TEA Party Ignorance, Stupidity and Extremism Cost GOP the 2012 Presidential Election

Thanks for the opening round. Crying Wolf 1. Pro lists 4 poor allegations the Republican party made against Obama, but doesn't give any tangible evidence that they were a factor in the election. To do so, he would have to provide surveys or quotes from voters indicating that "crying wolf" by the Tea Party uniquely affected their vote. As it is, we have no reason to believe that it did. Its just asserted. 2. He also has to prove that not only did crying wolf hurt Republicans, but that it hurt them so much that it single-handedly cost them the election. Thats not shown either. The claims aren't quantified. 3. On several polls asking for the biggest reason voters would vote for a certain cantidate, "Crying Wolf less" doesn't appear on any of them (1). As for the 4 sources themselves, they all have a myriad of issues. For instance, the writer of the article of Obama being born in Kenya isn't even a conservative, so he has nothing to do with this topic. The quote accusing Obama of socialism is from a propaganda website called "Commieblaster.com" which 99.9% of people haven't even heard of, let alone would be affected enough by it to vote against Romney. The Obama = terrorist quote is from 2008, and I doubt voters had a quote from 4 years ago in mind when casting their ballot. There's no reason to think any of these things were significant enough to cost romney the election. The race was between Romney and Obama, so you'd think that voters would put a lot more emphasis on things Romney says rather than things said by Glenn Beck and Commieblaster.com. Economy Pro's general argument is that conservatives didn't push the Economy enough in their campaign, and specifically calls out Donald Trump for focusing on Obama's birth certificate rather than his economic record. Except, he did talk about the economy. Here's a list of Donald Trump quotes relating to the it: 1. "(Obamacare) is very, very bad for business" (2) 2. "Its a tremendous cost" 3. "the United States is no longer a rich country. When you’re not rich, you have to go out and borrow money. We’re up to $16 trillion in debt.” (3) 4. The "real" unemployment rate is around 15-16%. (3) 5. "(an associate) thinks he's going to be closing up his business because of Obamacare....and you have a lot of people saying that." ___ Furthermore, the economy was pushed as a big issue by other means. The first presidential debate was solely about the economy. It also played a role in the second. The third debate was about foreign policy, but Romney redirected part of it to the economy once again (4). This means that in the three most most publicized and widely-seen political events, the economy was referred to more than anything else. Extremism 1. Pro's arguments about Romney's position on the Environment and Foreign Policy aren't topical, because Mitt Romney is not a member of the Tea Party (5), and according to them, is a moderate. 2. Pro doesn't explain why attacking the EPA and having a "belligerent" foreign policy is extremist. 3. Turn - Romney's environmental position ties into the economy. From my opponent's own source: "I am not willing to adopt multitrillion-dollar programs to reduce greenhouse gases in America." 4. The Republican platform on foreign policy isn't "more hawkish" than obama's. Anyone who watched the third presidential debate could tell that their policies don't differ. From his own source, Romney was "more or less agreeing with the president on everything". 5. Pro claims that conservative extremism could have accounted for 1-2% of the vote in swing states. But Obama won 7/8 swing states by at least 4% (6). The only one where 2% would have changed the outcome is Florida, without which Obama still would have won the election by 68 points. 1. http://tinyurl.com...2. http://tinyurl.com...3. http://tinyurl.com...4. http://tinyurl.com...5. http://tinyurl.com...6. http://tinyurl.com...