News Nuggets 1320

DAYLEE PICTURE: The Bay of Cadiz in Spain.  From the Daily Mail of the UK.

GOP’s Nightmare Come True: Obamacare More Popular Than Ever (Steven Rosenfeld) from Salon
"The GOP-led federal government shutdown over Obamacare has dramatically backfired on Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of active voters, the largest share yet, support the health insurance reform law and want it to work, new nationwide polling has found."

How One Smart Reporter Debunked the Hannity/Fox News Lie Machine (Joan McCarter) from Daily Kos
"Salon's Eric Stern happened to catch Hannity in the act, featuring four couples who swore they had been hurt by Obamacare, and decided to do a little fact checking. Debunking Hannity turned out to be "appallingly easy" for Stern when he conducted follow up interviews Hannity's guests. ... So is Obamacare hurting all Americans? Of course not, just the teeny-tiny bunch of die-hard conservatives who will refuse to be helped."

A Crusade Against Sins of Vatican City from the Washington Post
I hope the Pope is for real on this.  
"Pope Francis has sought to transform the tone of his office, extending olive branches to everyone from gays and lesbians to professed atheists. Now, he aims to reform Vatican bureaucracy."

Shutdown to Cost U.S. Billions, Analysts Say from the New York Times 
"It might take months to come up with a thorough accounting of the direct cost to taxpayers."

The President’s Pivot (Charles Blow) from the New York Times
"Sun Tzu’s ancient Chinese treatise “The Art of War,” perfectly captures President Obama’s strategic victory over Tea Party members of Congress on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling debate. It also explains his immediate pivot to another topic that Tea Partyers hate and over which their obstinacy is likely to get the party hammered again: comprehensive immigration reform. This is a brilliant tactical move on the president’s part. And Republicans know it."

Government Shutdown Inflicted Widespread Pain, Poll Finds from the Huffington Post
"The government shutdown is finally over, but not before inflicting pain on millions of Americans, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. Forty-four percent of Americans in the survey said the shutdown had hurt their families, including 19 percent who said it hurt a lot."

You’ll Pay for This, GOP: How Obama Will Make the 2013 Shutdown a Political Weapon (William Saletan) from Slate
"“There are no winners here,” President Obama declared at the White House this morning. Then, with an elegant air of nonpartisanship, Obama began to fashion the shutdown into a political weapon. Here’s how he’s going to deploy it. ..."

Republican Defeat: the Tea Party Should be Over from the Editorial Board of the Guardian [of the UK]
"Their mistake was to shut down government, making normal life and people's jobs the hostage of political demands. In doing that, they overreached themselves. Mr Obama is, as a result of this battle, a much steelier character, so are the Democrats in Congress. Together they have been fashioned by this conflict into an effective political force, less hobbled by the opposition. Let us hope the mid-terms mark the moment when the Tea Party's over."

How the GOP Can Neutralize the Tea Party (David Ignatius) from the Washington Post
"Many Republicans have been muttering over the past few weeks of political craziness that the tea party’s hold on the GOP must be broken to protect their party’s health — not to mention the country’s. ... The answers convince me that a grass-roots movement to rebuild the GOP as a governing party is possible, but only if it’s a disciplined, well-financed effort that mobilizes voters in the Republican-leaning districts where the tea party is strong."

Government Shutdown Exposes Rift Among Republicans from the Associated Press
"Lawmakers and strategists from the Republican Party's establishment are lashing out at tea partyers and congressional conservatives whose unflinching demands triggered the 16-day partial government shutdown and sent the GOP's popularity plunging to record lows. The open criticism is a stark reversal from just three years ago when the GOP embraced new energy from the insurgent group to fuel a return to power in the House."

Republicans Reassess After Shutdown Debacle (Karen Tumulty) from the Washington Post
"The GOP establishment has embarked, once again, on a round of soul-searching. But this time, the question is: What will it take to save the Republicans from the self-destructive impulses of the tea party movement? That the government shutdown was a political disaster for the party that engineered it is widely acknowledged, except by the most ardent tea partyers. And that near-unanimity presents an opportunity for the establishment to strike back — and maybe regain some control from the insurgent wing."

Without the Debt Ceiling or Shutdown, What Will Republicans Use As Leverage Now? (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"Sequestration. And that will work about as well as this month's bluff did."

Sanity Caucus vs. Kamikaze Caucus: A Cheat Sheet for the GOP Civil War (David Rohde) from the Atlantic
"With a budget conference forming and a new debt-ceiling hike coming early in 2014, there's more strife to come. Here is who to watch."

GOP’s Next Civil War: A Demented Blame Game (Brian Buetler) from Salon 
"... in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown fight, the rebel faction in the GOP — the faction that just walked the whole party into a wood chipper — appears completely unchastened.  Like Napoleon blaming his troops for not being better suited to the cold, the defund caucus now says it’s all the moderates’ fault. Maybe the press too."

