Republicans Differ on Why Party Fell Short

By JANET HOOK, Updated November 8, 2012, 12:16 a.m. ET, -- Source

Republicans across the country plunged into soul searching and finger pointing Wednesday after major losses for the party on Election Day.

"We have a period of reflection and recalibration ahead," Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the architect of the party's failed effort to take control of the Senate, said in the early hours of Wednesday.

"While some will want to blame one wing of the party over the other, the reality is candidates from all corners of our GOP lost tonight. Clearly we have work to do in the weeks and months ahead," he said.

Presidential historian Nick Ragone joins the News Hub to discuss Mitt Romney's loss and challenges the Republicans face. (Photo: Getty Images)

Other Republicans blamed forces other than the GOP itself—the media, Mitt Romney's campaign strategists, Hurricane Sandy—for President Barack Obama's re-election and the party missing a ripe opportunity to win control of the Senate.

"The media filter is so blatant, I'm not sure our message is getting through," said Chad Connelly, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. "Romney didn't defend himself all summer. The storm allowed Obama to look presidential."

Postelection second-guessing is as common as worms after a spring rain. But some Republicans see something potentially far more risky. Exit polls show a stark racial and ethnic divide, with Mr. Obama winning by big margins the support of nonwhite voters—a group that accounts for a rapidly growing share of the electorate. Mr. Romney dominated among the elderly and white men, who will make up a shrinking share of the U.S. population in the coming years.

"The obvious demographic changes in the country should be readily apparent to one and all," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. The GOP, he said, "looks and acts too white and is not sufficiently open, sensitive and welcoming to minorities."

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Matthew Dowd, a former campaign adviser to President George W. Bush, referred to two popular TV shows to critique his party. "This is a changing America, which makes it a changing electorate," Mr. Dowd said Wednesday on ABC's Good Morning America. "The Republican Party is a 'Mad Men' party in a 'Modern Family' America and it just doesn't fit any more.''

Haley Barbour, a former Mississippi governor who once headed the Republican National Committee, said he doesn't believe the party's weak showing among Hispanics is a permanent problem, noting that Mr. Bush and President Ronald Reagan enjoyed stronger support from Latino voters. But he said the GOP should advocate broad immigration reform, like those presidents did, to help repair the party's standing.

One prominent Republican anxious about his party's future said he was planning to urge Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to step up his national profile, because many see him as a model for how a conservative leader can forge strong ties to Latinos. Such anxieties could also bolster the already bright political prospects for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who recently was asked by party leaders to succeed Mr. Cornyn as chairman of the Senate campaign committee. (A Rubio aide said he declined.)

In the Senate races, critics said the GOP squandered a tremendous advantage in a cycle where many Democrats were up for re-election in conservative states.

The loss of Senate seats in Indiana and Missouri on Tuesday, and in Nevada, Delaware and Colorado in 2010, was blamed by many analysts on the selection of tea party-backed candidates who were too conservative to win a statewide general election. Instead, some Republicans now say that party leaders have to do more to ensure strong, more centrist candidates are put on the field and to support them in primary elections.

"There is a lesson from this past election as well as two years ago when we lost seats we should have won," said Sen. Susan Collins, a centrist Republican from Maine. "If the party chooses candidates with extreme views, they are not going to win. There needs to be a more pragmatic viewpoint."

Mr. Cornyn had deliberately stayed out of this year's GOP primary process, despite the influence he could have as chairman of the party committee that finances and supports its Senate candidates. In the last cycle, Mr. Cornyn saw the perils of playing a more active role when the party establishment endorsed former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in his failed primary battle with Mr. Rubio, a tea-party hero who won the primary and the general election.

On the presidential level, however, some conservatives say Mr. Romney's defeat resulted from the GOP establishment placing too much emphasis on their own view of what makes a candidate electable. Leaders of the tea-party movement and other conservative activists argue that he wasn't conservative enough to galvanize the party.

"Mitt Romney's loss was the death rattle of the establishment GOP," said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist. "Far from signaling a rejection of the tea party or grass roots conservatives, the disaster of 2012 signals the beginning of the battle to take over the Republican Party," he said.

For Ralph Reed, president of the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, the election results underscore the need not for the party to be less conservative, but to find a way to sell its conservative message to a broader, more ethnically diverse audience. "Defeat can be a very clarifying moment," said Mr. Reed. "We need to find a way to combine core principles with an outreach strategy that is more welcome to voters who haven't always been reached out to."

Write to Janet Hook at Janet.Hook@wsj.com