Election afterthoughts and reactions here:

[frigidmagi]

Okay, I'll be posting more later today but first some reactions and thoughts:

1: Nevada has a none of the above option on their ballot. I say this is awesome and we should all have this. Discuss.

2: Arpaio is still sheriff... ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?! Argggghhh. I don't know what's worse, the fact that he keeps winning on the votes of Snow Birds who don't live here for most of the year, or the fact that 80% of his fucking election money came from out of state! WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE AND WHY DO YOU KEEP INFLICTING THIS CANCER UPON ME? What vile and depraved sin could I have done to deserve this albatross? WHAT?

*cough*

Sorry, overreacted there, just... For once I was sure he would be gone. This is the bone in my wonderful fish and chips you see.

3: Montana has elected a Democrat to Senate and a Democrat governor... If I was running the GOP, I would be throwing shit at people and screaming curses. Don't get me wrong, this is cool as fuck but what the hell happened here?

4: God Help Us ALL North Fucking Dakota (as you can see I am using the full legal name of the state out of respect) has elected a Democrat to Senate.

5: Colorado and Washington have voted to legalize pot. For recreational use. Stoners start your bongs.

6: Maine and Maryland have through popular vote legalize gay marriage. There are now 8 states where gay men and women can lock themselves into martial bliss... Huh Marital bliss I meant... Yeah that's it.

7: If you are a tea partier... There is no joy in mudville. Which is has it should be. The overwhelming majority of tea party candidates were taken out behind the olde wood shed and got the fucking shit kicked out 'em. As they deserve. No, seriously, if you're a tea party candidate and you lost? I'm happy that you lost and think you deserved it. I can't stress this enough.

8: The great moral lesson of this race for GOP Senate hopeful. If anyone... ANYONE... I mean even your wife or kids, ask you anything about rape. You say "Rape is bad and I am against it. No one deserves to be raped. I will work against rape and for rape victims." or some variation of the theme. If you have anything else as an opinion keep your damn teeth together or lose the race as you have just panicked about 90% of women (Remember, they vote now! I know it's a new thing what with them only holding the vote FOR 92 YEARS NOW YOU IDIOTS!) in what seems to be country sized radius around you. And the thing is, you're likely to alienate some male voters to. Some of us are related to women, hell some of us are even married to one (strange as that is in these libertine, hedonist times) so we don't like it when some starts waving the rape flag around. It's makes us uncomfortable. I can only imagine what it makes an actual woman feel like (although the massive vote deceit provides a tiny clue).

9: I really think we should have a none of the above option on our ballots.

10: I just realized Bernie "That's not a Socialist, this is a real Socialist!" Sanders won his reelection bid for Senate. Additionally he polls as the single most popular Senator. Things... They may be approaching some quality of real here.

[Josh]

Uh... Bernie's been in the senate for a while now. This'll be his second term.
Duh, misread you. Ignore.

Now to the list.

1. Mechanics? Throw out the previous candidates, reprimary and start over?

2. Condolences. Fortunately we've managed to stave off the Arpaio wannabe who keeps trying to be sheriff here. I keep hoping the dirty fucker'll just die already.

3. Tester in 2008 was actually more pro-gun than his opponent among other things. He's a conservadem and now he has incumbency. Also, state/national political divide, same as Romney being governor back in the day.

4. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was from South Dakota. It's not unprecedented. For Daschle the res vote was a chunk of it.

5. About damn time. I'm hoping that between this and the synthetics the War on Drugs will finally be ended. Regardless of the merits and flaws of chemical recreation the government has used the War on Drugs to stomp the shit out of our civil rights.

6. SWEET. Also about damn time, and hopefully the latest swell in what will become a surge. However I think it'll take the SCOTUS to drag some retards out of the stone age on the issue.

7. Agreed wholeheartedly. The Tea Party was founded on a bullshit premise (Obama is a Marxist Muslim who's going to DESTROY AMERICA) and needs to get the fuck over it.

8. No, let 'em talk. Helps us weed out the shitbags. I'd rather have the likes of Mourdock or Akin broadcast their sheer and utter amoral self-centered lunacy rather than to have to dig for it. Please, talk about it more guys.

9. Not downing the idea, just waiting to really be sold on it as a concept. Especially for the presidency.

[SirNitram]

I am very pleased to be utterly and totally WRONG about expecting the Prez election to be dragged out for as long as possible.

[Josh]

I am very pleased to be utterly and totally WRONG about expecting the Prez election to be dragged out for as long as possible.

I was worried that it was going to become the standard thing after 2000 by whichever side lost, but the ego of these guys is such that I don't think they want to be shown up as poor losers.

Still, it was pretty comical last night when the Romney campaign called Fox to complain about them projecting Ohio for Obama, then Rove got out his laptop and scratch paper to carry the complaint on.

[Josh]

Oh... shit... this is great.

How Karl Rove Fought With Fox News Over the Ohio Call

Shortly before 5 p.m. yesterday, Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes assembled his network's election team in a second floor conference room at Fox’s midtown headquarters to discuss the night’s coverage. He prepared them for the worst. “Guys," he told them according to a source familiar with the exchange, "if things don’t go your way tonight, don’t go out there looking like someone ran over your dog."

Six hours later, American Crossroads co-founder and Fox News contributor Karl Rove was on-camera seeming to ignore his boss’s orders. Shortly after 11 p.m., Bret Baier went on-camera to read a script written by Fox’s Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, based on an analysis by the network's decision desk, announcing Ohio for Obama. “That’s the presidency, essentially," Baier said.

Instantly, Fox phones lit up with angry phone calls and e-mails from the Romney campaign, who believed that the call was premature, since tallies in several Republican-leaning Southern counties hadn't been been fully tabulated. "The Romney people were totally screaming that we’re totally wrong," one Fox source said. "To various people, they were saying, 'your decision team is wrong.'" According to a Fox insider, Rove had been in contact with the Romney people all night. After the Ohio call, Rove — whose super-PAC had spent as much as $300 million on the election, to little avail — took their complaints public, conducting an on-air primer on Ohio's electoral math in disputing the call.

