Do conservatives actually need to reinvent after loss?

>>> there's a shot of the white house . beautiful, the white house .

>> fiscal cliff right here.

>> exactly. that's historic. that was an historic election. let's do our "must-read opinion pages." mika has telefaxed us in over the mojo wire. charles krauthammer , "the way forward ." and this is what charles says. "the answer to romney 's failure is not retreat, not aping the democrats' patchwork pandering," on and on.

>> that's a lot of alliteration from anxious anchors placed in powerful posts.

>> that is. republicans, though, i like this. no wim perfecting, no whining, no wining, do conservatism but do it bet ter. there's a whole generation of leaders ready to do that. really this is a party doomed, jon meacham , by demographics if they can't make the compelling case that conservatism, the type of conservatism i believe in is just as relevant to an 18-year-old latino voter in new mexico as it is to a 65-year-old white voter in birmingham, alabama.

>> the conservatism is not limited to country clubs and that there is in fact a libertarian small government more self-determined, self-government governing ethos going forward. and that argument was not made. and that seems to me that a republican party pulling itself back together here is going to have to argue that you want to keep the government in the, you know, out of your life as much as possible.

>> right.

>> and in order to create space for individual choice, individual decisions. and in a climate, in a generation and a world shaped by the technological and cultural factors that have shaped this generation, seems to me there's a climate where that argument could work.

>> the opportunities lost by this republican party , mike barnicle , that elected a multimillionaire, possibly the richest guy ever to run for president, the same election cycle that we had the collapse in 2008 of lehman brothers due to wall street scandals, due to banking scandals, that was a missed opportunity, doubling down on a failed afghanistan war strategy was a missed opportunity. americans would have loved to see a republican talk about breaking up the banks, ending the war in afghanistan , rebuilding the country here at home. but no republican was there to answer that bell.

>> you know, the issues that you just mentioned, when you measure them against a conservative philosophy which many people in this country adhere to and like to hear about, the principles of conservatism, that is one issue that you put over here, and it's a very attractive issue. it has very attractive aspects to it. and yet it seems to me that the republican party , in their quest for conservatism, have come to confuse with what they hear on talk radio as conservatism principles. the three issues that you just mentioned, you rarely hear them on talk radio . they're talking about building higher walls, getting more people out of the country, stuff like that. just, like, crazy, hate-filled rhetoric rather than principled talk about politics.

>> the thing is, john heilemann, milton friedman didn't trust big businesses any more than he trusted big government . there would have been a great opportunity to say, break up the banks. bring the troops home. and by the way, break up the bureaucracy in washington, d.c. fight for smaller government. that's a message that would have broken across party lines . boy, it was a very, very narrow ideological path that this republican party wanted to run.

>> it was. you know, i don't mean to change the subject, but i think, you know, one of the things that we've been talking about yesterday, a similar subject, what else do republicans have to do. it's a mormeck cal point. but boy, as we looked at the stories that have come out over the last few days, we talked a lot yesterday about the incredible mechanical expertise that the obama campaign brought to bear. we're now starting to see how bad the romney campaign was. these stories are now coming out about what their ground game actually looked like and their voter identification and their poll watching and all this stuff. and, i mean, it's like deep blue , you know, the ibm computer that played chess versus, like, guys working on an abacus or something.

>> how did that happen?

>> you know, it's weird, these things move in cycles.

>> how did it happen?

>> you get periods where democrats are ascendant technologically and karl rove and those guys, and it sways back and forth. boy, republicans apart from having to come up with a message that appeals to the new emerging electoral coalition , they'll have to figure out how to modernize their basic infra infrastructure, because man, we are rapidly hurtling toward a new world that they are still caught in the past.

>> can you believe how bad the last two republican campaigns have been for president? how badly run they have been?

>> well, you know, yes. i think yes, both of them had significant flaws. but you know, just to drive this point home --

>> by the way, that starts at the top.

>> it does.

>> it starts at the top.

>> in the end, the candidate is ultimately responsible for his campaign and the blame or credit should rest with the candidate. the story that blew my mind yesterday was the story about the fact that somehow the obama campaign managed to increase african-american turnout in ohio from 11% in 2008 to 15% in 2012 . the country, african-americans are exactly the same, 13% in 2008 and 2012 . in ohio , it had a 33% increase in black turnout in ohio . why did they win ohio ? they won for a lot of reasons, but that's a huge part of the reason. and a huge part of the reason why the romney campaign, to the very end, thought how can we be losing ohio ? this doesn't make sense. the obama campaign went out and found votes that they didn't know existed.

>> strategically goes back even further than that where the romney people allowed david plouffe to draw up the map. and said this is where we're going to be fighting the battle. these are going to be the nine states. and that's where they fought them. instead of going into pennsylvania early, instead of going into minnesota, instead of forcing them to fight on their own turf more effectively. and they had all the money in the world. and all for nothing.

>> so why do you think they did that? i'll take a guess at why they did that from talking to american a few of them. it's because they thought the country was such in a mood, in this kind of a mood, that people don't like this president. they don't like what's happening to their lives, over the past two or three years of his presidency. we can just sit back, spend a lot of money on tv ads that very few people will pay attention to and people will come out in droves to the polls to vote against barack obama .

>> you look at the big losers of this campaign, and there are a lot of them, but boy, the guys that spent a lot of money on super pacs, wow! it not only didn't move the presidential vote, it didn't move the senate races.

>> oh, my god.

>> i think there's a dr. seuss problem here. that if the republicans can convince people that their heart is not two sizes too small and that they are big-hearted, it's an argument about big hearts versus big government .

>> i do not like green eggs and ham . i do not like them, sam i am .

>> sam i am . that is a different book.

>> great book.

>> republicans have been told by people on the far right that they have to make a choice between being real conservatives and being liked. ronald reagan somehow figured out how to do both. it was not mutually exclusive . chuck schumer joins us with a look at negotiations over the fiscal cliff. plus nbc's political director, chuck todd , and moderator of "meet the press," david gregory will come in and join the conversation. we shall return on " morning joe ." had to