2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Romney grossly overestimated the country's hatred of Obama... [View all]k2qb3
(374 posts)Republicans convinced themselves that moderate Obama supporters expected a messiah, expected they'd get free money and world peace just because he won in '08. They believe everyone is horribly disappointed with him and we're all going to go running back to the SOS.
The reality is that all the scare tactics used in '08, all those horrible consequences never materialised. He's governed in a moderate way, or at least not in an extreme way, and a lot of people are more comfortable with him today than they were when they voted for him in '08. He's been awfully tough on terrorists for a closet muslim commie sympathizer...just for one example.
As a result their entire fear-based campaign strategy this time is failing, nobody is buying except the birther crowd. It doesn't just fail to win votes it actively drives them away, nobody likes being manipulated.