The episode "speaks for itself. It was live television," said a Fox News spokesperson. "Karl was in touch with the Romney people after he and Joe Trippi became concerned the call might be premature," said a Rove spokesperson. "It was then he found the Ohio Secretary of State website had roughly 7 percent more of the vote in and the two candidates separated first by 1,995 votes and then by 911." Hovering behind the dispute was Rove’s history as George W. Bush’s strategist in two close elections: In 2000, Fox had called Florida for Al Gore early, and then was forced to rescind the call later. At 2:16 a.m., they again called the race, this time for George Bush — that call, too, they'd had to rescind. (Adding to the controversy, Bush’s cousin, John Ellis, was leading the team of statisticians that made the call.)

This time, it was the network divided against itself, and Fox News' top producers held a meeting to adjudicate. The decision desk stood their ground. They knew how momentous the call was. Earlier in the night, according to a source, before making the call, Arnon Mishkin, who heads the decision desk, told Fox brass, “let’s remember this is Fox News calling Ohio. This will say something beyond Ohio going for Obama.” Fox brass told Mishkin to get the numbers right and ignore the politics: "If we think Ohio has gone Obama, we call Ohio," said a Fox News executive.

With neither side backing down, senior producers had to find a way to split the difference. One idea was for two members of the decision team, Mishkin and Fox's digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, to go on camera with Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier to squelch the doubts over the call. But then it was decided that Kelly would walk through the office and interview the decision team in the conference room. “This is Fox News,” an insider said, “so anytime there’s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly’s legs they’ll go for it.” The decision desk were given a three-minute warning that Kelly would be showing up.

A squawk box links all the networks' decision desks together. A voice at another channel watching the drama unfold at Fox piped over the intercom, “Hey Fox, do you know Megyn Kelly is coming to your office?”

In the end, Kelly interviewed Mishkin with Stirewalt looking on. By midnight, Rove reluctantly seemed to concede. But his rear guard action seemed like a moment he would rather forget. He had raised hundreds of millions of dollars as the co-founder of the Crossroads PAC and came up short. He never went to the decision desk to apologize.

After he left the set, he walked toward the elevators and looked over to the decision team and waved. This morning, he appeared on Fox & Friends; the episode never came up.

For anybody who missed Rove's mini-meltdown, link has the video I believe.

[Norseman]

Oh... shit... this is great.

For anybody who missed Rove's mini-meltdown, link has the video I believe.

Almost as fun as him and Donald Trump calling for a revolution I particularly love this line: "The world is laughing at us," Trump added, apparently without irony. "Lets [sic] fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!"

[frigidmagi]

I promised more and more you recieve:

By Kodiak1

Make no mistake. The Republicans were smashed nationally last night. Obama defeated Romney by something over 2% in the popular vote (with the West Coast still finishing the count) – but won 332 electoral votes. The GOP lost every toss-up Senate race except Nevada and the GOP-favored race in Arizona; the Democrats and left-wing independents will have 55 Senate Seats which is a net gain of seats in a year they were supposed to lose control. The Senate ideological balance has also lost ground. In effect, the Democrats traded Ben Nelson for Elizabeth Warren, who is left-wing by Massachusetts standards, and purged Joe Lieberman for a party-line junior vote.

As an ideological bonus, two states legalized same-sex marriage (why this has become a Republican issue is…addressed below), Minnesota became the first to reject a constitutional ban, and vote-by-mail Washington State is almost certain to complete this sweep.

As David Frum remarked over the initial passage of the Affordable Care Act, there is no consolation prize here. This is a serious loss that will do serious damage. Any chance of repealing the Affordable Care Act is up in smoke; it will go into effect as planned. Obama can win a tax cut debate by simply refusing to sign an extension. Eight years of Democratic control over the federal bureaucracy, Federal Reserve appointments and judicial appointments will forge a serious permanent imprint just as the country is shifting demographically away from Republicans. Instead of it being theirs as some sort of midnight appointment ideological rearguard, this all belongs to Obama.

This is a brutal loss. Keeping the House with a reduced majority is only a booby prize – and enough to get the party in serious trouble to boot. The same goes for anything at the state level. You don’t advance your party by losing the Presidency and getting crushed in the Senate.

Even though Mitt Romney is a total stiff, the economy is miserable and incumbents usually don't survive that, let alone dominate in electoral vote. So what went wrong?

1. Demographics, Demographics, Demographics.

Let’s be blunt here. George W. Bush – before his disastrous second term - could have won this election. Karl Rove knows this. Karl Rove wrote about it. Karl Rove is probably trying desperately to not blurt it out when he’s on angry conference calls with far-right billionaires this morning.


George W. Bush liked Hispanics and they liked him. He could win 40% of the vote with them, which is roughly double of what Mitt Romney got. Obama won while receiving roughly 40% of the white vote. He won 80% of everyone else, and won by 2% nationally. George W. Bush’s percentage among non-Cuban Hispanics would, on the 2012 map, enable him to compete in Nevada and New Mexico, and quite possibly win Colorado, Virginia and Florida.

Part of this is Mitt Romney’s fault, with his decision to stake out an explicit, extreme position on immigration in the Republican primary to be more right-wing than Rick Perry. Latinos pay attention to this sort of thing; it is talked about more in Spanish-language media than it is in wingnut-language media. There was probably no recovery for Mitt from his infamous “self-deportation” remark with this demographic.

But this is also the fault of the Republican primary electorate. This Republican alienation of Hispanic citizens dates back to 2005, when Republicans in Congress inexcusably decided to break from the Bush-Rove doctrine of engaging Hispanics and started treating them as a suppressible enemy of the white race.

This was a horrible idea to start with. It has become unworkable. As Lindsey Graham said when he preemptively engaged Romney’s loss this week, Republicans are not losing 95%+ of African Americans and over two-thirds of Latinos (and two-thirds of white young people) by being insufficiently hardcore. Running platform exclusively for whites does not work when whites are declining in voting-age-population share – and declining rapidly in national swing states.

A subset of the old, dying white conservatives are the social conservatives (many of whom overlap with the “hate brown people” demographic). This parcel of positions – ban same sex marriage, ban all abortion even if it kills women, institute theocratic laws in general so long as they are Christian - has almost no currency with anyone under the age of 45 and alienates anyone who isn’t already a true believer and therefore on your side anyway because Godless Democrats. It’s actively offensive to Millennial voters. And it’s in the Republican party platform, which must be pleasing to all of the grey haired attendees of the Republican National Convention.

The Grim Reaper and the Stork are winning. Fighting them is not historically a high percentage activity.

2. Lady Parts

That gender gap? Yes, it exists. Yes, women don’t like being spoken of like some sort of non-human incubator that should just roll with it when raped.

