The Crisis of Blue

Poor Beth Cox. She’s suffering a severe crisis of sorts, and it began on Election Night. Like so many other vehement Romney supporters, she cannot fathom what went wrong. From The Washington Post:

Here in the heart of Red America, Cox and many others spent last week grieving not only for themselves and their candidate but also for a country they now believe has gone wildly off track. The days after Barack Obama’s reelection gave birth to a saying in Central Tennessee: Once was a slip, but twice is a sign….

Among so many Romney voters, perhaps none had been as devoted to the cause — as indefatigable, as confident, as prayerful — as 44-year-old Beth Cox, a member of the school board and a volunteer who had committed to Romney early in the Republican primaries. She had run the small GOP campaign headquarters in Sumner County by herself for six days a week during the last four months. She had been the first in line to vote on the first day of early voting.

Now it was left to her to clean up the aftermath. She stood next to a space heater in a small building in the exurbs of Nashville, taking inventory of what supplies they had left and packing up boxes of red-white-and-blue streamers. She put away the pink Romney shirts, the white Romney-Ryan hats and the GOP bumper stickers with the Tennessee logo. Down came the sign that read: “We Built It!” Down came the elephant flag and the George W. Bush commemorative emblem. Down came the signed picture of Romney, with a typed inscription that read: “This is a great time to be a Republican.”

But now Cox was wondering: Was it?

She had devoted her life to causes she believed were at the heart of her faith and at the core of her Republican Party. She counseled young married families at church, spoke about right to life in area schools and became a stay-at-home mom with two daughters.
Now, in a single election night, parts of her country had legalized marijuana, approved gay marriage and resoundingly reelected a president who she worried would “accelerate our decline.”

When I say poor Beth Cox, I’m not being facetious. I honestly feel sorry for her. The article describes a woman who loves her country, her pastor hubby and their two beautiful girls. She leads a women’s prayer group. She scrapbooks. She sounds like a nice woman. She also sounds a lot like many of the women I use to worship with at my former church. Unfortunately, she seems to be living in somewhat of a bubble.

I’ve read numerous autopsies over the past week about what went wrong- or for many of my Dem family and friends, what went right. Romney lost the Asian vote. And Latinos, although there is much contention why. And of course, many ladies.

So how could Republicans not see it? How could people like Cox not have an inkling Romney wasn’t a shew-in?

Far be it from me to add to the cacophony of posts trying to dig in to the raison d’etre. I know living in an urban city in Jersey, my experiences of politics are a far cry from Cox’s, so I wasn’t really surprised that Obama won re-election.

But I’d love to hear from you, Dear Reader. I purposely stayed out of the fray for the most part because I’m pretty disgusted with American politics. But with the election blessedly over, I’m opening up the discussion. What do you think the GOP needs to do to win back the White House? Go left? Go farther right? Embrace minorities (in a more genuine fashion)? Retreat from the same sex marriage battle? Weigh-in, but NO DISRESPECT. Seriously. I will not post any comments that are nasty. Don’t like it? Go write at your own blog.