2016

I saw a graphic on TV this morning that said “Ryan front runner for 2016.”

Can I say “Puh-leaze!” on two levels?

1 – do we have to start now? Can’t we all just breathe easy for a bit?

2 – this is more complicated but bottom line when the pundits and pollsters are all finished crunching numbers for yesterday’s votes, I think they will find this:

Ryan may not have hurt Romney but it likely didn’t really help him. It helped him shore up the conservative vote that might have been squishy early; those people who weren’t quite sure they could vote for a Mormon or who worried about Romney’s flip-flopping on some issues. But in the end he should have gotten those votes anyway. They may not really like/trust/accept Romney, but these folks are ultimately going to vote for the most conservative person on the ballot.

But when you look at the red and blue areas on the map, I doubt that Ryan helped in any of those so-called battleground states that turned this election for Obama. Ryan couldn’t even deliver his home state of Wisconsin. But then Romney couldn’t (deliver adopted home state) either.

I wrote a blog years ago saying that a certain young man from Chicago was a name to know for the future. I think the GOP will finally have its own changing of the guard after the dust settles on 2012.

Look for Latinos and women to take more prominent roles in the party. The party needs them! That and a move toward the center is what it is going to take to win back the Senate and the White House. More stringent tea-partiers are not what the GOP needs to win more seats anywhere.

Both sides have their base. Like it or not, the next elections will be won (or lost) mostly in the middle. Romney didn’t reach far enough.