Claire McCaskill, who is a poor Senator with ethics issues and significantly ideologically out-of-step with her state, annihilated Todd Akin 55-39. A Republican Senate candidate couldn’t break 40% in Missouri. Richard “God Wills It” Mourdock lost by 5.5% in Indiana, while Romney was winning the state 54-44. These are catastrophes. Republican Beltway strategists have to be praying in their own right this morning that no Republican candidate will ever utter the word “rape” again. It may be a religious position and so immutable among believers, but it is demonstrable poison even in red, red states.

Yesterday, I was working as an election official in a ward that includes a lot of off-campus university students. I noticed something interesting – it was the girls who showed up to vote and especially for same-day registration, by close to a 2-1 margin from what one would think the sex ratio should be. And that’s giving the males credit for already being on the wrong end of a 55-45 enrollment split in the big research university in town. They don’t care; the girls cared almost fanatically. Millennials and their trailing teenage affiliates are quite secular and quite liberal to start with; they’re also quite a large generation, the size of the Baby Boomers and more than three times the headcount of the remaining “Silent Generation” seniors. The only saving grace for conservatives at all is that young people don’t vote.

Utterly terrifying the female young people fixes that. And make no mistake, a bunch of wild-eyed preachers and elderly people talking about taking away every level of input over reproduction scares the shit out of these girls.Why the fuck are these old strangers talking about their vaginas?

To the extent the gender gap isn’t already a serious problem for Republicans, it will become fatal as those university classes that are dominated by women become the principle voting demographic of that sex. The only people that hold down the average are the elderly church ladies and, well, Grim Reaper.

3. The Rulebook

Obama was the head of the Harvard Law Review. The primary thing that law review staffs do other than fluff their own resumes is be sticklers for rules even by the standard of law students – who themselves are far more anal than most actual lawyers. Technically correct is of course the best kind of correct.

Obama, for all of the Hope and Change, cares about technically winning. It’s probably why he is President. His 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton’s machine was methodical and delegate based. Hillary’s campaign was famously run by Mark Penn who Hillary ultimately stiffed for $5 million after he planned like large states (California in particular) were winner-take-all. They were proportional and Obama ran accordingly, running up delegates in every minor caucus state and splitting the big ones. Obama won.

The 2008 general election was a walkover for Obama due to national collapse. He didn’t need much of a strategy, particularly after Sarah Palin turned out to be a rolling incompetent disaster first-in-line behind a very old and sickly man. 2012 was a methodical fight, and Obama won again by understanding the rules: We pick a President through 270 electoral votes in the Electoral College, no points are awarded for the popular vote, and states must complete voting by the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Ex-OFA infrastructure, Obama campaigned exclusively in nine states. He never visiting any “Kerry” state besides Wisconsin and spent no money on national ads or on TV in Kerry states until the final week when he had plenty to spare. He won eight of nine, only losing North Carolina narrowly. That gives 332 electoral votes – far more than needed and quite robust in possible paths. Obama also frontloaded his advertising campaign and made ad reservations far in advance, both spending less for the same damage and getting in before early voting. Obama built a field organization that is solely designed to win a turnout election by getting his demographics – less likely to vote than Republicans – to the polls.

The Republicans, in contrast, focused their campaign on a late-break in some sort of meta narrative, with a huge late advertising bomb (more on that below) and latent scandal machine. All this achieved was coming a lot closer in the popular vote than they did in the Electoral College. They did five points better than John McCain – but Romney conceded when it became apparent that even if Ohio magically reversed, Obama was winning three other ways in electoral votes. And Obama won the popular vote anyway.

4. Caesar’s Coin

It seems counterintuitive that Citizen’s United, unleashed by conservative Supreme Court justices to give unlimited voice to conservative businessmen and corporations, would be detrimental to Republicans. But that’s exactly what happened, in route to Obama beating Romney and his myriad Super PAC’s and 501(c)(4)’s soundly.

Obama, by virtue of being a candidate spending money raised by his campaign directly, was entitled to something called the “lowest unit rate.” This applies only to the campaigns themselves and guarantees that a candidate can get on air if they can raise any money. For a candidate like Obama that is raising hundreds of millions through small donors (anything under $2,200 per person went directly to his campaign), this means more TV than they can use. Obama was consistently the biggest spender on TV, nearly matching all of the conservative groups combined and still funding the huge OFA ground operation.

The Republicans, being a mix of Super PAC’s, 501(c)(4)’s, and oversized RNC contributions ($75,000 checks), got no such rate. They could be – and were – gouged by TV stations.



The other problem in this “bury Obama” strategy – beyond that Obama raised enough to match it and got cheaper rates on top of that - is less apparent but arguably more serious. Billionaire businessmen are used to getting their way. If they are bankrolling an “independent expenditure,” it may very well be where and what they want it to be. The result was a spectacular array of inefficient, off-message and useless advertising. To wit:

-- My fiancée, who lives in a very liberal city in a swing state and is a militant progressive, received several dollars-worth of direct mail about debt and taxes from Grover Norquist and at least four “Mediscare” mailers. These and similar mailers filled up our building complex’s recycling bin. The building is almost entirely students and young grads.

-- While watching Hurricane Sandy devastate the Northeast on CNN, I was subjected repeatedly to a rambling one-minute national ad from billionaire Thomas Peterffy about how socialism destroyed his native Hungary. This is running during the President handling a national disaster.

-- The Republicans spent $5.5 million in Nevada in the last week of the election, despite most of the state having voted. Flush.

-- Democratic states called immediately for Obama (the ones Romney would not win with his campaign strategy unless he had already won) received a total of at least $37 million in TV spending alone. There’s at least another $8 million in irrelevant, inconsistent early (before Romney was even trying in the state) spending in Wisconsin on top of that; $10 million of such spending in New Hampshire. This is wasting what was John McCain’s entire budget.

-- Watching YouTube videogame footage or playing Epic Score/Two Steps from Hell while working became nearly impossible with ad spots about the national debt and other off-message trash.

Et cetera, ad infinitum. Obama’s campaign ran much more targeted, visceral ads and his only major Super PAC supporter, Priorities USA, had the sense to parrot the attacks. It was all Plutocrat Mitt, all the time, from Bain to the secret tax returns to the 47% to Mitt’s various untrustworthy remarks. Supplementing targeted ads hit Spanish-language media on the DREAM Act and self-deportation, and college radio on women’s rights, gay rights and Pell Grants.

