Still-stunned GOP seeks recovery from losses

>>> back to "hardball." to listen to republicans these days after the election you would get a sense of genuine shock at the makeup of the electorate. they're surprised who votes in this country. his running mate said he was surprised by the turnout from urban areas . let's take a look.

>> i think the surprise was the turnout in urban areas which gave president obama the big margin to win this race.

>> let's watch a little more comprehensive look at this. this is from a good by. tom davis . he talked about the democratic turnout efforts among the, quote, underclass minorities. his choice of words were kreked by salon's joan walsh . let's watch it.

>> voter turnout has changed dramatically as the underclass minorities are starting to minorities are starting to vote.

>> i want to give you free advice. i don't think you should refer to as the underclass. that's a really dated word and that's not who we are talking about here.

>> economically they have less. i'll us a more politically correct term. no offense, obviously.

>> it's just a more accurate term. when we talk about people who make less than $50,000, a lot of those are -- those are middle class people, too. some of them are working poor .

>> that's not where the voter turnout came. it's really the people making less than that polled out of the apartments, groups that traditionally haven't voted.

>> pulled out of the apartments. a phrase used by governor romney as well. give whean is at stake, why were republicans so surprised when the 50 so called 47% voted heavily this year showed up. john and bob shrum . gentlemen, it's great to have you on. because i find that i keep trying to figure through the mind set that we were hearing what is called the mainstream media , where we kept hearing that romney has a really good thing of winning this thing and from the establishment types and then all of a sudden there's an election and there's this other america , some of it was other america in the sense of the book. your thoughts, john? still using terms to sort of diminish or separate poor people , minorities from being of the american electorate, like it's, oh, it's that over there. that's that.

>> look, the franchise is a thing that's evolved through american history and once upon a time you had to be white and mail and own property and i think there still is an embedded mentality that those are the only people whom at least make considerate decisions, right? maybe the others should be allowed to vote but they are not thinking for themselves so they are being pulled out of their apartments. others are making the decision for them and they are going along in a way that isn't quite the same way that you and i would make a decision. that's the mentality.

>> that is well said. bob, hard to beat that thought. they are not autonomous. they are just being driven by a group. they don't have any individual thinking going on here.

>> look, what drove a lot of them was that mitt romney said he didn't care about tax fairness, he wanted to let the auto industry go bankrupt, basically alienated latinos and hispanics, and obviously offered nothing to black people and unmarried women. now, over time -- and jonathan is absolutely right about this, we've ex panned the franchise in this country. there's always been a politicratic response to that. you will remember the defense secretary saying what's good for general motors is good for the kourp tree. this year, of course, what was good for general motors was bad for mitt romney .

>> yes, it was. i was thinking of the election up in canada and the french-speaking people lost their effort to separate from canada .

>> right.

>> and the leader of the french-speaking people says, oh, that's because the ethnics voted and the people that weren't french speaking . the jewish and indians had moved into that part of the country that had become canada but they were not considered canadian because they were not french speaking .

>> right. and there isn't the same mentality on both sides because the republican voted coalition is almost entirely white. the democrats have a lot of white voters but also a lot of nonwhite voter. so the democrats haven't become accustomed of not being real votes.

>> you have to visually -- if you look at the two conventions, not to be partisan this way, but if you look at a republican convention , it looks monocromatic and there's a few women there with power and then at the democratic convention , it's pretty diverse. it's interesting. it's like merng.

>> yeah.

>> it's different.

>> when you turn the camera randomly on at the democratic convention and point it in any direction, you would see the diversity of america . the only time you see diversity at a republican convention is when the camera is pointed at the podium and they have people carefully appointed to stand up and speak. the fact of the matter is that you have a whole bunch of entitled americans that think they should own this country, some on the grounds of race, some on the grounds of wealth, and they just can't believe that people went out and voted divisively rejected mitt romney and his message. look at the madness going on right now on the fiscal cliff stuff. romney lost and boehner is insisting on the romney plan. we have and leakses in this country for a reason.

>> bob, you can be a minority at republican conventions, you're just not encouraged to gather.

>> it's hard to get enough of them together.

>> no, you're not supposed to get together too much. that concerns them, then. your thoughts? are they going to learn their lesson this time, that there's an america out there?

>> you can't say the republicans are in the same place as they were before.

>> you must have am microscope. jonathan, very well spoken, very articulate fellow. bob shrum , thank you. bob shrum , you are