Month: November 2012
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Some Respond To Election Results By Advocating Secession
Some people on the right apparently want to return to this map.
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New Texas Senator Says Texas Could Go Democratic In The Future
Ted Cruz just won a comfortable victory in the race to replace Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Senate, but he’s already warning his fellow Republicans that the Lone Star State’s status as a solid red state may not last much longer: As a senator from Texas, the largest and most important state in the Republican…
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Romney Got No Votes In 59 Philadelphia Precincts?
According to preliminary results, Mitt Romney got absolutely no votes in 59 of Philadelphia’s most heavily African-American precincts: It’s one thing for a Democratic presidential candidate to dominate a Democratic city like Philadelphia, but check out this head-spinning figure: In 59 voting divisions in the city, Mitt Romney received not one vote. Zero. Zilch. These…
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The Conservative Political Media Complex
Many conservatives are living inside of a media bubble and they’ll continue to have problems until the consciously decide to break out of it.
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U.S. Death Toll From Hurricane Sandy Hits 113
The recovery from Hurricane Sandy continues to proceed, but the costs continue to mount: The outward signs of recovery were everywhere Monday across the Northeast nearly two weeks after Superstorm Sandy struck: Power restored to tens of thousands, bridges and tunnels reopened, and limited train and ferry service up and running. But there were signs,…
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Barone not Learning
Barone tells some tales to make himself feel better.
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FBI, DOJ Knew About Petraeus Affair For Months
The David Petraeus/Paula Broadwell story gets curiouser.
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Lines of the Week (“What a Difference an Election Makes” Edition)
"It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won’t, I don’t think. I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer."—Bill Kristol "Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half…
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The GOP Is Nearly Dead In California
Republicans used to dominate California. Now, they’re barely a factor in the state’s politics.
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Republicans In A Bind On Tax Increases
Political reality says that the Bush Tax Cuts for high income earners are likely doomed in the wake of the election, but the GOP will find it very hard to switch positions on this issue.
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Karl Rove v. The Tea Party?
Karl Rove may take his American Crossroads SuperPACs into Republican Primary campaigns, where a clash with Tea Party forces would seem inevitable: Rove is pondering new missions for Crossroads to address weaknesses laid bare by the GOP’s back-to-back failures to win the White House and the fact that the party fell short when expected to…
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2012 Pollster Rankings: Rasmussen And Gallup Among The Least Accurate
There are some expected and unexpected results in Nate Silver’s review of pollster accuracy in 2012.
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Republican Problems More Than Failure to Communicate
The Republican Party needs more than outreach to Hispanics to become a viable national party again.
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Allen West Has Lost, But Still Refuses To Concede
As I noted after the election, it was apparent after the vote was counted that Florida Congressman Allen West, who has nothing but an embarrassment from the moment he arrived on Capitol Hill, had lost his bid for re-election to Patrick Murphy after what had been one of the most toughly fought, expensive, Congressional elections in recent…
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Jesse Jackson Jr. Plea Deal Said To Include Resigning From Congress
A Chicago television station is reporting that the plea deal being negotiated by Federal Prosecutors and representatives of Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. includes the stipulation the Jackson will resign from Congress: A former U.S. attorney representing embattled Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is negotiating a plea deal with the federal government, CBS 2 has learned. CBS…
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McConnell Not Willing to Raise Taxes to Avoid Fiscal Cliff
Obama thinks he has a mandate to raise taxes on high earners. Republicans think they have a mandate to stop him.
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Political Geography
Quite fascinating: How presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline.
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FBI Probe That Uncovered Petraeus Affair Prompted By Threats From His Mistress
The Washington Post is reporting that the FBI probe that led to the discovery of former CIA Director David Petraeus’s affair with biographer Paula Broadwell was prompted by email threats allegedly sent by Broadwell to other women: The collapse of the dazzling career of CIA Director David H. Petraeus was triggered when a woman with whom he was having…
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What do I Mean by “Benghazi Conspiracy Theories”?
An attempt to lay down some basic groundwork for discussing this story.
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Scott Rasmussen Tries To Explain Why His 2012 Polling Was So Bad
Rassmussen Reports was among the least accurate pollsters of the 2012 Election Cycle, tying for 24th with Gallup out of 26 pollsters ranked in one post-election study. The main reason for this, of course, is the fact that Rasmussen went into his polls with a pre-conceived notion of what the electorate was supposed to look like and,…
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New York Post Wins The Petraeus Headline Wars
In the end, it wasn’t even a contest
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Supreme Court To Review Section Five Of The Voting Rights Act
The Supreme Court has agreed to take on another big case.
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Charles Darwin Gets 4,000 Write-In Votes Against Anti-Evolution Congressman
Georgia Congressman Paul Broun was quoted back in October as saying that evolution and The Big Bang Theory “come from the pits of hell,” so it’s appropriate that the father of Evolutionary Theory made an appearance the the returns against him on Election Day: A long-dead, 19th century British naturalist received nearly 4,000 votes against incumbent Georgia congressman…
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Petraeus Hindsight Bias
As is often the case with sex scandals, pretty much everything ever written about General David Petraeus takes on an ironic double meaning in hindsight.
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A Clue To The Petraeus Scandal In The New York Times?