It wasn’t particularly pretty or particularly uplifting – but it hit Mitt nonstop on his and the Republicans’ image problems. And there is no consolation prize for the Presidency.

This guy isn't an editor or a writer but I thought this was well written.

[Josh]

I don't really know if anybody takes Trump seriously at this point, even on the far right. My very Republican father was very glad that Trump didn't get into the primaries, since even by their lights he's a nutbag. If he wasn't a millionaire, he'd just be another oddball Freeper at this point.

It may seem amazing to consider that the party leadership actually has standards and there's actually somebody who falls outside of them, but there it is.

[Josh]

This guy isn't an editor or a writer but I thought this was well written.

Pretty good postmortem that sums it up nicely.

The Republicans are lost in how fast things are moving. Now that any place they're at is a potential open mic and anything they say on any obscure interview has the potential to be endlessly Youtubed, the shit attitudes that they used to stash away came home to roost. Add the purge of the moderates to that and the lowest common denominator of sexist, racist xenophobe was what was left in the leadership.

So now it comes home to roost.

Where does it go from here? Dunno yet. I thought the first Obama shellacking might be a kick in the teeth that would rattle them out of being idiots, but instead they ran with the Tea Party instead.

So now they're reaping the rewards of the Tea Party. Maybe it'll finally start to fade off and I'll quit hearing all the favorable local references, especially when it comes to such and such candidate being a 'Tea Party guy.'

[Batman]

Dear Mr Trump: the world has been laughing at you since you first elected Dubya the Stupider. You reelecting Obama may be the first step to getting us to stop.

[General Havoc]

This guy isn't an editor or a writer but I thought this was well written.

Pretty good postmortem that sums it up nicely.

The Republicans are lost in how fast things are moving. Now that any place they're at is a potential open mic and anything they say on any obscure interview has the potential to be endlessly Youtubed, the shit attitudes that they used to stash away came home to roost. Add the purge of the moderates to that and the lowest common denominator of sexist, racist xenophobe was what was left in the leadership.

So now it comes home to roost.

Where does it go from here? Dunno yet. I thought the first Obama shellacking might be a kick in the teeth that would rattle them out of being idiots, but instead they ran with the Tea Party instead.

So now they're reaping the rewards of the Tea Party. Maybe it'll finally start to fade off and I'll quit hearing all the favorable local references, especially when it comes to such and such candidate being a 'Tea Party guy.'

Back in the aftermath of the Dems slaughtering the Republicans in the 2006 congressional elections, as it began to become clear that whoever won the Democratic primary in '08 was extremely likely to become the next President of the United States, back before I had even heard of Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or the Tea Party, I made a prediction. I said that the Republican party had reached a tipping point of incompetence and that the next few election cycles were going to be very unpleasant for them. I said this because the Republicans of 2006 reminded me a great deal of the Democrats of 1980, a party that had simply lost the plot of where the country was, looking back to perceived successes from two decades earlier, not understanding why these lessons did not apply to the situation they found themselves in today. I also predicted that the trajectory that the Republicans would take would mirror in many ways the trajectory the Democrats took throughout the 80s and into the Early 90s. The party's failures would discredit the leadership, resulting in a free-for-all by its constituent elements. This free-for-all would bring forth the extreme wing of the party, a wing not powerful enough by itself to actually seize direct control of the party, but powerful enough to force its agenda upon those who did. Once this happened, the resulting platform would sink the electability of the candidates shackled to it, resulting in defeat after embarrassing defeat, as the extreme right failed again and again to perceive why their lunatic agenda wasn't selling to the entire country.

Now, I'm no prognosticator, and I did not foresee the events that interposed themselves between this moment and that one, specifically the rise of Obama (a man I once bet sixty dollars would never be elected President of the United States), the Great Recession, and the utter implosion of the Bush Administration. These events and the change in the electorate meant that the precise results of the 2006-2012 elections were not identical to those of 1980-1986, but the general trend I think has been played out. Neoconservativism as a doctrine was discredited. The extreme right did rise. Though unable to force its candidates through to the national stage (neither Romney nor McCain were extreme right wingers), it was able to force its agenda on those candidates that were pushed forward. This shackled the Republican party to a platform which was roundly rejected by large segments of the population. Consequently the Republicans, like their Democratic counterparts in the 80s, though able to make occasionally impressive showings in off-year congressional elections (such as 2010 or 1982), were totally unable to compete on a national scale. McCain was slaughtered in '08 (as would probably any Republican in his place) along with his party. Romney, though he did not get slaughtered, managed to fail to unseat the President despite spending a billion dollars amidst the worst economic climate in seventy years, and lost the popular vote consolation prize his strategy all-but guaranteed to give him, all while his party lost every competitive Senate race in the country and several more that were not competitive at all. This is all in keeping with what I expected.

So what does history tell us?

What ultimately reversed the tides of ineptitude for the Democrats was the advent of Bill Clinton. Clinton was a very moderate, dare I say 'Conservative' Democrat, with an appetite for power that exceeded his appetite for ideological purity. Over the course of three years, between 1989 and 1992, Clinton and several others dragged the Democratic party kicking and screaming into the center. He abandoned the Nuclear Freeze debate, and the Reagan-era talking points that the Republicans were sure to win. He dropped all pretenses of statism from the party agenda, for which the left wing never forgave him (ironically, this might have come back to bite him in 2008). He focused on turning the page away from the 80s and the Cold War into modern conceptions of governance, and altered the narrative to points like Health Care and Taxation that he knew the party could be strong on without alienating the middle ground. The result was a commanding victory in 1992 that all but destroyed the Reagan coalition and left the Republican party careening in a way they never really stopped.

This, I think, is the Republican party's eventual future.

Not everyone who voted for Romney did so because they hate black people and muslims, believe God causes rape, or think that taxes are the devil's socialist work. Ignoring the accidents of Romney's personal strengths or weaknesses, his excellent performance in the first debate was based around principles that do play well to a majority of Americans. Remember, this was the man who instituted the nation's first universal health care system, whatever the right wing made him say about it once he reached the national scale. The Tea Party, Limbaugh, Rove, and the rest of the usual gang of idiots will all scream that Romney lost because he wasn't ideologically pure enough, but the Republican party is a large place, and some of the people in it are as aware as any of us that the solution to having lost an election is probably not a policy that alienates even more people. It is both a vice and a virtue of electoral politics that lust for power eventually trumps every other ideal. That includes the ideals of theocracy and objectivism. The Republican party will eventually acquire a crop of leaders who want to be in power more than they want to congratulate themselves on the purity of their anti-abortion platform. Once that happens, the party will re-align itself around a new, more modern platform. And once they do that, I expect they will have another lengthy period of success. I might even rejoin their ranks.

