The Nation’s John Nichols has a sobering article for Dems who may still be basking in the warm glow of the election. Nichols’s “GOP, Koch Brothers Sneak Attack Guts Labor Rights in Michigan” tells the disturbing story of how the government of the once mighty industrial state of Michigan has been turned into an anti-labor bastion almost overnight:

In the state where workers sat down in Flint General Motors plants 75 years ago and emboldened the industrial labor movement that would give birth to the American middle class, Republican legislators on Thursday voted to gut basic labor rights.
…After Republican leaders announced Thursday morning that they intended to enact so-called “Right-to-Work” legislation – which is always better described as “No-Rights-at-Work” legislation – the Michigan state House voted Thursday afternoon to eliminate basic union organizing and workplace protections that generations of American workers fought to establish. Several hours later, the Michigan state Senate did the same thing, as part of a bold anti-labor initiative launched in coordination with a Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity project to “pave the way for right to work in states across our nation.”
As the Republicans launched the attack on unions and their members, Americans for Prosperity — a group developed and funded by right-wing industrialists and billionaire campaign donors Charles and David Koch — was in the thick of things. AFP recruited conservatives to show up at the state Capitol in Lansing to counter union protests and prepared materials supporting the Michigan initiative, including a 15-page booklet titled “Unions: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: How forced unionization has harmed workers and Michigan.” Within minutes of the announcement by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that Republicans would ram through the “Right-to-Work” legislation, AFP was hailing the move in formal statements “as the shot heard around the world for workplace freedom.”
Snyder, a Republican, has indicated that he will sign the measure that was passed during a lame-duck session of the legislature.

This despite the fact that President Obama carried Michigan by a 10-point margin and his stated opposition to the so-called “right to work” law. Nichols adds that “The Republican legislators evidenced no intention to listen to logic, or to entertain honest debate. GOP legislative leaders had plotted behind closed doors with Governor Snyder, to have Michigan join the traditionally lower-wage states that decades ago enacted “Right-to-Work” laws to thwart the rise of a labor movement…” Protestors who managed to get inside the legislative chamber were pepper-sprayed, while others were locked out.

Read more…

James Vega’s mockery of Republicans distancing themselves from their Tea Party allies is one part of the shell game going on in GOP circles in Washington at present. But another is an entirely superficial “makeover” being undertaken by insincerely repentant conservatives, supplemented by “purges” of right-wingers that never really draw blood. I’ve been writing about both phenomena at the Washington Monthly this week.
Ever since Election Day, leading Republican pols and opinion-leaders have been agitating the air with calls for major changes in GOP leadership, technology, messaging, and attitudes–changes in everything other than ideology. The latest exhibit of illusory change was a big event: Tuesday night’s Jack Kemp Foundation dinner featuring two potential 2016 saviors, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. The former got deeply substantive about the GOP’s new ideas, trotting out every stale conservative policy proposal of the last decade. The latter reframed–but did not change–conservative “entitlement reform” proposals not as efforts to stop raids on “makers” by “takers,” but as deeply compassionate measures to liberate the needy from their slavish dependence on government assistance.
Meanwhile, you’d get the impression listening to a lot of the louder right-wing voices that the RINO GOP Establishment is conducting a house-to-house search for true conservatives and then taking them out and shooting them after ransacking their pockets for tax concessions to Obama. Truth is Boehner and company have made no concessions beyond those already signaled by the Romney campaign’s embrace of loophole-closing as a potential way to generate deficit savings (the Jim DeMint’s of the country oppose any negotiations that do not include a balanced budget constitutional amendment with a permanent percentage-of-GDP limit on spending and taxing), and most GOP maneuvering appears to follow Grover Norquist’s instructions to avoid Republican complicity with any real fiscal fix. As for “purges,” yes, a couple of back-bench Tea Party types have lost prime committee positions–but mainly because they voted against the Ryan Budget, hardly a RINO measure.
Another conspicuous “purge” said to indicate the new pragmatism of the GOP was the apparent decision by Fox News to keep Karl Rove and Dick Morris off the air. “True conservatives” would laugh heartily at the idea these guys are suffering for their sins; Rove was the author of virtually all of the Bush administration policies condemned by today’s conservatives as heretical, and Morris–whose main principle seems to be devotion to his own pocket-book–is nobody’s ideologue, but simply America’s most hackish hack.
Maybe the GOP will eventually conduct a real makeover and hold actual purges, but it ain’t happened yet.

