News Nuggets 1126

DAYLEE PICTURE: A winter morning in Yosemite.  From National Geographic.

UP-FRONT PUNDIT NUGGET!!
How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign (Dan Froomkin) from the Huffington Post
Boy, it has been ages since Froomkin made an appearance among the nuggets! He became much more predictably partisan after he moved over from the Washington Post to the Huffington Post.
"...according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth."

‘Thanks for Ruining My Life’ from Newsweek
"A teen tweets against her attackers—and upends the courts."

Woman Denied Driver’s License In Wife’s Name from CBS
"For the year since she married her partner, waitress Cynthia Landis has legally been a Landis. It’s the name on her Social Security card, her District of Columbia marriage certificate and her Virginia driver’s license. But the state of West Virginia won’t recognize it. The Division of Motor Vehicles won’t issue the Romney resident a driver’s license in that name because she’s married to a woman, and state law forbids the agency from recognizing any documents related to a same-sex marriage."
Daily Kos comments on this case here.

Medicaid Expansion: States Must Meet Obamacare Standards To Get Full Federal Funding (Jeffrey Young) from the Huffington Post
"States must expand Medicaid all the way if they want to receive full Obamacare funding, federal officials said Monday."
Catch the word: "must".

Marco Rubio and the Coming Conservative Revolt (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"... the future of the party is already taking shape, and that future will be, in some form or fashion, a conservative reaction against the Republican leadership that has sold them out. The smarter Republicans have already shaken off the trauma of electoral defeat and begun positioning themselves to capitalize."

Republicans Mugged by Reality on Election Day (Jon Perr) from Daily Kos 
"...while most polling analysts predicted a comfortable Electoral College triumph for Barack Obama on Nov. 6, by all indications Team Romney and the GOP brain trust truly believed their own cooked-up numbers. That's what makes their subsequent shock and awe at Romney's crushing defeat all the more fitting. Because after years of slandering President Obama and misleading voters with myths about taxes, debt, health care, Iraq and so much else, on Election Day Republicans duped only themselves."

Why the Fiscal Cliff Is Causing a Nervous Breakdown on the Right (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"From Joe Scarborough to Bill Kristol to Rush Limbaugh, the post-election recriminations are getting heated on the slow march to the fiscal cliff. Howard Kurtz on why the GOP is at war with itself."

Obama-GOP Cliff Talks Take Positive Turn from the Wall Street Journal 
"Neither Side Gives Details, but Strict Moratorium on Public Comments Is Considered Sign of Progress at Bargaining Table."

Dozens Of Republicans Open To Bucking Norquist Pledge: See The Full List from Talking Points Memo
"For all the talk of Grover Norquist’s ironclad grip on the GOP, a large and growing number of Republicans say they’ve renounced the anti-tax activist’s pledge against raising taxes."

Election Sharpens the Partisan Divide (Gerald Seib) from the Wall Street Journal
"... as the dust settles from last month's election, the findings that emerge in many ways illustrate just how stark the partisan divides are across the land. Even as President Barack Obama won with relative ease in the Electoral College, Republican areas appeared to be growing darker red, while Democratic regions seemed to be growing darker blue."

The Obama Campaign's Real Heroes (Tim Dickinson) from Rolling Stone Magazine
"Meet 10 key operatives who got the president re-elected."

Republicans Must Wise Up (Eugene Robinson) from the Washington Post 
"The biggest problem the Republican Party faces is not uninspiring candidates or unsound tactics. It is unpopular ideas. This reality was brought home in last month’s election. It’s playing out in the struggle over how to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” And we’ll see it again in coming fights over immigration, entitlements, inequality and a host of other issues. Here’s the sad thing: Republicans get this stuff so wrong that Democrats aren’t even forced to go to the trouble of getting it right."

RNC Launches Official Review on 2012 Election (Updated) from Politico 
"The Republican National Committee is rolling out a plan to review what worked and what didn't for the party in the 2012 cycle, appointing five people at the top of a committee that will make recommendations on things like demographics, messaging and fundraising."

Will the RNC's "recommendations" make any difference?  I doubt it.  Why?  Because of people like this:
Dick Armey Blames GOP For Congressional Setbacks from the Huffington Post 
"Dick Armey, who until recently led the conservative group FreedomWorks, said some GOP candidates said "stupid things" that party leaders should have taught them to avoid saying. He said Republicans had a lot of candidates who did "dumb things" during their campaigns."
Now -- WHO put forward these people who said "stupid things" and did "dumb things" -- dare we even call them dumb and stupid candidates?! (Perish the thought).  It was Armey's own Tea Party legions.  God damn those party beltway insiders who didn't train those candidates not to say or do those things!  For Armey, it wasn't their ideas -- it was their lack of training and development!  And of course that's the responsibility of beltway people!

Why Yes, Liberals Do Competely Control The Media, And They Use It, Very Successfully, To Advance Their Political Agenda from Ace of Spades HQ 
"Chait makes a point that usually falls to right-wingers to make: that Hollywood liberals are pleased to take credit for their power to change hearts and minds and therefore the culture when it suits them, but plead otherwise when it doesn’t. The truth is, they really do have this power, and, as Chait avers, have triumphed completely."
I actually find that I agree with much of the analysis here -- all though of course I totally disagree with much of the subversive/catastrophic meaning he assigns to it.

Mitt in the Afterlife (Josh Marshall) from Talking Points Memo
"Part of what gets my attention about these photos — and perhaps others are the same way — is that Romney seems a lot more normal in his political afterlife than he did before November 7th."

Newt Gingrich: If Hillary Clinton Runs In 2016, Republicans 'Incapable Of Competing' (VIDEO) from the Huffington Post
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regularly brushes off the idea of a 2016 presidential bid. But if she were to run, at least one prominent Republican thinks his party would be completely outmatched. "The
Republican party is incapable of competing at that level," Gingrich said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet The Press.""
A first: I TOTALLY agree with Newt.

What Hillary Wants (Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"Privately, there seems little question that Clinton has yet to turn her mind to whether she wants to run again and/but those around her — up to and including her husband — want badly for her to make the race. (Bill Clinton cannot — and will not — ever get enough of politics. God love him.)"