Now... when will this happen? I don't know. It took the Democrats 12 years to pull this transition off, and while much of that is circumstantial elements unique to the 80s, much of it is not. Still, the defeat that the Republicans suffered this time around is different than the one they suffered in 2008, both in type and in reaction. In 2008, the proto-Tea Party was able, with some credibility, to claim that voter apathy was to blame for their loss, because the momentum of the Democrats was so strong, the credibility of the Republicans so ravaged by Bush, and the crop of candidates they fielded so mealy-mouthed, that the proper solution was to "go back to the base" and run to the right. You can agree with that analysis or disagree with it, but it held water for a lot of people at the time, and formed the narrative that followed. Remember Michael Steele's declaration just a month after the '08 election that the Republicans were "done apologizing"? The feeling was that the Republicans lost because they were not sufficiently Republican, and that the public was bamboozled without a fight by the meteoric rise of President Obama.

This time around however, there's no hiding. What just took place was a catastrophe for the extreme right wing. Every race, Senate, President, or otherwise, that the extreme right wing muddied its hands on, was transmuted as if by magic into Democratic victories. Right wing lunatics unseated veteran Republican senators in primaries, only to have their own, very red states, turn on them by double-digit margins once the sheer scope of their extremism was put on display. Richard Mourdock, who unseated six-term incumbent Richard Lugar in the Indiana primary, not only lost a senate seat that had been republican for four decades, but underperformed in his state's party affiliations by more than 12 points. Obviously, opening his mouth to say that Rape was God's Will had something to do with that, but it's no co-incidence that two different Republican senators had their campaigns imploded by such means. The extreme right, like extremists everywhere, simply do not know how to interact with the rest of the nation. And consequently, elemental errors of messaging and common tact pass unnoticed until they wind up with a billion hits on Youtube. I would wager that every single person that Akers or Mourdock interacts with on a daily basis believe the same things that they do on the subject of rape and abortion. As such, neither of them ever learned that the majority of the country, Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, finds such sentiments to be offensive to the point of inhumanity. Like any ideological fanatic, they do not possess the necessary human empathy to perceive how such statements will be seen by the rest of the world, a trait developed from a lifetime of being the outsider looking in on the political system. There are lefties with similar biases. The difference is that they weren't running for senate this year.

This election's narrative, once several months have gone by, will be, hopefully, the high water mark of the Tea Party. They pushed their agenda as far as it would go and could not bring it any further. Following its amalgamation with the Southern Bible Belt Evangelical Social Conservative agenda, the Tea Party has always been a regionalist right wing nuthouse with a veneer of Libertarianism atop it, and the very Red states with very different definitions of what Red means to them (such as Montana), are having none of it. Their policies cannot shape a national political debate. This has always been true. But now it's in the open.

It would not surprise me if the Republicans manage, following this catastrophe, to pull their shit together enough to field a new form of Republicanism in time for 2016. This would put them ahead of the Democrats in my historical comparison, but macrohistory is never exact. I believe they have a chance to do this because of my read of the next four years of Republican narrative. People are sick of gridlock, posturing, and obstructionism, which is increasingly being seen for what it is. The House, the only institution that the Republicans control, is never seen as doing anything, and often seen as preventing things from being done. The extreme right will try and concentrate on being more obstructionist within the House, which will render it even easier for the Democrats to paint them as out-of touch and crepuscular. Nobody who rises to the forefront in that context has a prayer of national political office.

No, the only Republicans who have a chance at being elected in 2016 will be the ones who do not have the Tea Party stench on them. They will not be Liberals, but fiscal conservatives who return to the notion of simply refusing to care about social issues in a time of exploding national debt. They will present themselves as the adults in the room, as opposed to the Democrats who are patronizing, arrogant, and revolutionary. They will not cite Reagan as a relevant model to follow, understanding that the electors they are courting barely remember who Reagan was, and certainly don't see his policies as relevant to themselves. They will have a history of hammering action through divisive congresses, legislatures, and committees. They will appear curt and polished and resoundingly boring. In many ways, they will resemble the Mitt Romney of 2008. They will never go so far as to attack the Tea Party, but they will act as though it does not exist, regarding it as an irrelevance and a distraction. And should the Republicans regenerate themselves enough to nominate them for President in 2016, they will conclusively, though not impressively, win.

And if they do, then at long last, we will be able to close the book on the crazy period of the Republican Party in the early 21st Century.

[frigidmagi]

My own thought is this, based on short trips to townhall.com and other places that you know. In 2014, we will see one more charge of the tea party. Many of them are declaring that the fact they hold the house shows that Obama "Has No Mandate," personally I think that's lunacy, but they didn't ask me. If they win in 2014, or even think they won, they are going to round themselves up for another showing in 2016.

The first question becomes then, will they be funded? To be blunt, one of the reasons the teaparty has been able to well... Party, in the primaries is that they've managed to convince a number of folks to fund them. I would seriously ask if they still look like a good investment right now.

The second question is, will the bad redistricting in many states be enough to make them competitive? I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut but once I sat down and looked... Yeah in some states (not all by any stretch) the gerrymandering is really that fucking bad. Which is what keeps some of these boys and girls on life support. Does that make them invulnerable? Well... No. No matter how you cut up the lines, you cannot create a congressional district made up of enough ideological manics that they will keep you in power no matter what. Sooner or later, you will cross a line and get your ass thrown out. That's how it is. That's how it's always been. That's how it's always gonna be. Which leads us to the last question... Will 2014 be the line?

Honestly though, don't stress too hard on these questions. I think we've all earned a break from relentless politics. I will be posting one more bit in this thread however, and of course it is open to anyone else who wants to slaps something up. Even if it's just a silly picture (make it a good silly picture though!).

[Charon]

I'm gonna agree with Magi on the issue of the Tea Party "highwater mark" I think they will try for one more off-year success story to prove that they can do it. When (Or if) that fails as well, the Republicans will start to get their act together as new leadership comes to the forefront and more of the Tea Partiers get shed from the ranks after failure in 2014. This may leave them ready to come back in 2016, but I think the baggage of the past decade of Republican craziness will hamper their attempts.