Not all conservatives are tea party puppets or monomaniacal ideologues. Some top business and defense executives are now calling for tax hikes on the wealthy and defense budget cuts, according to this Huffpo report by Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui.
Yet another Associated Press-GfK poll indicates that “Americans prefer letting tax cuts expire for the country’s top earners, as President Barack Obama insists, while support has declined for cutting government services to curb budget deficits…There’s also a reluctance to trim Social Security, Medicare or defense programs, three of the biggest drivers of federal spending, the survey released Wednesday found.”
In another just-released survey, “American voters give President Barack Obama a 53 – 40 percent job approval rating – his best score in three years – and by a wider 53 – 36 percent they trust the president and Democrats more than Republicans to avoid the “Fiscal Cliff,” according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today…Voters 65 – 31 percent support higher taxes on households making more than $250,000 per year, with 84 – 14 percent support from Democrats and 66 – 31 percent support from independent voters. Republicans are opposed 53 – 41 percent…American voters say 56 – 38 percent that Obama and congressional Democrats will make a good faith effort to cooperate with congressional Republicans on important issues. By 51 – 43 percent, voters say congressional Republicans will not act in good faith.”
Was there ever a more hypocritical Republican than John Sununu, who now echoes his version of Romney’s “Obama won because of those who are dependent on government” meme? Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia’s bio of Sununu: “As White House Chief of Staff, Sununu reportedly took personal trips, for skiing and other purposes, and classified them as official, for purposes such as conservation or promoting the Thousand Points of Light. The Washington Post wrote that Sununu’s jets “took him to fat-cat Republican fund-raisers, ski lodges, golf resorts and even his dentist in Boston.” Sununu had paid the government only $892 for his more than $615,000 worth of military jet travel. Sununu said that his use of the jets was necessary because he had to be near a telephone at all times for reasons of national security…After leaking rumors of financial difficulties in his family, he traveled to a rare stamp auction at Christie’s auction house in New York City from Washington in a government limousine, spending $5,000 on rare stamps. Sununu then sent the car and driver back to Washington unoccupied while he returned on a corporate jet. In the course of one week, 45 newspapers ran editorials on Sununu, nearly all of them critical of his actions…Sununu repaid over $47,000 to the government for the flights on the orders of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, with the help of the Republican Party. However, the reimbursements were at commercial rates, which are about one-tenth the cost of the actual flights; one ski trip to Vail, Colorado alone had cost taxpayers $86,330.”
At PoliticusUSA, Jason Easley explains why Fox is benching Dick Morris and Karl Rove.
Lois Romano has an interesting Politico report on Democrats trying to get access to the Obama campaign’s 16-million voters, donors and volunteers data base, noting: “The data is rich with intricate layers of information about individuals’ voting habits, television viewing tastes, propensity to volunteer, car registration, passions, email address, cellphone numbers, and social media contacts. The historical trove enabled Obama to connect with voters on a highly personal level and get them not only to vote but to actively persuade their neighbors to do the same.
A new poll by the Barna group indicates a strong majority, with growing conservative support, for dumping the electoral college.
At CNN Politics, Kevin Liptak’s “Digital experts: Social media and dual screens the future of online campaigning” notes that “…Metric trends don’t end at viral photos and funny memes. Increasingly, the web is offering predictive tools that could become essential for campaigns looking to gauge their position ahead of important contests. Charles Scrase, Google’s head of elections, issue advocacy and non-profits, said search volume had become “so prominent we’re able to predict the outcome of primary elections,” including Rick Santorum’s surprise Iowa caucus win in January…”People want to gather information earlier,” Scrase said, saying 51% of voters were looking for information about the election more than a year before Election Day.”
Transparency International has released the Corruption Perceptions Index 2012. which “ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be…” The ten ‘cleanest’ are, in order (several are numerically tied), from the top: Denmark; Finland; New Zealand; Sweden; Singapore; Switzerland, Australia; Norway; Canada and The Netherlands. The U.S. ranks 19th, a little behind Japan, Germany, the UK and a few smaller nations.
This will likely be mother’s milk for John Stewart.

