Election 2012- Post Mortem

[SkinsHokieFan]

Several ‘Ron Paul Republicans’ win closely contested House races

Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will retire from Congress next year after serving for 12 terms, but several Republicans influenced by the iconic libertarian-leaning lawmaker will be arriving to take his place.

Thomas Massie won the race to replace retiring Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis, beating Democrat Bill Adkins by 20 percentage points. Massie, an ally of Paul’s son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, raised nearly 10 times as much money as Adkins, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, who was already vying to be the House’s next “Dr. No” in his first term, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote. Democrat Steve Pestka had hoped to win the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who might regard Amash as too extreme, but failed to gain traction against the 31-year-old congressman.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/07/ro...#ixzz2BbIGnpJ3

[thebluefood]

This is very interesting.

http://didmittromneywin.com/

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6...5z1ro1_500.gif

Baaaaaaahahahaha!

[charles mannley]

Drop thank you. I could not have said it better myself.

[Switchgear]

Question I have is how a 50/50 country breaks 45/55 Republican in the House?

Pennsylvania went to Obama, but if you check the House map, against the Presidential election map (same page, click the President tab) the population centers went D, the rural districts are all R. The way it lined up, that translated to 5 D seats and 15 R. I'm surprised the House numbers aren't more skewed to the R's. Surprised and grateful.

[Wrong Direction]

I had several meetings with consultants yesterday and the news was almost all bad. They said a few things on different topics.

1. Implementation of the health exchanges is currently a disaster. 28 states don't even have the authority to set up their own exchanges. The ones that do are horribly behind schedule. The federal exchange is also horribly behind schedule. It's bad enough that Obama may want to delay implementation for most states.

2. There's a health reform scandal on the horizon about a former head of health reform making a shady deal with a big company and the strong possibility that admin officials tried to cover it up until after the election. You can google United and QSSI for more details. I think this was reported in Hill and the Weekly Standard before the election, but I understand from consultants this is very real and pretty damning. I have no idea how "big" this will be in terms of news, but it could take down someone high ranking.

3. R's have some incentive to make a deal on taxes, but not much. Ditto immigration.

4. R's have almost no incentive to make other deals with Obama on his terms. The word I'm getting is the atmosphere on the Hill is absolutely poisonous right now. Rather than spending, Medicare or tax deals, the R's would just let the sequester go through. According to hill staff, they see no incentive to help because they think they'll be blamed as obstructionists and radicals no matter what happens. Unless Obama really comes to the table and makes major concessions, they'll just let him own the sequestration, tax hikes and health reform failures.

The three leaders (Obama/Reid/Boehner) hate each other. We re-elected all three to the same positions of power. As told to me, the only way things change is if either Obama really changes (which these people don't expect) or if some other transformational leader somehow emerges.

The one random thing that really surprised me is that one guy has the strong opinion that Hillary is done, meaning she won't run for president. I think he's wrong, but he's almost always right about things so I figured I'd pass it along since I don't think anyone else is imagining a 2016 w/o Hillary.

[thebluefood]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...m_opinions_pop

Boehner’s first instinct on Tuesday night was to side with his House firebrands. “While others chose inaction,” he said at a Republican National Committee event, “we offered solutions.” Americans, he said, “responded by renewing our House Republican majority. With this vote, the American people have also made clear that there’s no mandate for raising tax rates.”

After sleeping on it, Boehner appeared at the Capitol on Wednesday and offered a dramatically different message: He proposed, albeit in a noncommittal way, putting tax increases on the table.

“Mr. President, this is your moment,” he said into the cameras, reading, sometimes with difficulty, from a teleprompter. “We’re ready to be led, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. . . . We want you to succeed. Let’s challenge ourselves to find the common ground that has eluded us.”

[Wrong Direction]

One more thing:

I didn't hear this from anyone...just my thought. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a government shutdown in this environment. The debt ceiling, whenever hit, would be the trigger. It really seemed to me at least from yesterdays talks that R's will make Obama put his plans out there. No more implications about the right's positions behind closed doors. If O really wants to reform taxes, or Medicare, or pass a budget or whatever, he'll have to lead with real ideas on paper for the public to see. This was implied, but not stated.

It was a depressing day. I really hope this is day-after-the-election stuff, but I was expecting hopeful feedback and all I got was pessimism. At least I wasn't talking to members of Congress or leaders in the executive branch. It was just plugged-in consultants, so take this for what it's worth.

[Thinking Skins]

The three leaders (Obama/Reid/Boehner) hate each other. We re-elected all three to the same positions of power. As told to me, the only way things change is if either Obama really changes (which these people don't expect) or if some other transformational leader somehow emerges.

