What Happened to the Republican Party?: And What It Means for American Presidential Politics by John Kenneth White

Author:John Kenneth White [White, John Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612059228
Goodreads: 26778545
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

A Rising American Electorate

At 11:12 p.m. eastern time, NBC News became the first network to call the 2012 election for Barack Obama.129 It wasn’t even close: Obama won 332 electoral votes and 51 percent of the popular vote, abruptly ending what many Republicans believed would be a long election night and possible recount to follow. After NBC News made the announcement, Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett turned to the president and exclaimed, “You won!” to which Obama replied, “I’ll believe it when Fox calls it.”130 Four and a half minutes later, Fox News did just that.

Disbelief was profound in the GOP ranks. On Election Day, Republican pollster Neil Newhouse sent an email to Romney supporters with the headline, “IN EVERY SINGLE STATE WE HAVE A SIGNIFICANT MOMENTUM LEAD.”131 Newhouse projected the 2012 turnout would include more whites than in 2008 (similar to the turnouts of 2004 and 2010), making that year an exception, not the rule.132 Under that model, Newhouse projected Romney would carry every one of the contentious states in an electoral college landslide. (In fact, Romney carried just one, North Carolina.) Conservative columnist George Will joined the chorus, predicting Romney would amass more than 300 electoral votes and win Minnesota (which had voted Democratic in every election since 1976).133 Obama beat Romney in Minnesota by 7 points. The second half of the Republican ticket, Paul Ryan, was told by Romney headquarters on election morning that victory was certain and he should prepare to assume the vice presidency. Later, Ryan shared his recollections with New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who harrumphed, “Well, that just shows how shitty they were.”134

At Fox News, the election night drama took an unexpected turn when Karl Rove questioned the call that Ohio (and thus the election) had gone into the Obama column. Rove went into overdrive claiming that the projection was inaccurate. After several minutes of contentious back-and-forth on-air discussion, television history was made when anchor Megyn Kelly took her cameras backstage to the Fox News Decision Desk and had its analysts confront Rove. More minutes went by, and eventually Rove conceded the obvious when political historian Michael Barone came on the set and concluded (rightly) that there were not enough outstanding Romney votes in Ohio for a win.

Disbelief also gripped the Boston hotel headquarters of Mitt Romney and his confidants. Romney began the day convinced that he would easily beat Obama. Months earlier, confident of victory, Romney assembled a transition team led by former Utah governor Mike Leavitt. The group began collecting resumes of potential job seekers and had begun the task of preparing cabinet recommendations for Romney, who, they were certain, would be the president-elect once the night was over.135 Romney himself was so certain of victory that he failed to draft a concession speech (a rarity in modern presidential annals). One aide described the Republican nominee as being “shell-shocked,”136 while his wife, Ann, sat nearby crying, asking, “How did this happen?”137 At once, some Republicans cried foul. Donald Trump tweeted that the election returns were “a travesty, a total sham, a disgusting injustice.

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