Romney lost on too-few specifics, top Republicans say

LAS VEGAS — Top Republicans meeting for the first time since Election Day say the party lost its bid to unseat President Barack Obama because nominee Mitt Romney did not respond to criticism strongly enough or outline a specific agenda with a broad appeal.

In conversations at the Republican Governors Association confab in Las Vegas, a half-dozen party leaders predicted the GOP will lose again if it keeps running the same playbook based on platitudes in place of detailed policies. Instead, they asserted, the party needs to learn the lessons from its loss, respect voters’ savvy and put forward an agenda that appeals beyond the while, male voters who are its base.

“We need to acknowledge the fact that we got beat,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in an interview. “We clearly got beat, and we need to recognize that.”

Little more than a week after Romney came up short in his presidential bid, the party elders were looking at his errors and peering ahead to 2016’s race. Some of the contenders eying a White House run of their own were on hand and quietly considering their chances. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie scheduled a private meeting on the sidelines with Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor who is widely seen as one of the GOP’s sharpest political operatives.

“We need to have a brutal, brutally honest assessment of everything we did,” Barbour said. “We need to take everything apart ... and determine what we did that worked and what we did that didn’t work.”

Other potential White House contenders such as Jindal, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker were outlining a vision for the party in coming elections.

“We need to figure out what we did right and what we did wrong, how we can improve our tone, our message, our technology, our turnout — all the things that are required to win elections,” McDonnell said. “We are disappointed, but we are not discouraged.”