Rep. Allen West (R-FL) refused to concede after the state concluded that challenger Patrick Murphy (D) held a lead beyond the margin needed for an automatic recount, the AP reports.

West was elected in 2010 on a wave of tea party support and has since had a constant string of headline-grabbing statements, from calling congressional Democrats communists to saying President Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and others should “get the hell out of the United States.”

Paul Begala: “Our goal was to take Romney’s greatest strength–his business record–and make it a weakness. We were given a road map by none other than the late, great Ted Kennedy. As the 2008 election was approaching, I paid the senator a visit. I thought Romney might be the GOP nominee, and Kennedy gave me a tutorial on how to beat him. Don’t underestimate Romney, Kennedy said. He’s smart and resourceful and will say anything, take any position. Kennedy recounted how his campaign team tracked down employees of companies that had been shut down after being bought by Bain Capital. Shamelessly copying Kennedy’s plan, we interviewed dozens of laid-off ­middle-class working people. Their stories were emblematic of the collapse of the middle class: factories closed, health benefits canceled, lives ruined.”

“My old friend, former Georgia governor and senator Zell Miller, taught me that ‘a hit dog barks,’ but Romney remained silent. I am still amazed that Romney did not respond. He allowed our little, underfunded super PAC to define him as Gordon Gekko. Without his business record, Romney was left with nothing but his charm.”

Soon after Mitt Romney conceded the presidential election, more than
55,025 Facebook users have “unliked” Romney, at a rate of about
847 an hour, according to Mashable. 

President Obama has been declared the winner of Florida in the presidential election, the Associated Press reports.

The final Electoral College tally is Obama 332, Romney 206.

The latest nationwide popular vote tally is Obama 50.6%, Romney 47.9%.

The Week lists seven things he should have done differently.

The Economist: “Arguing whether Mr Obama has a mandate is like debating whether somebody has mojo, or whether basketball star LeBron James is ‘in the zone’ on a given night: there’s a discussion to be had, but no way to come to a definite conclusion.”

Politico: “The face of the historic $1-billion plan to unseat President Obama and turn the Senate Republican, Karl Rove now finds himself the leading scapegoat for its failure. And he’s scrambling to protect his status as a top GOP money man by convincing disappointed donors to his Crossroads groups that he did the best he could with their $300 million.”

“During a secret Thursday afternoon conference call with his benefactors, Rove laid out the analytics behind his assertions to donors that a massive late-game advertising push would expand the electoral map into Pennsylvania and deliver the White House and the Senate.”

National Memo: Karl Rove gets philosophical.

“What’s been interesting to watch is that our data has been remarkably
consistent really from last spring forward, and our battleground polls
really didn’t fluctuate much. There were times when it would dip to
where we had a 2-point lead in the battleground states. There’s one poll
over the course that we had a 1-point lead.  By and large, we’ve been 3
and 4 points ahead in the battleground polls.”

— David Axelrod, in an interview with Mike Allen, giving a postmortem on the 2012 presidential campaign.

Even though Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) won re-election at the same time he was on the national ticket, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel notes he was crushed in his hometown of Janesville, WI by challenger Rob Zerban (D), 55% to 44%. Ryan had never lost Janesville in a re-election campaign before.

In addition, the Obama-Biden ticket defeated Romney-Ryan ticket in Janesville by a whopping 25 points, 62% to 37%.

“The drop-off from the Ryan congressional vote to the Romney-Ryan presidential vote was much larger in Janesville (7.2 points) than it was in the rest of the congressional district (3 points). Put another way, there were more Ryan ticket-splitters in Janesville than other places: people who voted for Ryan for Congress but against Ryan for vice president.”

Fox News: What’s next for Paul Ryan?

Roy Moore (R), forever known as Alabama’s Ten Commandments judge, “has been re-elected chief justice in a triumphant political resurrection after being ousted from that office nearly a decade ago,” the Biloxi Sun-Herald reports.

Said Moore to his supporters: “Go home with the knowledge that we are going to stand for the acknowledgment of God.”

Michael Scherer talks to Michael Smerconish about the microtargeting and backroom number crunching that won the 2012 election.

[Read more…]

Mitt Romney’s campaign boasted for weeks about their voter-targeting sytem called ORCA, “named for the killer whale, that cost substantial resources to build over months,” Politico reports.

“Instead, Romney campaign officials were mostly flying without instruments on election day. Numerous Republicans in and around the Romney campaign called the ORCA platform a total bust, stranding thousands of volunteers without a way of reporting data back to headquarters and leaving Romney central command without a clear view of developments on the ground.”