A new website tracks Mitt Romney’s fade from Facebook in real time.
David Petraeus’ Other Seduction
Howard Kurtz: “David Petraeus had another love affair long before the one that cost him his job running the CIA. It was with the press.”
“The retired general’s skillful courtship of journalists brought him a career’s worth of favorable headlines and has, to a remarkable degree, softened the coverage of his fall from grace. Petraeus accomplished this in part by granting reporters access–though none quite as extraordinary as that accorded his biographer, Paula Broadwell, who several news organizations have identified as Other Woman in the extramarital affair he has acknowledged.”
Megachurch Pastor Warns Obama Will “Pave Way” for Antichrist
Robert Jeffress, a Texas megachurch pastor, said that President Obama’s re-election victory would lead to the rise of the Antichrist, the Christian Post reports.
Said Jeffress: “I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist, I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he’s not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes.”
He added: “But what I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”
Are House Republicans Ready to Cut a Deal?
Wonk Wire sees signs the GOP might be willing to bargain in order to avoid going over the “fiscal cliff.”
The Second Term Curse
Walter Shapiro: “Dating back to Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 failure to bring the United States into the League of Nations, second presidential terms have almost always been disappointing and sad. There have been successes: Ronald Reagan passing tax reform in 1986 and Bill Clinton balancing the budget. But far more common are thwarted ambitions, scandal and a slow slide towards political irrelevance.”
SNL Reflects on Romney’s Loss
A Saturday Night Live skit opens with Karl Rove visiting Mitt Romney: “Look, now might not be the best time. But, uh, can I borrow $300 million?”
Is the Independent Vote Overrated?
First Read: “Romney actually won the independent vote, 50%-45%. So now twice in the last three elections — in 2004 and 2012 — the winner has lost the indie vote. What does this mean? Well, party ID appears to matter much more: In 2004, it was even; in 2008, it was D+7; and last week, it was D+6. Also, many polls have different ways of deciding who is an ‘independent’; some pollsters include ‘lean Dems and lean GOPers’ in their independent number which lately has given the indie number a GOP skew. If you move the leaners into their own parties, then you get a more pure indie subgroup (and you also realize how really small of a subgroup it is).”
Rasmussen Explains What Went Wrong
Rasmussen Reports, which had Mitt Romney leading President Obama on the final day of the presidential campaign and picked the winner in just three of nine swing states, explains:
“A preliminary review indicates that one reason for this is that we
underestimated the minority share of the electorate. In 2008, 26% of
voters were non-white. We expected that to remain relatively constant.
However, in 2012, 28% of voters were non-white. That was exactly the
share projected by the Obama campaign. It is not clear at the moment
whether minority turnout increased nationally, white turnout decreased,
or if it was a combination of both. The increase in minority turnout has
a significant impact on the final projections since Romney won nearly
60% of white votes while Obama won an even larger share of the minority
vote.”
“Another factor may be related to the generation gap. It is interesting
to note that the share of seniors who showed up to vote was down
slightly from 2008 while the number of young voters was up slightly.”
Bowles, Lew Rumored to Replace Geithner
NPR says that Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired up the president’s debt reduction commission, is a candidate to replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in President Obama’s second term.
But “a more likely choice might be Jack Lew, the current White House chief of staff and formerly the president’s budget director.”
Wonk Wire: Who should be the next Treasury Secretary?
Obama Will Hit the Road for Budget Deal
As President Obama begins budget talks to avoid the fiscal cliff, the New York Times notes he “will not simply hunker down there for weeks of closed-door negotiations as he did in mid-2011, when partisan brinkmanship over raising the nation’s debt limit damaged the economy and his political standing. He will travel beyond the Beltway at times to rally public support for a deficit-cutting accord that mixes tax increases on the wealthy with spending cuts.”
Wonk Wire: What is the fiscal cliff anyway?