Other than that though, a great analysis Havoc.

[Josh]

Tea Party might not get the chance at 2014. They've basically killed Republican prospects for the senate two elections running, and this time they didn't just kill the prospects, they actually caused the Republicans to lose ground.

The Tea Party may well lurch out of relevance in a great hurry if their funding does get pulled. Thing is that senatorial elections are a lot more nationally noticed than rep elections, and that's killed them two cycles in a row.

What little I'm actually listening to shows a real strain of 'We need to change our image' from the Republicans, and the question is if they can do that while retaining the financial support of the sincere extremists.

[White Haven]

I somewhat expect that any party transformations in the Internet/Mobile age will be less sluggish than they have in past occurrences. Communication is so much faster, information is so much more quickly-distributed, multi-party collaborative discussions so much more easily accessible, especially as the 'series of tubes' generation winds their way out of politics by simple demographics. The election cycle isn't speeding up any, but the pace of data/idea exchange has sped up dramatically, which should theoretically decrease the levels of inertia involved.

[Cynical Cat]

Part of David Simon's reaction.

This election marks a moment in which the racial and social hierarchy of America is upended forever. No longer will it mean more politically to be a white male than to be anything else. Evolve, or don’t. Swallow your resentments, or don’t. But the votes are going to be counted, more of them with each election. Arizona will soon be in play. And in a few cycles, even Texas. And those wishing to hold national office in these United States will find it increasingly useless to argue for normal, to attempt to play one minority against each other, to turn pluralities against the feared “other” of gays, or blacks, or immigrants, or, incredibly in this election cycle, our very wives and lovers and daughters, fellow citizens who demand to control their own bodies.

Regardless of what happens with his second term, Barack Obama’s great victory has already been won: We are all the other now, in some sense. Special interests? That term has no more meaning in the New America. We are all — all of us, every last American, even the whitest of white guys — special interests. And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment. And those who continue to argue for such retrograde notions as a political reality will become less germane and more ridiculous with every passing year.

Lots of waste and shouting and ignorance still to come, of course. But last night was a milestone.

I'm still digesting it.

[Josh]

Part of David Simon's reaction.

This election marks a moment in which the racial and social hierarchy of America is upended forever. No longer will it mean more politically to be a white male than to be anything else. Evolve, or don’t. Swallow your resentments, or don’t. But the votes are going to be counted, more of them with each election. Arizona will soon be in play. And in a few cycles, even Texas. And those wishing to hold national office in these United States will find it increasingly useless to argue for normal, to attempt to play one minority against each other, to turn pluralities against the feared “other” of gays, or blacks, or immigrants, or, incredibly in this election cycle, our very wives and lovers and daughters, fellow citizens who demand to control their own bodies.

Regardless of what happens with his second term, Barack Obama’s great victory has already been won: We are all the other now, in some sense. Special interests? That term has no more meaning in the New America. We are all — all of us, every last American, even the whitest of white guys — special interests. And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment. And those who continue to argue for such retrograde notions as a political reality will become less germane and more ridiculous with every passing year.

Lots of waste and shouting and ignorance still to come, of course. But last night was a milestone.

I'm still digesting it.

Hunh. Me too.

I mean, I like what he's saying there. Just not sure if we've actually crossed that line yet or not.

[frigidmagi]

You know, I tend to think the age difference was a bigger deal than the white man thing. It may be because I'm a white guy and I voted for Barry.

See Romney did get the majority of white men, by something like 59 to 40%. Not great, but then Barrack carried 80% of hispanics, 91% of blacks and 55% of women. He also carried 60% or so of everyone under 30, got the majority of votes for people between 30 and 45 and it's only when you hit the 50 and older set that Romney has the majority (which suggest he carried old women as well). What if Barrack got 60% of hispanics instead or just 55% of women? Or what if Romney had carried 80 or 90% of white men? Lucky, a GOP party like today just bluntly doesn't have that kinda appeal. It literally cannot have that appeal. It really only can appeal to the majority of older established men who don't have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes or about making it without assistance.

What does that tell me? Well, it tells me that frankly it's likely that the majority of younger white men didn't vote Romney. It also suggests that older white men are more likely to vote than older black men or older hispanics. Because I really don't see a 62 year old black man declaring that the last thing he needs is the federal government telling the states what to do. Unless he's gone senile.

Now this election shouldn't have been so close. Frankly one of the reasons it was is because the groups that the President carried so massively (I mean seriously, when the other side walks off with 80% of a group's votes or so, it's time to consider that you suck at presenting yourself as a viable choice to that group. In fact odds are you're not a viable choice to that group and need to rethink). Bluntly, it's believed that 93 million voters didn't bother to show up, most of those who didn't show up were young, and/or hispanic or black. The good news is turnout percentage wise did increase. 19% of voters in 2012 were young (18 to 24 or so) compared to 12% in 2010 and 18% in 2008. Hispanics went up but not by alot.

So I think Simon may be jumping the gun here. I really want to see how the 2014 and 2016 elections go down before I declare the 2012 election as the end of white male voter strength forever.

[Hotfoot]

Two things:

1. There wasn't the electrifying desire to get Bush and his policies out of the white house like there was in 2008. Many of Obama's supporters from that period have been less than enthused by the last four years. While many of them wouldn't vote for Romney, the lack of urgency mixed with the disappointment may keep them out of the polls. People in large groups don't have long memories, they're worried about the day to day, and today things still sort of suck. 2016 will be the real test, because the Dems will need a new frontrunner and the Republicans will have had 8 years to sort their shit out. It may not be enough time though, which leads us to the next point.

2. The Tea Party isn't going away just yet. Look at their key demographic. We're not going to change the minds of the core of the Tea Party and they're not going to up and die in 2-4 years. They're still going to be dissatisfied with the government and the Tea Party is the only place right now where that can be heard. The OWS crew? They're in the Dem camp, almost entirely. The Dems can do that because they don't have an organized structure like the Republicans have, and likely never will. It's a lot harder to splinter off when you have no hard point of contention to pull people away with. The lack of leadership in both the Dems and the OWS crew means they're both going to flounder around, doing some good things here and there, while fucking up elsewhere. To me they're already indistinguishable, other than the OWS is just the new Young Democratic Hopefuls. The Tea Party though, they've got several solid concerns bundled up in several truck loads of crazy, and they're separate enough from the rest of the GOP that it's not likely they are going to mend the fences, at least not in four years. So the support will still exist and draw people away from the GOP vote, it's just a question of how much.