Many people I follow on Twitter, including several journalists, are wondering if there’s any connection between the Petraeus scandal and this letter to Chuck Klosterman, author of the The New Times’ “The Ethicist” column that appeared on July 13, 2012: MY WIFE’S LOVER My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is…
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Christie Leads Prospective 2016 Republicans In New Hampshire
Since we already took a look at the potential 2016 Democrats in Iowa, let’s take a look at their Republican counterparts in New Hampshire: Twenty-one percent of Republicans in the state favor Christie as the party’s nominee in four years. A cluster of prospective candidates trail Christie but still crack 10 percent: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (14…
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The Petraeus Scandal Within a Scandal
The scandal that led to P4’s downfall has many layers, none of them flattering to the most famous American general of his generation.
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What Do Benghazi Conspiracy Theories and the Romney Electoral College Landslide Have in Common?
Answer: they have both been the hallmarks of particular news and commentary outlets. The same commentators who earnestly felt in their guts that the polling was all wrong and that Romney was going to win 300 or more electoral votes are also the ones who are convinced that Benghazi represents some sort of massive cover-up…
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Filibuster Reform On The Agenda In 2013?
Once again, Senate Democrats are talking about filibuster reform, but will they actually follow through?
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David Petraeus Resigns As CIA Director, Admitting To Extra-Marital Affair
A surprise Friday resignation at the CIA.
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Unfortunately For the GOP, Democrats Have An Electoral College Advantage
The Democratic Party appears to have a lock on a substantial part of the Electoral College. That poses a problem for Republicans.
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Poll: 51% Of Republicans, 64% Of Independents Support A Path To Citizenship For Illegal Immigrants
According to the exit polls from Tuesday’s election, there is widespread support for reform of the nation’s Immigration System, including a path to citizenship for illegals, even among people who voted for Mitt Romney: By 65 to 28 percent, voters said most illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for…
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The Fight Against Obamacare Died On Election Night
Any chance that the Affordable Care Act will be repealed died with the re-election of Barack Obama. But, there are other fights to come.
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David Frum: Republicans Were Fleeced And Lied To By The Conservative Media
David Frum was on Morning Joe this morning talking about the factors that led up to Romney’s loss, and he made an excellent point about the role that the conservative media played in this election: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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The Romney Campaign Was Full Of Poll Denialists
If the Romney campaign looked shocked on Election Night, that’s because they didn’t believe the polls either.
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Karl Rove: Obama Won Because Of Voter Supression
Karl Rove adds to the Republican theories of why Mitt Romney lost the election by accusing the President’s campaign of, wait for it, voter suppression: Mitt Romney lost the election because President Barack Obama engaged in voter suppression, according to Republican political strategist Karl Rove. “He succeeded by suppressing the vote,” Rove said in an interview…
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Hillary Clinton Leads Prospective 2016 Democrats In Iowa
Thirty-eight months from the Iowa Caucuses, Hillary Clinton is lapping the field: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would start out as a dominant favorite in the 2016 Iowa caucuses if she chooses to run for president, a new survey from Public Policy Polling finds. The PPP poll, which was shared exclusively with POLITICO, shows Clinton taking…
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Marijuana Got More Votes Than Obama In Colorado
Legalizing marijuana got more votes than Barack Obama in Colorado: In Colorado, weed is more popular than President Barack Obama. More people voted for Amendment 64 — which legalizes and regulates recreational use of marijuana — than voted for the president. As of Thursday morning, with 100 percent of precincts reporting their results,1,291,771 votes in favor of Amendment…
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Praying Passenger Gets Denver to DC Plane Military Escort
A passenger praying in the aisles will apparently get your plane priority landing privileges.
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So Much For The Myth Of The Efficient, Organized Romney Campaign
The post at Ace Of Spades by someone who had volunteered as a poll watcher for the Romney campaign is really quite revealing. Rather than quoting it at length, I’ll just recommend reading the whole thing.
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Republicans Need To Understand What Went Wrong If They Want To Win Again
Republicans are trying to figure out what went wrong. Will they learn the right lessons from their loss?
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Jared Lee Loughner Sentenced To Seven Life Sentences In Giffords Shooting
Jared Lee Loughner has been sentenced to life in prison for the shooting that resulted in the injury of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six other people: Jared Lee Loughner, who shot former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head, killed six and wounded 12 others in a 2011 Tucson rampage, was sentenced to life…
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Romney Campaign Concedes Defeat In Florida
While it thankfully wasn’t necessary to a determination of the winner of the Electoral College this time around, as of today there still hasn’t been an official winner declared in Florida thanks largely to uncounted absentee ballots. Despite that, President Obama has a lead of roughly 50,000 votes and it was quite apparent as of…
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Has Nate Silver Ruined Politics?
Is the triumph of political forecasting good for our democracy?
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Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson Locates Krypton
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and a hero to science geeks everywhere, has a role in a new Superman comic: Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman’s home star system! Thanks to astrophysicist and geek all-star Neil deGrasse Tyson, Krypton has been located within the known…
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Obama’s Re-Election Sparks Racially Tinged Protests At Ole Miss
Not everyone was thrilled about the idea of Barack Obama being re-elected, especially not some students at Ole Miss: JACKSON, Miss. — A protest at the University of Mississippi against the re-election of President Barack Obama grew into crowd of about 400 people with shouted racial slurs as rumors of a riot spread on social…
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Nakoula Basseley Nakoula Sentenced To A Year In Jail For Probation Violations
The producer of a controversial anti-Muslim film that led to anti-American riots in several Muslim nations back in September, and who was arrested on charges that he had violated the terms of his Federal Probation shortly thereafter, has been sentenced to a year in jail: LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California man behind an anti-Muslim…