Josh, writing at TPM reminds us of a over-looked fact:
A Reminder
Republicans have won the popular vote for president once in the last six presidential elections.
That should really give you an idea of where the country sits.
Yesterday I noticed a growing sentiment amongst those on the right; that they lost because of Mitt Romney. Here's a quick summary from Salon:
It’s been less than 24 hours since the polls closed and already the first shots in an emerging civil war within the conservative movement are being fired. Right-leaning pundits have been taking turns beating up on Mitt Romney and blaming him for the loss last night. Donald Trump just tweeted, “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.” And GOP leaders are already taking to the barricades on either side of the divide, which basically comes down to this question: Were Romney and the GOP too conservative or not conservative enough?
Granted, none of this is a shock. We hear this all the time from not only the right, but also the left. But as non-shocking as it may be, I always shake my head at the argument "the establishment picked this candidate". That was the meme in 2008, when John McCain won the GOP nomination. Apparently Republicans forget about that entire primary process and going to the polls earlier this year.
But there is something that has shocked me. From the same Salon article, we see a real fracture growing in the GOP:
But on the other side of the fight, Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate who still has a robust following via his popular talk radio program and speaking tours, today suggested the most clear step to open civil war: secession. Appearing on Bryan Fischer’s radio program this afternoon, Cain called for a large faction of Republican Party leaders to desert the party and form a third, more conservative party.
Dick Morris has to be one of the sickest fucks on the planet. Here he is, giving one of his reasonings for Romney's loss:
But the more proximate cause of my error was that I did not take full account of the impact of hurricane Sandy and of Governor Chris Christie’s bipartisan march through New Jersey arm in arm with President Obama. Not to mention Christe's fawning promotion of Obama's presidential leadership.
Really? Christie is a smart man and I'm sure he knew that this would not help his political future in the party that shuns anyone who might appear to reach across the aisle. But that wasn't what Christie was thinking about. Instead he saw his state in ruins and saw the leader of our country come to help out. All the while, the man that wanted to lead our country was out worrying about only his future.
So what would have made Dick happier? Well if Christie denied Obama's help and let the people of his state continue to suffer and die, all in the name of Romney.
In other words, Dick feels that the hurricane should have been turned into nothing more than a political issue. Who else would do such a thing? Well, terrorist organizations are great for this. That's exactly how Hezbollah acts. So there you have it, Dick Morris and Fox News have now crossed the line into radical Islam. Great job guys!
Harry Reid is vowing to take on something that many of us have asked for - filibuster reform:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pledged on Wednesday to change the rules of the Senate so that the minority party has fewer tools to obstruct legislative business.
In his first post-election press conference, the Nevada Democrat said he wouldn't go so far as to eliminate the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for the chamber to enter and exit the amendment and debate process. But in remarks meant to preview a more combative approach during the next session, he warned Republicans that obstructionism as a tactic won't be tolerated -- or as technically feasible.
Now let's look at why this really needs to be done. Here's a handy graph showing how much the GOP has decided to abuse the filibuster in the past several years:
Of course the way the filibuster happens has also changed. It's not like the old days, where the cots are rolled out and the TV screen is full of senators reading from Shakespeare. Instead they basically say "filibuster" and the legislation is done. It has been twisted into a tool where the minority controls Senate, not the majority.
So how is the right responding to this? Well here's Drudge's headline on it:
I've been going through the exit polls from yesterday and they reveal a big problem for the GOP, and a problem I talked about the other day.
When it comes to race, the GOP has seen a decline of 2% women votes since 2008. I'm sure all, if not more, of that can be attributed to the GOP's war on women we have seen take place over the past couple of years.
But an even bigger problem exists in race. In 2008, John McCain got 31% of the Latino vote. This year, Romney got only 27%. The GOP is pushing out a growing demographic in the American electorate, and that is a huge problem.
My suggestion is for the GOP to spend the next four years working with Obama instead of against him. Apparently Obama is doing something right amongst this group, while the GOP isn't. It's time for the GOP to grow past the "party of old, white men" and increase the size of their tent. Just because they can taut people like Herman Cain doesn't make them the party of African Americans, not does Marco Rubio make them the party of Latinos.
Republicans now have four years to regroup and try to retake the White House. They are also likely to face some tough competition in 2016, like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. Republicans really need to change their image and they need to start working on that today. If they don't, then they risk not being in the White House for a very long time.
This is one of the top stories Drudge is pushing right now:
Local Republicans went to court to have a judge order a mural of President Obama covered up at the Ben Franklin Elementary School polling place in the Northeast.
Republican Party of Pennsylvania Chairman Rob Gleason released the following statement regarding the Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s successful challenge.
To get away with their disgusting attempts to suppress Republican voices in Philadelphia,” Chairman Rob Gleason said. “Whether it’s blocking Republican Election Day workers form doing their job or violating Pennsylvania law by electioneering in the polling place, it is clear the Obama campaign has taken their campaign in the gutter to manipulate this election however they can. Based on the Obama campaign’s behavior today, it certainly raises the question: what are Democrats doing in the polls that they are working so hard to shield folks from monitoring this election?”
