Republicans around the country are looking at each other trying to determine what happened in the presidential election. The answer is easy if we are willing to accept the truth. We Republicans nominated Mitt Romney. Our supporters across the country voted for him in primary after primary.

While we had solid conservative candidates, all of them had some sort of baggage and so one by one Gingrich, Cain, Perry, Bachmann and Santorum all fell by the wayside as momentum built for Romney. None of them could withstand the force of a New England silk stocking Republican and his big money contributors. In the end, they all played as good team members by endorsing and working for Romney.

Then as with every other "moderate" Republican, the message got muddled, our candidate refused to take on the president and point a finger at him in the debates and tell the truth to the American people, 60 million of whom were watching. The one time he did go on the offensive in the first debate, everything shifted his way. Then he tried to run out the clock the rest of the way and it did not work. In the foreign policy debate, our murdered ambassador, three other dead Americans and the cover up were not even mentioned. Astonishing!

Romney was fought tooth and nail every step of the way by the national media, but he knew that would happen. He was fought every step of the way by big labor unions but he knew that would happen. He was hounded and lambasted every day by the so called Hollywood elite. Any Republican candidate has to expect those opponents and be ready to deal with them.

Still Mitt Romney tried the same old failed tactics we see daily from moderate Republicans in Washington: "If I act nice to liberals and give them what they want, they'll like me more and act nice to me." In fact, the dedicated, hard core liberals who have complete control of the Democratic Party despise conservatives and no amount of groveling at their feet will change that. Yet Republicans refuse to learn that lesson and still let Democrats play us like cheap fiddles and laugh all night long about it. When will we learn how to compete in this arena? We won't win again until we do.

John Douglas is Newton County Commissioner Elect for the 1st District. He formerly served one term each on the Newton County School Board and in the Georgia House of Representatives and three terms in the Georgia Senate. He can be reached at jfdouglas@aol.com.