Tea Party Learns Its Painful Electoral Lesson: That Mitt Romney Was Too Moderate

It is so much fun to watch the Party of Personal Responsibility point fingers and self-implode, isn’t it? It certainly is! Today’s finger-pointing blame-game session comes courtesy the Tea Party, which has engaged in about a week of sober reflection and concluded that the GOP lost because Mitt was too moderate. No, really:

Tea party supporters are angry at the GOP for embracing as its presidential nominee a “moderate” like Romney. For undermining “true conservative” candidates. And for “choosing to ignore” the conservative agenda.

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Nearly 400,000 People Call On Macy’s To Dump Donald Trump

THINK PROGRESS

A grassroots campaign for Macy’s to end their association with Donald Trump has caught fire. Nearly 400,000 people have added their name to a petition on Signon.org for Macy’s, which exclusively sells Trump’s clothing line and fragrance, to dump the controversial businessman.
Trump gained prominence during the 2012 election for relentlessly promoting the discredited conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States. He vocally maintains that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that the election results were “a travesty, a total sham, a disgusting injustice” and “urged Americans to march on Washington.” He claims global warming is “a concept created by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Trump also promotes dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines.
Macy’s touts themselves as a “socially responsible” company. Nevertheless, they have continued to embrace their relationship with Trump and will prominently feature him in its holiday Television ads.

Arizona Taking Even Longer To Count Votes Than Florida, Which May Get Unearned Sense Of Competence

Arizona appears to be ahead in the race to the bottom of the electoral-competence barrel, yay! Nearly a week after the election, hundreds of thousands of votes were still waiting to be tallied. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the mess appears to be at least in part a result of the state’s efforts to suppress minority voting enhance ballot security, resulting in a large number of provisional ballots that must be verified by hand. Early votes also make up a large portion of the uncounted ballots, which you would think is a little odd since they were, you know, early and stuff. READ MORE »

STEELERS FOOTBALL --11-12-12

STEELERS vs. CHIEFS
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2012
KICKOFF - 8:30 PM - ESPN
Steelers Game Notes

MAUREEN DOWD - Romney Is President

WASHINGTON 

IT makes sense that Mitt Romney and his advisers are still gobsmacked by the fact that they’re not commandeering the West Wing.

(Though, as “The Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver jested, the White House might have been one of the smaller houses Romney ever lived in.)

Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after all, resoundingly won the election of the country he was wooing.

Mitt Romney is the president of white male America.

Maybe the group can retreat to a man cave in a Whiter House, with mahogany paneling, brown leather Chesterfields, a moose head over the fireplace, an elevator for the presidential limo, and one of those men’s club signs on the phone that reads: “Telephone Tips: ‘Just Left,’ 25 cents; ‘On His Way,’ 50 cents; ‘Not here,’ $1; ‘Who?’ $5.”

In its delusional death spiral, the white male patriarchy was so hard core, so redolent of country clubs and Cadillacs, it made little effort not to alienate women. The election had the largest gender gap in the history of the Gallup poll, with Obama winning the vote of single women by 36 percentage points.

As W.’s former aide Karen Hughes put it in Politico on Friday, “If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue.”

Some Republicans conceded they were “a ‘Mad Men’ party in a ‘Modern Family’ world” (although “Mad Men” seems too louche for a candidate who doesn’t drink or smoke and who apparently dated only one woman). They also acknowledged that Romney’s strategists ran a 20th-century campaign against David Plouffe’s 21st-century one.

But the truth is, Romney was an unpalatable candidate. And shocking as it may seem, his strategists weren’t blowing smoke when they said they were going to win; they were just clueless.

Until now, Republicans and Fox News have excelled at conjuring alternate realities. But this time, they made the mistake of believing their fake world actually existed. As Fox’s Megyn Kelly said to Karl Rove on election night, when he argued against calling Ohio for Obama: “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?”

Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their “traditional” America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot.

The election about the economy also sounded the death knell for the Republican culture wars.

Romney was still running in an illusory country where husbands told wives how to vote, and the wives who worked had better get home in time to cook dinner. But in the real country, many wives were urging husbands not to vote for a Brylcreemed boss out of a ’50s boardroom whose party was helping to revive a 50-year-old debate over contraception.

Just like the Bushes before him, Romney tried to portray himself as more American than his Democratic opponent. But America’s gallimaufry wasn’t knuckling under to the gentry this time.