Here's a picture of the mural:
Funny how this is an issue, but what about voters right here in Hamilton, Ohio? Here's a statue outside my polling place:
For claiming to be so "patriotic", the Tea Party does a lot to go against the very grains of America:
Yesterday we reported that True the Vote was attempting to place observers at precincts in Central Ohio, focusing on African American districts. We also noted that there might be some problems with the forms they submitted to the Franklin County Board of Elections (FCBOE).
The FCBOE met today and determined that True the Vote had likely falsified the forms submitted for general election observers. The new observer forms, filed over the past few days by True the Vote representative (and Hilliard Tea Party Member) Jan Loar, used candidate signatures copied from a previous set of forms filed in early October
All but one of the six candidates whose names appeared on the original form had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of today’s forms. During the BOE meeting Candidate Terri Jamison spoke up to say her name was “forged” on the latest round of forms.
The form for appointing observers reads ‘election falsification is a 5th degree felony’. Election officials have confirmed that there will be a post-election investigation of True the Vote.
The forms have been rejected unanimously by all members (Rs and Ds) on the board. True the Vote observers will not be allowed in Franklin County polling locations tomorrow. Poll monitoring organizations expect they may still be stationed outside of polling locations.
There is no room in our democracy for people trying to steal it. These people need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It's time for the United States to have fair elections, and these type of actions take us much further from that goal.
This past Friday Mitt Romney held a rally in West Chester, Ohio (a 15 minute drive from IntoxiNation headquarters). More then 30,000 people came out to see Romney speak. Well let me rephrase that. 30,000 came out to see Kid Rock play. Many went ahead and stayed to see Mitt Romney speak.
West Chester was a prime location for this event. In 2010 it was the site of a Tea Party rally that drew 10,000 people. Given how red this area is, that is no shocker.
But if you look at the photos from Friday's rally, you will notice something. Everyone appears to be white. Here's one image from the rally:
You can also view more images here and here.
To see little to no diversity in such a huge crowd should be troubling for the GOP. Sometime in the next few decades, it is predicted that whites in America will become the minority. Non-white births are now actually exceeding white births, so that day is quickly approaching. This is a statistic that Republicans love to throw out there all the time, using it as some scare tactic. That, in itself, appears to be a problem, but the crowds at these GOP rallies are even more troubling.
Politico's Jonathon Martin, reporting on the crowd at this event, has this to say:
There was a lot of talk yesterday of how Mitt Romney's so called "hurricane relief" event in Dayton, Ohio turned into nothing more than a campaign stop. Twitter was a storm of reports about the event. Today we get even a bigger insight into how staged this "relief" effort was:
As supporters lined up to greet the candidate, a young volunteer in a Romney/Ryan T-shirt stood near the tables, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, "You need a donation to get in line!"
Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, "What if we dropped off our donations up front?"
The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. "Just grab something," he said.
Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their "donations" to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest "Thank you."
This has to be one of the most callous acts in politics I have heard of in a long time, if ever. Millions are suffering. 54 are dead and that number is still expected to rise. The damage is in the billions of dollars and things are still chaotic.
Mitt Romney is not fit to be President. He is not fit to even be considered human. I wonder how the Mormon Church really feels about this, given all their humanitarian work? Romney is totally exploiting the misfortunes of millions to further his own ambitions.
I don't see how anyone could vote for Mitt, especially after this. To call it disgusting is an understatement. It easily compares to Bush eating cake with John McCain and playing guitar with a country music singer as New Orleans flooded and hundreds died after Katrina. Do these Republicans have no shame?
Leave it to Matt Drudge to come up with some new conspiracy that all the little minions on the right can latch onto. Today's conspiracy involves the release of October's jobs numbers. Here's the headline he is pushing right now:
Mystery? Oh must be bad numbers and Obama is going to wait until after the election!!!
But let's look at the article that Drudge is linking.
“It is our intention that Friday will be business as usual,” said Carl Fillichio, a senior press advisor at Labor. Mr. Fillichio’s statement provided clarity to an earlier Labor statement that said the agency would assess how to handle data releases this week after the “weather emergency” is over.
Friday’s employment report will be the final read on the labor market ahead of the November elections. Initial reports that a delay was possible briefly fueled speculation that the jobs data, good or bad, might not be revealed until after the elections.
Federal government offices in Washington are closed Monday and may be shut again Tuesday due to the storm.
(emphasis added)
Apparently Matt Drudge hasn't realized that there is a hurricane battering the east coast right now and that has shut everything down. You really think he would notice though, considering right above that headline is this:
Remember during the last Presidential Election, when Barack Obama said that people in the small towns of Pennsylvania "cling to their guns". You should. It has been making a comeback lately.
