Romney lost more so than Obama won

This is not a mandate. That's the first and most important thing to say. The President won, yes, but the GOP controls the vast majority of state houses and appears headed towards increasing its seats in the House of Representatives. It's a oddly divided nation we have, and the really interesting question about this election is, why are American voters so inconsistent?

It simply makes no sense that we re-elect a man who is spending our future away and has done a remarkably Carter-like job on the economy. Barack Obama should have lost on those grounds alone. So why, then, in a year which saw the GOP gain four governorships and expand its control of the House, could a man with that record win another four years?

Obviously, Romney was a weaker candidate than had been hoped. He never pushed as hard as he ought to have and when he should have. Mitt never really capitalized on the Benghazi debacle and, let's face it, he really didn't appeal to conservatives. If you can't appeal to your own party's base, how can you possibly appeal to the wider electorate? So it's safe to say that the conservative message wasn't the problem. It was the messenger.

And that is what the Republicans should be thinking. There have been and will be many calls for the GOP to look within itself, to do some soul searching, but that's not necessary. Why would Republicans hold so much power outside of Washington if the bulk of the voters didn't, at heart, think their way?

Why, then, did the bulk of the voters not vote that way in the one national election? Why that inconsistency? Simply put, because too many of them aren't ideological. They vote for reasons which really have little to do with policy. The President is viewed as a 'nice' man, and no doubt that he personally is one. Yet to vote for a guy because you think he'd make a great neighbor is rather shallow. Indeed, it's downright silly.

Yet that's how far too many voters think. The only way around it is to find our own nice man or woman and run them in 2016. We need someone to take up the mantle of Ronald Reagan, and there are several folks who could do that. We don't need a lot of soul searching, and we certainly do not need to rethink our priorities. Our principles are sound and true. We simply need someone to better enunciate them.

The 2012 Presidential election was ours for the taking. As such, it is safe to say Romney lost more than Obama won. The conservative situation isn't all that bad considering what the GOP gained even yesterday. If we but put a good, solid, conservative candidate up in 2016, then November 6, 2012, will have been but a speed bump.