How Republicans will explain a Romney loss

Real reasons and contrived excuses

Mitt Romney rides his campaign bus en route to a campaign rally in Avon Lake, Ohio, on Oct. 29.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Here's a way to explain just about every general election result in the modern era: A small percentage of Americans preferred your guy over the other guy. The emphasis should be on small, even in elections with clear historical vectors, like in 2008. Elections are more than the sum of their parts, but they can't be reduced to any single part, certainly not in defeat.

Nonetheless, we see patterns in the void, and Republicans and Democrats are likely to have more self-serving, self-sustaining justifications for why their side lost.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.