That pretty much leaves us with the question of if the GOP will have time to get it's shit together by 2014 or 2016. Unless something amazing happens, I suspect the mid-term elections will be more of the same, because people will simply be dissatisfied with the state of the economy and the current administration's efforts to reverse it. I don't really see the Dems taking the House there, but I could be wrong. Even if they do, the Dems are so fucking dysfunctional there's no assurance they'll be able to use it effectively. Obama doesn't have to worry about re-election anymore, which means he can go full steam in certain arenas if he wants to, but he still has to play the balancing act for the first two years in the hopes of getting full Blue. Then the last two years he can try to shove through whatever he wants, but that's only going to go so far if the White House goes Red in 2016.

It's always been my estimation that Obama would get two terms, but he would have to be a light touch in term one to assure his second. That's been done. If Obama doubles down this time around, kudos to him, and I hope he does for all the right reasons.

The GOP? Adapt or die. If 2016 rolls around and they can't take the big chair or the Senate back, they'll need to go back to the drawing board. People are getting less and less racist, sexist, and gender-biased as the years go on. They can't rely on those as much anymore. With the information age comes improved communication and education from around the world, and the more people relate to others as a general rule, the less easy it is to hate them and use them as scapegoats. While it's still possible to get lost in echo chambers, it's much easier to leave them and find other points of view.

[Josh]

The Tea Party demo is still there, but the thing with the Tea Party was that from pretty much day one they had a lot of high level backing both financially and internally in party politics.

Ultimately a political party is a corporate entity of a sort, with votes as a product. The current GOP organizational structure got caught in their own information loop and believed the propaganda they were peddling, hence the Romney campaign's delusional election-night behavior and Rove's little tantrum.

I'm not saying that the fundy conservative wing's going away, or even conceding power without a fight (I've heard that Limbaugh's speaking in tongues the past couple of days, just about) but in the end the GOP will come back to where the votes are. Even if they have to endure a winter of discontent or two, the American parties are tremendously resilient. Overly so in my opinion, but then I've been an on and off third party guy my whole life.

As for the midterms, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Reps pick up a bit of ground, that's just normal for midterms. I wouldn't expect a huge wave like last time, though. What I'm seeing around here is a lot more depressed resignation than OMGMUSLIMMARXISTTAKEOVER WE GOTTA TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY YEEHAA that we had after the last presidential.

ETA: Also, god DAMN, Florida. What the fuck?

[Norseman]

I find this whole thing very fascinating coming from a country where we have six major political parties jockying for votes. Have any of you considered proportional representation? John Cleese explains it quite nicely:

[youtube][/youtube]

Other than that I don't have much to contribute, being a horrible furriner and all that.

[frigidmagi]

Speaking solely for myself. No thanks. Besides our parties act less like your parties and more like your coalitions. It may be easier to consider the Republicans and Democrats as semi-permanent governing coalitions.

[SirNitram]

I reject the idea it will only take a cycle or two for the GOP to get back to reality. The rot has expanded too deep. Link

The cult is beleiving it's own bullshit. As Orwell would put it, the Party Bosses are eating the Prolefeed. This is a deep, deep problem.

[Josh]

I reject the idea it will only take a cycle or two for the GOP to get back to reality. The rot has expanded too deep. Link

The cult is beleiving it's own bullshit. As Orwell would put it, the Party Bosses are eating the Prolefeed. This is a deep, deep problem.

Well Romney himself and his campaign are a specific instance. My personal assessment of Romney is that he's a self-absorbed megalomaniac who's naturally prone to buying his own line, who has surrounded himself with yes-men who reinforce his delusions. Hell, they were talking about how Romney was looking for a 'boring white guy' for veep and then he picked Ryan and everyone was all "Okay, maybe that was a smokescreen" but then he promptly turned Ryan into a boring white guy who barely factored.

So you can correctly point out that there are any number of equally self-deluding members of party leadership, sure.

But here's why I think we'll start to see elements of change in the next couple of cycles: money.

Money equals relevance in politics now. No other way to look at it. And corporate investment is subject to ROI analysis. One of the things they were saying about Rove's meltdown is that he was looking at having to go back to all the investors in his PAC and explain how he was totally wrong about the presidential and senatorial outcomes. The longer this goes, the less money is going to go to the loudmouths who cost them votes.

Are they going to start singing sunshine and light right off? No, and I don't expect the transition to be finished in two cycles either. Nor do I honestly expect it to be a super-duper yay we all can like them now transition either. I'd expect that while they are likely to start making serious runs at peeling away Latino votes (and that the early efforts there will probably be laughably condescending and ineffectual), but ultimately what they'll be pursuing are conservative male latino votes, based on commonality on abortion and other social issues.

So it's not like they're going to magically improve. What improvement they do show, though, can be good for the country in the sense of at least taking some of the hateful nastiness off the table.

Also to come back to Romney, what's scary about it is that he was almost right. Candidate Obama roused far, far more enthusiasm than President Obama could deliver on, and the biggest thing that kept Mitt Romney away from winning was Mitt Romney.

[frigidmagi]

Okay, this will be a long post but a necessary one. First of all this article was written before the election, so I know some may ask why is it in this thread? Because it provides the framework for everything that follows.

The GOP civil War

Mitt Romney’s boisterous rally here Friday night featured both the promise of the Republican Party’s future and a sharp reminder of why the GOP may lose its second consecutive presidential race on Tuesday.

The scene in this Cincinnati suburb also set the stage for the party’s coming inner struggle to define itself no matter this cycle’s outcome.

A cadre of young and diverse Republican officials took the stage to speak before Romney. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte each made the case for their nominee and offered a reminder of the strength of the GOP’s bench.

But they did so before a crowd that was nearly all-white and their appearances were sandwiched in between slashing speeches from a familiar roster of older white males like Rudy Giuliani, who took it upon himself to demand that President Barack Obama resign over the Benghazi attacks.

Regardless of whether Romney wins or loses, Republicans must move to confront its demographic crisis. The GOP coalition is undergirded by a shrinking population of older white conservative men from the countryside, while the Democrats rely on an ascendant bloc of minorities, moderate women and culturally tolerant young voters in cities and suburbs. This is why, in every election, since 1992, Democrats have either won the White House or fallen a single state short of the presidency.

