Many political observers cannot remember a more mobilized bunch of voters than the ones who were determined to send Barack Obama into early retirement in the fall of 2012.
Although the president's challenger, Mitt Romney, had certain "flaws" to overcome in energizing the base, conservatives and their pundits were cautiously optimistic that our long national nightmare was coming to an end.
Then the dream died, of course, on Election Day. The sour defeat left many scratching their heads: what went wrong?
Jerome Corsi decisively answers that haunting question in a new book of the same title: "What Went Wrong? The Inside Story of the GOP Debacle of 2012 … and How it Can Be Avoided Next Time."
The short answer is that Republican candidates for president have become routinely garden-variety centrists, who do not offer a clear and compelling difference from the leftists in the Democrat Party.
However, in "What Went Wrong?" Corsi offers much fascinating detail into the question and offers concrete steps that can be taken to actually win elections again.
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For example: "Democrats in swing states have transformed vote fraud and abuse into an ongoing process in a never-ending political campaign that can be challenged only by the passage of vigorous voter ID programs."
There are chilling examples of how Democrats used voter fraud to tip the last election, according to Corsi: "Obama won Wisconsin with 52.8 percent of the vote, a margin of victory over Romney of approximately 213,000 of over 3 million votes cast. In the last days of the campaign, as noted earlier, Romney traveled to Wisconsin for a rally, convinced by the campaign's internal polls that the election had narrowed such that he had a chance of winning.
"Aaron Gardner of Media Trackers, in a review of voter data for Colorado, a state without voter-ID requirements, found voter-registration rolls in ten counties had numbers larger than the total voting age population residing in the county," Corsi reveals.
And let's not assume all the problems come from the Democrat side. There's plenty of blame to go around. Does anyone remember Republican leadership in Washington as weak as it is now? Corsi shows how conservative and tea-party Americans were punished … by John Boehner.
"On December 3, 2012," Corsi writes, "just shy of a month after Election Day, in a spirit of retaliation, Boehner removed, for being uncooperative with the GOP leadership, four conservative congressman from leadership positions: Reps. Justin Amash, R-MI, and Tim Huelskamp, R-KS, from the House Budget Committee; and Reps. David Schweikert, R-AZ, and Walter Jones, R-NC, from the Financial Services Committee."
Corsi then goes on to say that the approval rating of Congress is dismal, and it's because the people elect principled men and women to go to Washington, only to see them become victims of petty (and obviously counter-productive) retaliation from their own party.
Corsi begins "What Went Wrong?" with a fascinating description of an encounter he had on Romney's campaign plane with a key strategist. The strategist, on Election Day, was confident that Romney would win because he felt a "positive" campaign based on a return to small business growth and free enterprise ideals would trump Obama's "geeky" Internet-based voter outreach.
The strategist was, as Corsi sensed, "wrong." Oh, boy, were they wrong.
That's why Corsi emphasizes that until Republicans get behind an principled ideologue who can inspire the faithful, Democrats will continue using their dirty tricks and sinister traps to stay in office.
Corsi agrees with conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly: "Her basic argument is that in their lust for power and money, the GOP establishment is tone-deaf to the public policy arguments that excite not only the conservative base of the Republican Party but also millions of centrist voters that pollsters typically categorize as 'independents.'"
Corsi, in writing "What Went Wrong?" proved that he is prescient, anticipating the depths to which Obama would take the country: "Obama's reelection may well mark a turning point where the majority of American voters realize runaway spending – with entitlement programs now consuming 60 percent of the federal budget and growing – is leading America into fiscal crisis."
Indeed, the ghastly "roll-out" of Obamacare, a specter of defeat and disaster if ever there was one, seems to be dawning on many Americans, including many who enthusiastically supported Obama.
If Benghazi and the other unconscionable scandals weren't enough to cause people to wake up, perhaps the final shattering of the nation's economy will. Romney tried to make the point.
What Corsi shows in "What Went Wrong?" is the battle plan for a new Republican contender to make the same points, but this time effectively.