I thought Boehner was good friends with Biden though? That can always lead to some progress

[SkinsHokieFan]

http://dyn.realclearpolitics.com/pri...6106-full.html

The Case of the Missing White Voters

By Sean Trende - November 8, 2012

Email Print

Comments Share
By Sean Trende
One of the more intriguing narratives for election 2012 was proposed by political scientist Brendan Nyhan fairly early on: that it was "Bizarro 2004." The parallels to that year certainly were eerie: An incumbent adored by his base but with middling approval ratings nationally faces off against an uncharismatic, wishy-washy official from Massachusetts. The race is tight during the summer until the president breaks open a significant lead after his convention. Then, after a tepid first debate for the incumbent, the contest tightens, bringing the opposition tantalizingly close to a win, but not quite close enough.

The Election Day returns actually continued the similarities. George W. Bush won by 2.4 percent of the popular vote, which is probably about what Obama’s victory margin will be once all the ballots are counted. Republicans in 2004 won some surprising Senate seats, and picked up a handful of House seats as well. The GOP was cheered, claiming a broad mandate as a result of voters’ decision to ratify clear, unified Republican control of Congress and the presidency for the first time since 1928. As Bush famously put it, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”

Democrats, like Republicans today, were despondent. Aside from having a president they loathed in the White House for four more years, they were terrified by what seemed to be an emerging Republican majority. John Kerry had, after all, hit all of his turnout targets, only to be swamped by the Republican re-election effort. “Values voters” was the catchphrase, and an inordinate number of keystrokes were expended trying to figure out how, as Howard Dean had memorably put it before the election, Democrats could reconnect with “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

For Republicans, that despair now comes from an electorate that seems to have undergone a sea change. In the 2008 final exit polls (unavailable online), the electorate was 75 percent white, 12.2 percent African-American, 8.4 percent Latino, with 4.5 percent distributed to other ethnicities. We’ll have to wait for this year’s absolute final exit polls to come in to know the exact estimate of the composition this time, but right now it appears to be pegged at about 72 percent white, 13 percent black, 10 percent Latino and 5 percent “other.”

Obviously, this surge in the non-white vote is troubling to Republicans, who are increasingly almost as reliant upon the white vote to win as Democrats are on the non-white vote. With the white vote decreasing as a share of the electorate over time, it becomes harder and harder for Republicans to prevail.

Link for rest

[Wrong Direction]

I thought Boehner was good friends with Biden though? That can always lead to some progress

Right now all we have is hope that these leaders will come together to actually solve problems. There's no evidence that any of them are willing to, or capable of doing so. At this point I wouldn't even be surprised if Obama lets all of the Bush tax cuts expire, even those on the middle class. Boehner came out and signaled a willingness to compromise, but then he put it on Obama to lead. I'm speculating on strategy here, but I really think the R's are going to throw their hands up, say "show us what you got, Mr. President" and then react. No more taking equal (or more) blame. They don't seem to think they're dealing with an honest negotiator on the other side. They know Obama's tax reform proposals are small in proportion to the problem so I think they'll either expose that or wait for a really good (for Republicans) deal they can take. If Obama isn't willing to make major concessions on taxes and entitlement reform, they'll just make him own the problems.

I could be wrong...just what I'm hearing.

[Thiebear]

If Harry Reid gets his way the Republs can start golfing everyday like it was the 70's.
Won't allow any opposition ideas into any bill, won't allow fillibuster, no need to even show up.

I guess the only way to see how this works, is to see how many of the 47/100(minority) ideas make it into the next bill.

Though this is the same leader breaking the law (Senate is above the law, and their own laws) on actually making a budget.

[Wrong Direction]

I think the house will force Obama to pass a budget or just shut down the government. No more simple continuations of spending levels that lets Obama off the hook for taking responsibility for spending.

[Monte51Coleman]

But the lobbyists will be okay, won't they? Please tell me the lobbyists will be okay.

[The Evil Genius]

I think the house will force Obama to pass a budget or just shut down the government. No more simple continuations of spending levels that lets Obama off the hook for taking responsibility for spending.

Does Obama have some unknown constitutional power of passing budgets now?

I thought that was Congress's job.

[alexey]

...
3. R's have some incentive to make a deal on taxes, but not much. Ditto immigration.

4. R's have almost no incentive to make other deals with Obama on his terms. The word I'm getting is the atmosphere on the Hill is absolutely poisonous right now. Rather than spending, Medicare or tax deals, the R's would just let the sequester go through. According to hill staff, they see no incentive to help because they think they'll be blamed as obstructionists and radicals no matter what happens. Unless Obama really comes to the table and makes major concessions, they'll just let him own the sequestration, tax hikes and health reform failures.

The three leaders (Obama/Reid/Boehner) hate each other. We re-elected all three to the same positions of power. As told to me, the only way things change is if either Obama really changes (which these people don't expect) or if some other transformational leader somehow emerges.
...

You write that R's have little or no incentive to cooperate... does Obama have control over that? Because you then write about Obama having the ability to change things by changing himself.