Thank God the elections are finally over. Now Sam and I don’t have to listen to any more political advertisements telling us how bad the other guy and his party are. Better yet, we no longer have to listen to all the political pundits analyze the races to death, telling us what this or that candidate is likely to do.
Trouble is, now we have to put up with the pundits telling us why Romney lost to Obama. In large part, they are telling us that Romney and the Republicans relied too heavily on their shrinking base of conservatives, who respected syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. says, “Stubbornly cling to their fears, their xenophobia, demagoguery and inchoate anger so extreme as to make Ronald Reagan seem almost a hippie by comparison.”
Pitts goes on to say that, “It should have told us something, when the previously moderate Mitt Romney pronounced himself “severely conservative.”
In fact, Romney pulled a switchy-changey every time it seemed politically expedient and some people actually noticed.
But here’s an interesting thing. If you look at all the states where Romney won the popular vote, you can see that if it weren’t for the fact that Obama carried the heavy-populated East and the heavily- populated liberal West Coast, Romney might have won. He won in about half of the 50 states. If we gave presidential candidates one Electoral College vote per state instead of a number of votes based on population, Romney might have won. Sam and I are glad that didn’t happen because we didn’t want Romney to win, but we’re just saying.
No doubt many others have asked this question over the years, but why don’t we elect our president by how many states he (or she) carries? Doesn’t that seem fairer? I mean if say, 26 states wanted Romney, why didn’t we elect him President? We didn’t because we are stuck with this archaic rule of apportioning Electoral College votes by population.
We have a similar problem here in Washington State. No matter how popular a candidate is - he or she can win almost the whole state - but if you don’t win in the three heavily-populated counties on the west side of the state - King, Snohomish and Pierce - forget about it. So, of course we have this ever-widening schism between eastern Washington and western Washington, just like we have this schism between the U.S. east and west coasts, and the rest of the country.
It’s almost unfortunate that Obama won instead of Romney (although I voted for Obama). As many people are pointing out, the Democrats barely maintained control of the Senate and the Republicans still rule the House, so it appears we may be headed for four more years of the political wrangling and nothing getting done that we’ve lived with the past four years. Sam and I sincerely hope not. Maybe, God-willing, Congress will cooperate with the President a little bit this time around. Four bags of poop on them if they don’t - which means we’ll have to scrounge another one up somewhere (but we’re willing to do it).
Trouble is, now we have to put up with the pundits telling us why Romney lost to Obama. In large part, they are telling us that Romney and the Republicans relied too heavily on their shrinking base of conservatives, who respected syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. says, “Stubbornly cling to their fears, their xenophobia, demagoguery and inchoate anger so extreme as to make Ronald Reagan seem almost a hippie by comparison.”
Pitts goes on to say that, “It should have told us something, when the previously moderate Mitt Romney pronounced himself “severely conservative.”
In fact, Romney pulled a switchy-changey every time it seemed politically expedient and some people actually noticed.
But here’s an interesting thing. If you look at all the states where Romney won the popular vote, you can see that if it weren’t for the fact that Obama carried the heavy-populated East and the heavily- populated liberal West Coast, Romney might have won. He won in about half of the 50 states. If we gave presidential candidates one Electoral College vote per state instead of a number of votes based on population, Romney might have won. Sam and I are glad that didn’t happen because we didn’t want Romney to win, but we’re just saying.
No doubt many others have asked this question over the years, but why don’t we elect our president by how many states he (or she) carries? Doesn’t that seem fairer? I mean if say, 26 states wanted Romney, why didn’t we elect him President? We didn’t because we are stuck with this archaic rule of apportioning Electoral College votes by population.
We have a similar problem here in Washington State. No matter how popular a candidate is - he or she can win almost the whole state - but if you don’t win in the three heavily-populated counties on the west side of the state - King, Snohomish and Pierce - forget about it. So, of course we have this ever-widening schism between eastern Washington and western Washington, just like we have this schism between the U.S. east and west coasts, and the rest of the country.
It’s almost unfortunate that Obama won instead of Romney (although I voted for Obama). As many people are pointing out, the Democrats barely maintained control of the Senate and the Republicans still rule the House, so it appears we may be headed for four more years of the political wrangling and nothing getting done that we’ve lived with the past four years. Sam and I sincerely hope not. Maybe, God-willing, Congress will cooperate with the President a little bit this time around. Four bags of poop on them if they don’t - which means we’ll have to scrounge another one up somewhere (but we’re willing to do it).
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