The advocacy infrastructure being developed by both sides in the post-Citizens United world will, over time, favor the most plausible side, which conservatives know is theirs.

via George Will: Republicans must start over again – The Washington Post.

The final sentence of his column says everything about what went wrong for conservatives in this election cycle…Their utter belief in their side being right…for everyone. They cannot, for an instant, ascribe to the progressives, a possibility of rightness. It is an article of faith… And faith cannot be argued with.

George Will’s take away from this presidential election, and evidently all of those in the recent past, is that it’s the “likability”” of a candidate that is most important…”Romney was a diligent warrior. Next time, Republicans need a more likable one.” So, we are back to 2000 where it was all about who you wanted to sit down with and have a beer? Really? It wasn’t the Fox focused world view? It wasn’t the outright lies in the adds? It wasn’t the direction he wanted to take the country? Really?

Liberals have an inherent but not insuperable advantage: As enthusiasts of government, to which many of them are related as employees or clients, they are more motivated for political activity than are conservatives, who prefer private spaces.

As if most of the conservatives voting in this past election weren’t “clients”. Come on George, your demographics alone would point out that a very large part of your base is collecting Social Security and dependent on Medicare. These are the folks Republicans continue to reassure that their “”entitlements” will not be touched as we cut taxes and rein in the promise we have made to the younger voters…Is their really any wonder that all of the younger demographics voted with such turnout for the Democrats?

(Elections are run by governments, so it is unwise to expect them to be run well, but really: Are hours-long waits at polling places inevitable?)

So when Republican’s decide to badly run elections, decide to demand ID many don’t have, decide to purge voter rolls without checking the names for accuracy, decide to cut early voting days or hours…When these things happen, you have to ask if hours-long waits are inevitable? Come on George, I thought that was the whole idea… What wasn’t anticipated was that the voters being disenfranchised by these actions would send such a FY message to the elected officials doing the disenfranchising by actually staying in line in such big numbers. All it taught me was that it might just be time for the federal government to demand  some sort of standards in federal elections. If your much vaulted “states rights”are feeling bruised by that, let the states do whatever they want on their own elections…Hell, here in my part of Texas, in a lot of races, they don’t even need to hold an election because no one runs against the Republican. Kind of like the mandate given to Speaker John Boehner when he was sent back to Congress after winning his unopposed election.

Look…I know George Will is totally unprepared for this week. He was so sure that Mitt was going to win he hadn’t bothered to put any thought into the other outcome. This weeks Sunday show should be fun…