch Daniels if he'd chosen to run, likely would have beat Obama if he had a viable plan for the nation (which Mitt didn't - his numbers wouldn't add up), but this would be a problem if the candidate wasn't simply a puppet to help the top 1-2% (as Mitt was). It will be interesting to see how this plays out - it was good to read Boehner is willing to discuss tax compromise.

Romney lost the election when he said, "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. ... my job is not to worry about those people." Obama has a opportunity now to show that he holds a different view about his role as president. If, and only if, Obama can summon the courageous humility to reach out to the people who did not vote for him, he will be a great man. If he fails to achieve greatness, he will fail in every other way.

I wonder how many of those ethnic voters were ILLEGALS? It is sad that our legal system will not allow us to make people show proof they are a legally registered voter. I firmly believe that this administration is leading this country down the primrose path to distruction. I sincerely hope and pray that does not happen. But if Obama keeps spending the way he has been spending we will be broke soon.

Republicans ran on the electorate they THOUGHT they had, while Democrats ran on the ACTUAL electorate. Being Republicans, they will likely keep trying to appeal to a base that is slowly dying, and as a result, they will keep losing elections for the foreseeable future.

After-tax take-home income for people who pay taxes has decreased by 5% during Obama's term, 10% including inflation...

The only coalition is apathy, and please---> correct me if I am wrong. In this intense election, Obama got 9 million votes LESS than 2008, and about 2 million less than W won with in 2004 despite a much smaller pool of voters. Romney got 2 million less than McCain/Palin in 2008? So much for "endless spending on ads" impacting elections = seems like voters stayed home.................. We are awash in debt and war quagmire, and the electorate evaporates. I would love insight on this from either side, ie it could be further proof of America's decline.

The difference between Repubs and Dems this year was that the Dems ran on things they actually believe in, and the Repubs ran a campaign of tactical illusions attempting to knit together a disparate ( and desperate ) group of the fearful, the ignorant, the wealthy and the superstitious.

Hard to see where they go from here. In rejecting Romney, the electorate said NO to these tactics, but the election did nothing to help republicans define who they are.

This is a new America.

Another demographic indicator the extremely conservative GOP is out of touch with America - almost 3 out of 4 Asian voters also favored Obama. But perhaps Republicans' first outreach should be a peace offering to the moderates in their party who were exiled to the margins.

The country is definitely changing. More people now expect others to give. It has become an entitlement society. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. That's who we now are.