What Obama Wants Now
John Heilemann “This is a
president unusually focused in the present on what his legacy will be in
the future. With Obama’s reelection, one foundational element of that
legacy has been secured: the Affordable Care Act, which, had he been
defeated, would not only likely have been repealed but retrospectively
reduced to one of the causes of his loss. Now, with a second term ahead
of him, among Obama’s paramount goals, say his advisers, is to add
another glittering trophy to his mantle: at least one more
domestic-policy reform tantamount in importance to near-universal health
care.”
“The shiniest such prize would be the achievement of a grand bargain on
entitlements and tax reform: a bipartisan agreement that would put the
nation’s fiscal house in order for years, and maybe decades, to come.
The extent to which Obama pines for this was illustrated by his ardent
pursuit of such a megadeal in 2011, which ultimately fell apart when
House Speaker John Boehner proved unable to move the tea-party faction
in his caucus to accept new revenues.”
How Obama Won the Class War
Jonathan Chait: “Like every president, Obama won for myriad reasons, important and petty. But his reelection was hardly small and hardly devoid of ideas. Indeed, it was entirely about a single idea. The campaign, from beginning to end, was an extended argument about economic class…”
“If there is a single plank in the Democratic platform on which Obama can claim to have won, it is taxing the rich. Obama ignored vast swaths of his agenda, barely mentioning climate change or education reform, but by God did he hammer home the fact that his winning would bring higher taxes on the rich. He raised it so relentlessly that at times it seemed out of proportion even to me, and I wrote a book on the topic. But polls consistently showed the public was on his side.”
“Obama’s goal was to prove to the GOP that their rigid defense of the richest one percent was political poison and to force them to bend. For now, at least, their same monomaniacal refusal to increase any taxes on the rich is leading Republicans to deny any connection between the tax issue and Obama’s victory.”
The Republican Media Cocoon
Politico: “The tension between the profit- and ratings-driven right — call them entertainment-based conservatives — and conservatives focused on ideas (the thinkers) and winning (the operatives) has never been more evident.”
“The latter group worries that too many on the right are credulous about the former.”
“The egghead-hack coalition believes that the entertainment-based conservatives create an atmosphere which enables flawed down-ballot candidates, creates a cartoonish presidential primary, blocks needed policy reforms and generally leave an odor on the party which turns off swing voters.”
Officials Knew of Petraeus Affair Last Summer
High-level officials at the FBI and the Justice Department were notified in the late summer that agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving CIA director David Petraeus, the New York Times reports.
“But law enforcement officials did not notify anyone outside the F.B.I. or the Justice Department until last week because the investigation was incomplete and initial concerns about possible security breaches, which would demand more immediate action, did not appear to be justified.”
Building Up Petraeus
Michael Hastings: “Until this weekend, Petraeus had been incredibly successful in making the public think he was a man of great integrity and honor, among other things. Most of the stories written about him fall under what we hacks in the media like to call ‘a blowjob.’ Vanity Fair. The New Yorker. The New York Times. The Washington Post. Time. Newsweek. In total, all the profiles, stage-managed and controlled by the Pentagon’s multi-million dollar public relations apparatus, built up an unrealistic and superhuman myth around the general that in the end did not do Petraeus or the public any favors. Ironically, despite all the media fellating, our esteemed and sex-obsessed press somehow missed the actual blowjob.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a
horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue. The
college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they
were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion
of ‘legitimate rape.'”
— Former Bush adviser Karen Hughes, quoted by Politico.
Kristol Urges Republicans to Break Tax Pledge
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol urged the Republican Party to accept new ideas, “including the much-criticized suggestion by Democrats that taxes be allowed to go up on the wealthy,” the Huffington Post reports.
Said Kristol: “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.”
He added: “Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?”
Jackson May Face Jail Time
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) might step down before the end of the year as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors investigating possible misuse of campaign funds, CBS 2 reports.
“Under terms of the deal, Jackson would resign for health reasons, plead guilty to misusing campaign funds and possibly do jail time. He’d have to repay any campaign funds that were converted for personal use, and serve at least some jail time.”