My, my. Will wonders never cease.
Jennifer Rubin, the MSM’s most florid and fact-averse defender/champion of the Tea Party, the GOP party line and, more recently, Mitt Romney has suddenly reinvented herself as a champion of “prudent, judicious” conservatism, going even to the extreme of wrapping herself in the awesome mantle of the great and most venerable Saints Buckley and Burke in order to scourge the extremists of the Tea Party and Republican House of Representatives.
Heck, not only does she ram a nasty little shiv right into the gizzard of the Tea Party on everything from immigration and gay marriage to the budget with the same glee that she formerly reserved exclusively for all opponents left of Attila the Hun but she even plunges her dagger directly into the unprotected back of the hapless Julius Gaias Romney with a swipe at “self-deportation” as a classic example of moronic extremist overreach.
With Rubin’s absolutely spectacular self-reinvention the Tea Party and other “true conservatives” are quite suddenly finding themselves exiled back to the wastes of outer fringelandia with their stalwarts Limbaugh, Beck and Coulter while their fair-weather groupies in the MSM desperately rush to dump their “Amnesty, Never” teashirts and “Don’t Tread On Me” snake-thing bumper stickers in the nearest dumpster and dig those old Buckley posters out of dusty cardboard boxes in the garage.
The speed of the turnabout is impressive. Within two or three years we will almost certainly be calmly assured by the MSM conservative commentariat that there was actually not a single reputable conservative supporter of Tea Party extremism at all from 2008-2012 – just as all upstanding conservatives know that there was not even one solitary single conservative opponent of Martin Luther King and the 1963 March on Washington.
Granted, it is impossible to find even one significant conservative figure in the historical photographs or lists of supporters of the March on Washington that were collected at the time. But of course, that’s just because, unlike liberals, conservatives were by temperament just too modest and “judicious” to engage in any maudlin displays of public support like actually supporting the March.
In similar fashion, we will undoubtedly soon be informed that virtually every conservative capable of expressing an opinion without literally frothing at the mouth was actually completely appalled by all of that sweaty-sloppy-gauche-no-good Tea Party stuff. The only thing that prevented conservatives from making these delicate, refined and noble sentiments more publically known was, of course, their tremendous sense of decorum and propriety.

The three-dimensional map above by Princeton Professor Robert Vanderbei displays votes county by county, using purples, instead of just blues and reds. The creative display of his z-axis also provides a visual sense of how many voters turned out in the locations. As Kyle VanHemert’s article, “Infographic: A 3-D Map Of Where Votes Were Cast Most” at Fastcode design explains:

…In metropolitan areas, columns shoot up like neon skyscrapers; in flyover country, it’s typically more of a low-rise affair. But the effect is powerful: At a glance, Vanderbei’s map shows not just how the country voted, but where it voted, too.
And that means cities. The democratic lean of places like New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston shouldn’t be news to anyone, but seeing the results like this gives you a sense of just how overwhelming the number of voters really is in those densely populated urban centers.

…Vanderbei, a professor of operations research and financial engineering, made his first “Purple Area” visualization after the 2000 election. He had been reading USA Today when one of the typical “county-by-county, red-blue” graphics caught his eye. That map, he says, “made me wonder why anyone would paint a county-by-county map in such a way as to imply that a county has cast its vote for one candidate or the other. I live in a county that went about 52% republican and 48% democratic in that election. Painting the county red seemed highly misleading.”

Both GOTV and political ad strategists should find Vandebei’s map of considerable interest, since it does a good job of providing a visual sense of where you get the most bang per buck, at least in 2012. It would be even more interesting to see similar maps based on future demographic projections.
VanHemert notes the limitations of the map and continues:

…As long as we continue to operate under the Electoral College, state totals are really what matter in the end, and you’d be hard-pressed saying who won after a quick look at this map… But my biggest takeaway was that the Obama campaign’s ground game in Colorado must’ve really worked. Denver’s the country’s 23rd most populous city–smaller in population than Houston, Dallas, El Paso, and Fort Worth to the south in Texas–but its impressively tall (and solidly blue) stack represents a key source of votes in what was a hotly contested state.

Perhaps state and local Democratic party organizations can learn something useful from the Colorado and Denver Democratic organizations. The map also shows why Republicans have to invest their economic and human resources more widely to turn out their base. And if election by direct popular vote is ever enacted, you can see where most of the campaigning will take place.