If 2008 was about exalting the One, 2012 was about the disenchanted Democratic base deciding: “We are the Ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Last time, Obama lifted up the base with his message of hope and change; this time the base lifted up Obama, with the hope he will change. He has not led the Obama army to leverage power, so now the army is leading Obama.

When the first African-American president was elected, his supporters expected dramatic changes. But Obama feared that he was such a huge change for the country to digest, it was better if other things remained status quo. Michelle played Laura Petrie, and the president was dawdling on promises. Having Joe Biden blurt out his support for gay marriage forced Obama’s hand.

The president’s record-high rate of deporting illegal immigrants infuriated Latinos. Now, on issues from loosening immigration laws to taxing the rich to gay rights to climate change to legalizing pot, the country has leapt ahead, pulling the sometimes listless and ruminating president by the hand, urging him to hurry up.

More women voted than men. Five women were newly elected to the Senate, and the number of women in the House will increase by at least three. New Hampshire will be the first state to send an all-female delegation to Congress. Live Pink or Dye.

Meanwhile, as Bill Maher said, “all the Republican men who talked about lady parts during the campaign, they all lost.”

The voters anointed a lesbian senator, and three new gay congressmen will make a total of five in January. Plus, three states voted to legalize same-sex marriage. Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, told The Washington Post’s Ned Martel that gays, whose donations helped offset the Republican “super PACs,” wanted to see an openly gay cabinet secretary and an openly gay ambassador to a G-20 nation.

Bill O’Reilly said Obama’s voters wanted “stuff.” He was right. They want Barry to stop bogarting the change.

The Last Word - Rewriting the Romney cheerleaders

Bill O’Reilly: GOP Would Have Gotten Away With It Too If It Weren’t For These Hispanic Moochers Who Want Handouts

Would you like Bill O’Reilly’s advice on what the Republican party could have done differently to avoid losing the Presidency and their chances of a GOP Senate? Of course you would, and here it is! First off, says Bill O’Reilly, the campaign really just reined Mitt Romney in too much. He should have been allowed to be unscripted on a far more regular basis, and actually, your Wonkette agrees with this but for different reasons. Also Romney should have hammered Obama more on Benghazi, and made that issue center stage, which is what the American people care about. Forget jobs, let’s focus on Benghazi. Oh and of course, let’s talk about how Chris Christie betrayed the GOP and how liberals were “delirious with joy” over the storm. But what you’re REALLY wondering, Wonketteers, is what O’Reilly thinks the GOP should do about the “demographics problem.” (Well, the so-called liberal media calls it a demographics problem; your Wonkette characterizes it as a “racism problem.”)
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CEO who forced workers to attend Romney rally cuts 156 jobs and blames Obama

RAW STORY

The CEO of Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp., who forced his employees to attend an August rally for failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, announced on Wednesday that 156 jobs would have to be cut because of President Barack Obama’s reelection.
CEO Robert E. Murray read a prayer to employees before announcing the cuts, according to The Washington Post. “Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build,” he reportedly said.
The same company’s employees were forced to stand behind Romney during an Ohio event last August, in a visual that would later become part of a campaign ad. The Ohio Democratic Party later claimed that the miners were “extorted” for campaign contributions, and called for a criminal investigation. Employees of the company told The New Republic that their contributions are tracked and they feared repercussions if they didn’t attend fundraisers.
It’s not the first time that Murray has fired workers and blamed Obama: he did the same thing last August, closing a mining operation in Brilliant, Ohio, where 239 people worked, then telling them the move was due to “Mr. Obama’s ‘war on coal’ and the destruction it has caused.”
Despite Murray’s belief that there’s a “war on coal,” the U.S. Energy Information Administration says that domestic coal production has remained near historical norms during Obama’s first term, edging up each year since 2009. Additionally, Murray Energy’s most recent quarterly production report noted that workers in six of Murray’s mines have increased coal production by more than 1.2 million tons over the same period in 2011. The company’s earnings are only released to investors.
Unfortunately, Murray is not alone. Applebee’s New York franchise CEO Zane Tankel announced on Friday during an appearance on Fox Business that he’s refusing to hire any new people because the Affordable Care Act will require that the company purchase health insurance. “The model’s been set,” he said. “I just want to say we’re looking at it, we’re evaluating it, if it’s possible to do without cutting people back, I’m delighted to do it. But that also rolls back expansion, it rolls back hiring more people, and in a best-case scenario we only shrink the labor force minimally.”