Well now it looks like the President was correct and the effects are sad:
Police say a costumed 9-year-old girl was accidentally shot outside a western Pennsylvania home during a Halloween party by a relative who thought she was a skunk.
New Sewickley Township police say the girl was over a hillside and wearing a black costume and a black hat with a white tassel. Chief Ronald Leindecker told the Beaver County Times that a male relative mistook her for a skunk and fired a shotgun, hitting her in the shoulder, arm, back and neck Saturday night.
Leindecker told the newspaper that the girl was alert and talking when she was flown to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, about 30 miles away. Her condition was unavailable.
Leindecker says the man hadn't been drinking and he doesn't know whether charges will be filed. New Sewickley police said Sunday that decision will be made in a few days.
An innocent child, wearing a Halloween costume, and now her Halloween, as well as every other one that follows, is ruined. Sure it may have just been an "accident", but responsibility should be the key here. The shooter should have taken the responsibility to know exactly who or what his target was.
Disgusting!
It used to be that politics in the workplace was a very taboo subject. I have worked for companies in the past that would go as far as reprimand any employee or management that would engage in such conversation, simply because it is so easy to create animosity amongst workers. But that was then and this is now. Now we have people like Mitt Romney, who think politics in the workplace is a very good idea.
Back in June of this year, Romney held a conference call with the conservative National Federation of Independent Business. In that call, Romney had this to say about the upcoming election:
I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.
I will give Romney credit here; he played it very safe. If Romney told these people that they should tell their employees to "vote for Romney", then we would be looking at something illegal. Instead he did some wordsmithing to stay away from any legal problems.
But even if this does fall into the realm of being legal, it is still morally questionable. Having an employer say something like that to an employee carries a certain weight of threat to it. They don't have to say "vote for Romney or lose your job", but simply saying "A Romney win is in your best interest," is the nicer way of putting it.
Ohio is a key state to the White House. The Democrats know this and so does the Republicans. That's why it is no shock that Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, has stopped at nothing to try and give Romney an advantage in the Buckeye State. Well that latest attempt has now been turned down by the right leaning Supreme Court of the United States:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned aside a request from Ohio to hear a case in which a lower court ruled the state couldn't stop early voting during the three-day period before the election. The decision is a victory for the Obama campaign, which had successfully argued that Ohio could not allow military and overseas voters to vote during the three day period unless that opportunity was available to all voters.
Secretary of State Jon Husted announced he was appealing the case to the Supreme Court last week, arguing the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision didn't make legal or practical sense.
By SCOTUS turning down the request, that means the ruling of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals stands. The opinion (PDF) written by the 6th Circuit concludes that all persons should have the same amount of time and availability to ballots.
This has opinion was the very merits that the Obama campaign argued all along. You may remember when this first surfaced a few months ago and Mitt Romney and the right wing talking heads said it was Obama trying to not let our military vote. That was one of the biggest lies told this year. It had nothing to do with "not" letting our military vote, but rather letting every citizen of Ohio have the same access to ballots.
The latest in the crazy capers of Mitt and Paul has Paul Ryan pretending that he cares:
The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.
Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.
What about government coming into our homes and businesses? Paul Ryan just forced his way into one. Not only that, but what Ryan washed was already clean!
But it gets worse. There is fear that Ryan's shenanigans could cause the kitchen some donations:
He noted that the soup kitchen relies on funding from private individuals who might reconsider their support if it appears that the charity is favoring one political candidate over another.
“I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals,” he said. “If this was the Democrats, I’d have the same exact problem.”
I'm sure many would think this sounds petty; not supporting a charity because it looks like they support a certain candidate. They would be right. It would be as petty as churches that shun members for supporting a certain candidate or mega-millionaire business owners threatening their employees over support for a candidate (*cough* KOCH!).
Yesterday Chris Wallace challenged Romney adviser Ed Gillespie on rather Romney's tax cut plans were feasible. At issue was the "six independent studies" that the Romney campaign has been touting. Here's the exchange from Think Progress:
GILLESPIE: Six different studies have said this is entirely doable.
WALLACE: Those are very questionable. Some of them are blogs, some of them are from AEI, an independent group.
GILLESPIE: These are very credible sources.
WALLACE: One of them is a blog from a guy who was a top adviser for George W. Bush. These are hardly non-partisan studies.
GILLESPIE: Look Chris these AEI and other studies are very credible sources of analysis
So to Romney, an adviser to George Bush is non-partisan.
It's also amazing that the hundreds of other analysis that have come out, which say there is no way that Romney can cut the top earners tax rate by 20% without significantly raising taxes on the middle class, is just impossible. Instead Romney has chosen the very few studies that say it can be done.
But there is something even more interesting in this exchange. It's something I have hammered Romney on before - a lack of plan. Well Gillespie offers more insight into that. It shows that Mitt Romney is a man not worried about country, but worried about only him:
Ed Gillespie went on TV this morning and said Mitt Romney would only reveal the details of his tax plan after he’s sworn into office as President.