The following article is excerpted from Laura Pereyra’s press release on the Center for American Progress report, “The Obama Coalition in the 2012 Election and Beyond” by TDS co-founding editor Ruy Teixeira and CAP Senior Fellow John Halpin
Today [December 4] the Center for American Progress released a report titled, “The Obama Coalition in the 2012 Election and Beyond” at an event with CAP’s Ruy Teixeira, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research’s Anna Greenberg, Organizing for America’s Jeremy Bird, the National Urban League’s Chanelle Hardy, the Asian American Justice Center’s Mee Moua, and National Council of La Raza’s Clarisa Martinez De Castro.
In 2011 and 2012, the Center for American Progress’ Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin correctly predicted that two large forces would determine the outcome of the election: the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states and the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate. In the end, with growing concern about the economy, the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women and secular voters once again came together to push President Obama to get to the 270 electoral votes needed for his reelection. Their final report of this election cycle examines exit poll data and county-level election results in the 12 most important battleground states to provide a detailed examination of the Obama coalition and its potential for future growth.
Additionally, Teixeira and Halpin’s new report also highlights what happens next and gives strategies that will harness the Obama coalition to sustain and achieve progressive policy change. The shifting demographic composition of the electorate has clearly favored Democrats and increased the relative strength of the party in national elections.
Moreover, this transition toward a new progressive coalition was possible because of the ideological shift of the American electorate, one in which voters are moving away from the Reagan-Bush era of trickled-down economics and social conservatism and toward the more pragmatic approach of the Clinton-Obama vision that includes strong governmental support for the middle class, public investments in education, infrastructure, a fairer tax system that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share, and more inclusive social policies.
Despite all that, politics is never pre-determined, and demographics alone will not deliver more progressive gains and achievements. The fragmented American constitutional system–coupled with the ideological unity of congressional Republicans–gives conservatives multiple veto points over progressive legislation as they control many state houses and governor’s mansions, increasing their ability to block federal action on matters such as health care and encouraging further attacks on public employees and benefits for the poor, and punitive social policies aimed at communities of color and gays and lesbians.
Teixeira and Halpin give the following suggestions based on what they know about the electorate and the ideological orientation of the country:

A coherent way must be found to harness the rising electorate of communities of color, young people, women, and professionals, along with economically populist white working class voters, to give strong and consistent support to a progressive policy vision to benefit all Americans.
It must be made clear to all Americans that in the progressive coalition, all voices are valued, all opinions are respected, and all ideas are taken seriously. Unlike the conservative coalition, progressives should seek to invite people in rather than push them out.
Progressives must find ways to become a more permanent social movement that organizes and engages a diverse group of Americans to advocate for government reforms and progressive and social and economic policies. Gearing up for highly expensive campaigns every four years will be insufficient for achieving progressive change.

President Obama and progressives have proven they can build a powerful and growing coalition to win elections. Now they must find ways to permanently engage a diverse cross-section of Americans in support of government policies and investments that will produce a stronger middle class with rising opportunities and personal freedoms for everyone.
To read the full report, click here.

Republicans are not citing public opinion data in support of their positions on tax hikes for the rich and raising Medicare’s age of eligibility, primarily because there isn’t any. In fact, the public strongly opposes their views on these two central issues at the heart of the fiscal showdown, as TDS Co-founding Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘:

…In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, the public supported the idea of raising taxes on those with annual incomes of more than $250,000 by a thumping 60 percent to 37 percent majority.
The second: Raising the Medicare eligibility age is a no-no. In the same poll, the public rejected the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 by an overwhelming 67 percent to 30 percent margin.

As Teixeira concludes, “The public’s sentiments couldn’t be clearer. Let’s hope that despite the haste to cut a deal, policymakers give these sentiments the careful consideration they deserve.”

