After a devastating loss during the presidential elections last week, Republicans have attempted to figure out just what went wrong. While some credit the loss to the Obama campaign's effective voter turnout rate or Superstorm Sandy, others place the blame on Mitt Romney and the party's failure to attract minority voters, the Los Angeles Times reported.
During the annual Republican Governors Association conference on Thursday, Republican governors and governors-elect met with party strategists, lobbyists and donors for the biggest post-election meeting of GOP leaders. According to the LA Times, "few were shy about laying much of the blame squarely at the feet of the former Massachusetts governor, who was once the group's chairman."
The conference, which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, had at least six party leaders saying the GOP needs a new strategy that "appeals beyond the white, male voters who are its base," The Associated Press reported.
Some party leaders, however, said that Democrats were able to win the race due to effective "branding" of Romney as someone voters couldn't trust in office. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstand told reporters, "The president won the election. But I think it wasn't on the issues. He ran a heck of a good grass-roots organization and was able to basically convince enough people that they couldn't trust Gov. Romney."
According to the LA Times, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker added, "We didn't have a well-defined case against the president and, of even greater importance, we didn't have an effective means by which to counter the attacks."
On the other hand, incoming Governors Association chairman, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, criticized the former presidential candidate for telling donors that the president won the election due to "gifts" his administration handed out to vital minority groups.
"We have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent," Jindal said during the conference, referencing Romney's 47 percent comments during the campaign. "I think that's absolutely wrong. I don't think that represents where we are as a party and where we are going as a party."
Others, like former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, focused on what needs to get done within the party to win future elections. "We need to have a brutal, brutally honest assessment of everything we did. We need to take everything apart...and determine what we did that worked and what we did that didn't work," Barbour told the AP.
Barbour also told the LA Times that Republicans must work to attract minority voters and establish effective immigration reform policies. "We can catch up in four years. This isn't rocket science. But it's hard work, and we can't wait and start in 2016," he said.
The same sentiments were echoed across the country, where former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush addressed attendees at the ABC Continuity Forum in Miami. Bush, who spoke on social mobility in the U.S. and the rising issue of immigration, said that Republicans couldn't afford to wait until the next election to improve their support among Latino voters.
According to the LA Times, Republicans will face another big election test next year as gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia open up. Republican governors hold both states and may have luck on their side, the LA Times reported. "Since 1989, the party that won the White House has lost the governorship in those off-year states," it reported.
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