Originally Posted By: sini
Originally Posted By: Derid
Its been proven as much as it really can be proven, that losing true conservative and libertarian votes is what cost Romney.


I'd like to point out that this is "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Your suggestion also implies that Romney wasn't conservative enough.

Both I disagree with.


Wrong. Its the "No True Conservative" fallacy - get it right!

But I get to decide what I consider a true conservative, so its not a fallacy in this case. As held by the general political vernacular , a "true" conservative is synonymous with an older school of conservatism and is diametrically opposed to the "neo" conservative strain which is actually a Trotskyite strain of statism.

It has already been shown here that Romney lost the election by a spread that was less than the people who voting for Ron Paul in the GOP primary. I know from my extensive contacts in the Ron Paul and liberty movements that Romney did NOT get those votes and that includes several states that held primaries after it was apparent Paul had no chance so I would say the effect was understated. I know from contacts in other conservative grassroots movements - especially of the paleocon stripe that Romney lost a lot of votes there as well.

Silver was right... this time. He needs to pull it off a lot more often if he is to be used as a gold standard of justification. Someone is always right after a big event, and they get some limelight for a while but usually cannot keep it up.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)