The following video clip by TDS Co-founding editor Ruy Teixeira is cross-posted from the Center for American Progress web page:

The following article is cross-posted from a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner e-blast:
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, has released the results and analysis of a poll conducted by GQR that shows a new, pro-marriage equality voting bloc is having a significant impact on elections and ballot initiatives across America.
Leading into the 2012 election cycle, marriage equality advocates lost 29 straight marriage equality referenda in a row, discounting the temporary win in Arizona. And yet, we went four for four on November 6th, bringing the total number of states that enjoy marriage equality to nine plus the District of Columbia. An analysis of HRC’s national post-election survey as well as state-level exit polling suggests several dynamics contributed to what is definitively a cultural sea change in this country.
To be sure, there was an energized progressive base in 2012. Barack Obama won in large measure because he garnered large margins among younger voters, people of color, unmarried women and, as we shall see, LGBT voters, enough to compensate for losing Independent voters by 6 points. Marriage equality prevailed in Minnesota, Maryland, Washington and Maine, in part, by rolling up huge margins among these same voters. Moreover, nationally, progressives attached much greater importance to the broader issue of gay rights than conservatives, a huge shift from prior election cycles.
This election also signals broader, cultural change in our country that foreshadow future success. HRC’s national post-election survey, like so many other recent public surveys, shows majority support for marriage equality (50 percent favor, 39 percent oppose) and a higher margin (+11) for marriage than for the President (+2). At the state level, support for equality in Maine grew among conservative leaning groups, in Maryland, support was solid among African Americans, and in Washington, a near majority of Independents favored marriage equality up from 33 percent in 2009.
In short, the tide has turned. What was considered extreme is now mainstream. Conservatives no longer have incentive to put marriage referenda on the ballot to goose right-wing turnout or make “the protection of marriage” a core theme in their campaign. It is no accident that Romney remained quiet on this issue after securing the nomination. Moreover, American voters reelected Obama knowing full well his stance on marriage, without any negative blowback. This is not to say, of course, that future challenges do not remain, but the time for playing defense is over.
Read the full memo with graphs here
Read HRC’s Press Release, “Marriage Voters” Take Center Stage in 2012 Votes.”