Ted Cruz, Back in Texas, Rails Against Fellow Senate Republicans (Laura Koran) from CNN
"Sen. Ted Cruz returned to Texas following a whirlwind week in Washington that saw an end to the partial government shutdown that he helped ensure - and for which he made no apologies. Instead, Cruz blasted his fellow Senate Republicans, saying they are most to blame for the failure of the push to defund or delay Obamacare."

Tea Party’s New Theory: Boehner Sabotaged Them on Purpose! (Josh Eidelson) from Salon
"A key Tea Party leader tells Salon that Obama would've given a year-long mandate delay, but Boehner pre-surrendered."

McConnell Faces Tea Party Fury (Alex Pareene) from Salon
"The right is determined to rid itself of its single most effective legislative weapon. Good!  ... These days, angry conservatives seem to get much more excited about campaigns to punish insufficiently conservative Republicans than they do about campaigns to actually defeat Democrats. "

Republican Civil War Erupts: Business Groups v. Tea Party (Michael C. Bender & Kathleen Hunter) from Bloomberg
"A battle for control of the Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened Tea Party moved to oust senators who voted to reopen the government while business groups mobilized to defeat allies of the small-government movement. We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."
For most of this year, almost all the "purge the party" rhetoric within the GOP has come from the Tea Party crowd and it's been directed at their more centrist colleagues.  Well, NOW the battle is joined!  The focus of this story is the US Chamber of Commerce, one of the oldest, most influential, and staunchly Republican lobbying groups in US history!  That's whose doing the talking here.  As folks like Mitch McConnell come under increasing fire from the hard right, look for the more establishment GOPers and their supporters and activist organizations to feel FORCED to take sides.  Can they simply stand by the wayside and let the McConnells, the Grahams, Thad Cochran (of Mississippi) and their non-Tea Party colleagues go the way of the dodo bird?  

A GOP Divided (Michael Gerson) from the Washington Post
"Tea party leaders predicted that the shutdown strategy would result in a mass uprising against Obamacare, forcing the political establishment to defund or delay it. In fact, Republicans were broadly blamed for overreach and the law became (in some polls) more popular.  The reagent was added to the test tube. The reaction did not occur. Conservatives who are not sobered are not serious."

GOP Isn’t Learning from its Mistakes (Joe Scarborough) from Politico 
"This was a big, fat nothing-burger turned into a gladiatorial grudge match by a blizzard of 30-second ads and tactical ignorance. As the smoke clears, we now see a Republican Party holding on to its lowest ever ratings in both the Gallup and the NBC News/WSJ polls. There is enough blame to go around but the bottom line is this: Republicans will not win the White House back again until they unite behind a candidate who wins the vote of Ted Cruz and Colin Powell."

Obama’s Devious Plot to Destroy the GOP (Ezra Klein) from the Washington Post
"Obama's a center-left technocrat who wants to get immigration done. And getting immigration done, most everyone agrees, would be good for the Republican Party. It's possibly necessary for its very survival. ... that's the irony of the GOP right now: They're so scared that Obama is trying to destroy them that they're destroying themselves."

Keep Quiet, Ted Cruz (Kathleen Parker) from the Washington Post
"What lies ahead is the GOP’s internal struggle to determine which wing of the party prevails. And which wing prevails likely will determine the balance of power come 2014. Suffice to say, if Cruz’s voice drowns out the so-called establishment voices, Republicans may as well start investing in camels. The desert awaits."

MOVIE REVIEW NUGGET!!
Fighting to Survive: “12 Years a Slave” and “All Is Lost.” (Dave Denby) from the New Yorker
"“12 Years a Slave” is easily the greatest feature film ever made about American slavery. It shows up the plantation scenes of “Gone with the Wind” for the sentimental kitsch that they are, and, intentionally or not, it’s an artist’s rebuke to Quentin Tarantino’s high-pitched, luridly extravagant “Django Unchained.”"

NAZI GERMANY NUGGET!!
Hermann Göring’s Shrink and the Perils of the Nazi Mind (Jack El-Hai) from the Daily Beast
"At the Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis, one American psychiatrist took on the task of understanding their personality, and developed a strange attachment to Hermann Goring that ruined his life. Jack El-Hai on this unknown story."

POLITICAL BOOK REVIEW NUGGET!!
Who Decided? Peter Baker’s ‘Days of Fire’ (David Frum) from the New York Times
"The Bush administration opened with a second Pearl Harbor, ended with a second Great Crash and contained a second Vietnam in the middle. The story of those eight years would seem far too vast to contain inside a single volume. Yet here that volume is."