The following article by Democratic Strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The odds are increasing that President Obama and the Democrats will rout the Republicans in the current battle over the “fiscal cliff.”
I realize that all of the “wise men” of Washington are clamoring for a bi-partisan solution to fix the nation’s deficit — a “solution” that involves “shared sacrifice.” But the plain fact is that the deficit is not a bi-partisan problem. Democrat Bill Clinton left Republican George Bush surpluses as far as the eye could see.
Today’s deficit was caused when the Republicans cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and started two wars for which they refused to pay. The deficit got worse when Republican policies caused the financial markets and the economy to collapse in the Great Recession.
That was the Republican legacy inherited by incoming President Barack Obama. Now, after having saved the economy from falling into a depression, laid the groundwork for economic recovery and soundly won reelection, President Obama is poised to force Republicans to do what is critically necessary to right the nation’s fiscal situation: raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
And he is likely to be successful without yielding to Republican demands that much of the bill to close the federal deficit be paid by the still-struggling middle class.
The fact is that Obama and the Democrats are holding all the cards.
There are five reasons why Obama is likely to succeed:
1). The “fiscal cliff” is very different than the “debt ceiling.” In 2011, the Obama administration believed it was critically important to the economy to avoid a default on the nation’s debt.
In that standoff, the GOP held so many cards because many of its members were willing to allow the nation to go into default. They were like terrorists who are willing to blow up themselves — and everyone else — to make a political point.
As a result, the Obama administration had to use every tool it could to avoid yet another GOP-induced economic disaster. It was bargaining with a gun to its head. In the circumstances, the outcome was not bad for Democrats. Though the deal did not include increased revenue from the wealthy — and many key programs that benefit the poor and middle class took a hit — Democrats avoided disastrous permanent structural changes in Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. And they took the debt ceiling timebomb out of the GOP’s hands until after the fall elections.
Most importantly, they struck a deal that changed the battlefield for the next engagement to a much more advantageous time and place — after the elections when the Bush Tax cuts were about to expire by law.
It would not be an economic disaster for the country to go over the “fiscal cliff.” In fact, going over the cliff will only increase Democratic leverage to reach a deal which eliminates the dreaded “sequester,” avoids massive cuts, and most importantly raises taxes on the wealthy.
2). Expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts. If Congress takes no action at all — something the Republican Congress is very good at doing — all tax rates in America will go up to their Clinton-era levels at year’s end. The pressure on Republicans will then be enormous to vote yes on the Democratic bill to restore the Bush tax cuts for the 98% of the population that makes less than $250,000 per year — leaving wealthy Americans paying Clinton-era rates.
After the first of the year, Americans will start seeing an average of over $2,000 per year coming out of their paychecks in withholding. If the Republican leadership refuses to take up the Democratic tax measure, the GOP will be blamed by the voters for the tax increase; it’s that simple.
Once the Republican leadership in the House is forced to face reality and bring the bill to a vote, most Republicans will join Democrats in supporting the measure — whether or not it is coupled with any further “spending cuts.” Otherwise they will risk being attacked in the 2014 elections for voting against tax cuts for the middle class simply to protect tax breaks for people like Donald Trump.
The president has been clear he will veto any bill that extends the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy. In the end GOP lawmakers will have no choice but to fold.
3). Republicans are afraid to propose specific cuts to Medicare. Don’t get me wrong, Republicans want to destroy Medicare. But their proposal to do that — the Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare and convert it to a voucher program — was soundly discredited in the election.
The GOP understands the power and popularity of Medicare. Without any shame, it ran ad after ad in 2010 and 2012 accusing Obama and Democrats in Congress of “cutting” Medicare by $716 billion as part of ObamaCare. They were, of course, perfectly willing to ignore that benefits actually improved and that these “cuts” were really reductions of insurance company subsidies for the so-called “Medicare-Advantage” program and other forms of inefficiency and waste.
But the point is that the GOP understands that Medicare is very popular and the everyday voters don’t want to see it cut to fix the deficit. They understand its electoral power.
That’s why yesterday, when Obama administration representatives met with Republicans to present Obama’s bargaining position, the Republicans refused to say what additional cuts they wanted in Medicare as the price for tax increases. They demanded that the administration itself detail cuts they might be willing to accept. They want to be able to claim that they supported cuts in Medicare proposed by the Democrats.
Well that isn’t going to happen. Democrats have no interest in falling into that trap — or negotiating with themselves — even if they were willing to inflict economic pain on ordinary Americans to fix a deficit problem that ordinary people didn’t cause in the first place.
The Republican’s best hope for political cover when it comes to Medicare was some kind of bi-partisan panel or “grand bargain” negotiation. But by forcing the GOP to name its own price — to put its cards on the table in public — Obama has forced them to accept full political responsibility for cutting Medicare. That is a big problem for them.
And let’s be clear, the GOP understands that it is impossible for them to run a national mobilization to demand cuts in Medicare.
4). Obama has political momentum and public support. Obama and the Democrats just won major victories at the polls. Most Americans favor closing the deficit by raising taxes on the rich. Most Americans opposed closing the deficit by cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
And Obama plans to press this advantage by mobilizing the massive organization he created during the campaign. His allies have organized events all over America starting this weekend to demand action from GOP Members of Congress — rallying its forces around TheAction.org.
The Labor movement has joined the fight with issue ads, press events and thousands of phone calls to Congress.
Progressive organizations like MoveOn and Americans United for Change have swung into action.
Capitalizing on the momentum from his campaign victory, the President is poised to barnstorm around the country to mobilize support his demand that the taxes of ordinary Americans should not be held hostage to tax breaks for the rich.
5) The GOP base, on the other hand, is divided and dispirited. The Romney campaign and Republican operatives had — against all evidence — convinced them that they could and would win the fall elections. They were wrong. The long knives are out in the Republican Party.
Worse, the organizing principle uniting the Tea Party — ousting Obama — is gone. Many of the Tea Party faithful are unlikely to get too worked up about defending tax breaks for Donald Trump and Paris Hilton.
Even in the election campaign, it’s hard to argue that Republicans had a real unifying leader they could believe in and follow. Romney will not be remembered as in inspiring figure. But now they have no one. Does anyone expect to see John Boehner barnstorming the country?
A fundamental principle of warfare is that when you have them on the run, that’s the time to chase them.
Both the timing of the Lame Duck battle, and Obama’s willingness to press his advantage, have denied the Republicans the opportunity to regroup after their devastating election defeat. They are leaderless and disorganized. It’s hard to press a counter attack when you are in full retreat.
If the president and Democrats continue to press their advantage, history will remember the battle of the “Lame Duck Fiscal Cliff” as a rout.