“If we lose this election there is only one explanation — demographics,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
But Republicans are divided on the way forward. Its base is growing more conservative, nominating and at times electing purists while the country is becoming more center than center-right. Practical-minded party elites want to pass a comprehensive immigration bill, de-emphasize issues like contraception and abortion and move on a major taxes-and-spending deal that includes some method of raising new revenue.

But many rank-and-file Republicans in Congress and grass-roots activists won’t sanction amnesty for undocumented immigrants, are determined to advance restrictions on abortion and have no appetite for any compromise with Democrats on fiscal issues. And that doesn’t even get at the growing cleavage on foreign policy in the GOP between the party’s hawkish wing and the rising voices who prefer a more restrained role abroad.

There’s not much of a moderate wing left in the GOP, but the pragmatism versus purity battle that looms on the horizon could be as fierce as Republicans have seen since the Goldwaterites sought to wrest control of the party in the 1960s.

Now, as then, the establishment is made up mostly of older pragmatists, such as Romney, House Speaker John Boehner and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. And it’s the younger “Red Dawn Republicans,” like Jindal and likely Texas senator to-be Ted Cruz, who are the true

This split will loom over the GOP for the next few years whether Romney is in the White House or on the beaches of La Jolla. If he becomes the 45th president in January, Romney will have to tread carefully as he grapples with a conservative-dominated Republican House, a Senate GOP increasingly divided between old bulls and younger true believers and thousands of party activists who opposed him in two presidential primaries.

“He’ll have half the party watching him every morning,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, calling the House GOP “the bedrock he’ll have to maneuver around.”

A Romney loss would mean the same internal issues would come to the fore more quickly and explosively but with no clear leader at the top of the party. Consider all the voices who’d jockey for attention: the pragmatic Senate and House GOP leadership; next-generation stars like Rubio and Paul Ryan; older reformers led by Jeb Bush; conservative stalwarts like Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky ; and the talent-rich ranks of current Republican governors. These forces would all assert their authority in the lead-up to what could be a sprawling 2016 presidential primary that renders a judgment on which direction the party will take.

The fault lines are already clear: True-believers will say, see, this is what happens when you nominate moderates — John McCain lost in 2008 and Romney lost in 2012 because they couldn’t or wouldn’t make the case for conservatism.

“Structurally, a Romney loss, following a McCain loss, would be a rebuke to moderates who have wanted ideological conservatives to fill the bus but not drive the bus,” said a GOP operative close to one sure-fire future presidential aspirant. “The nominee in 2016, if he is not a President Romney, will certainly be a card-carrying movement conservative with a track record to match.”

The pragmatists will howl at this and point to the underlying issues in the electorate.

“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts,” said Graham. “We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

Of the party’s reliance on a shrinking pool of white men, one former top George W. Bush official said: “We’re in a demographic boa constrictor and it gets tighter every single election.”

The first big issue that Republicans will confront is the so-called fiscal cliff and whether to cut a major deal on entitlements and taxes with Democrats in a divided Senate. Veteran GOP officials think a President Romney would be much more likely to win support for a compromise from tea party-backed Republicans than a second-term Obama.

“They’ll want to support their president,” said former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour of congressional hard-liners. Barbour, aping the voice of a House or Senate conservative said: “’He don’t agree with me on everything, but at least he’s trying to take our country in the right direction.’”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah.), a young conservative, added of Romney’s ability to bring along more ideological elements of his party: “That’s exponentially more true because of Paul Ryan’s presence. He has the personal relationships and street cred to make that happen. That’s one of the reasons Mitt selected him.”

If Romney loses, the party will almost certainly be far more divided when it comes to a grand bargain. Potential 2016 hopefuls like Ryan and Rubio will be hesitant to support any deal that could make their right flank vulnerable in a GOP primary.

Chaffetz thinks that congressional conservatives would take their cues from Ryan.

“Win or lose, Paul is the most influential guy in the House and probably the Senate,” he said.

Some sort of fiscal agreement could be finessed with the conservative base if it’s sold as tax and entitlement reform, if individual rates do not go up and it’s exemptions and deductions that are eliminated.

“We as Republicans would be smart to tell our Democratic colleagues that we will eliminate deductions and apply the revenue to the deficit if you take on entitlements,” said Graham. “But if we become the party that can’t compromise, in the view of the average person we’ll get punished.”

Yet while there may be a way to make a grand bargain palatable to the rank-and-file conservatives, immigration reform is much more clear-cut and therefore tougher to find consensus around and may be even more illustrative of the internal civil war Republicans seem on the verge of.

After getting pounded on it in election after election, some congressional Republicans will seek to deprive Democrats of having the issue every two years. But anything that smacks of amnesty will face fierce resistance in the ranks of a GOP caucus that is even more conservative than when the issue was debated in 2007, to say nothing of the likes of talk radio and cable opponents.

To some longtime Republicans, the party faces an existential question on immigration.
“Once we deal with the issue, we’ll have a permanent majority for a generation,” said Gingrich. “But until we do, we’re permanently in danger of losing.”

Gingrich’s solution, regardless of whether Romney wins: “It’s going to require Jeb Bush coming to Washington for about six months and working directly with Marco Rubio and building a bipartisan majority. We really need Jeb to live in Washington for six months to get this done.”

Barbour, an outspoken supporter of immigration reform, said the key is to make the economic argument for why reaching an agreement on the issue makes sense.

“Let’s just say 5 million of the 12 million [undocumented immigrants] have a job, pay taxes, have a family and children here — they’re residents who contribute,” he said. “Let’s say we deport all of them — well who’s going do those 5 million jobs? Are we going to find 5 million Americans to do them? Not a chance.”

But the opposition to a bill that includes legal status for undocumented immigrants will face roadblocks from congressional Republicans, regardless of who is in the White House.

“ ‘Comprehensive’ seems to be code word for amnesty,” said Chaffetz, who won his seat following a primary against a Republican who was a moderate on immigration. “I don’t think that’s doable.”

But even if there is an immigration reform bill passed, some pragmatists fear a scenario in which the issue becomes relitigated in a future GOP primary. It’s easy to envision, for example, a Republican going to Iowa in 2015 and campaigning for much of the year on a pledge to repeal “Obama’s amnesty law.” The specter of that could stop future presidential hopefuls such as Ryan and Rubio from being party to any deal.

“Too many Republicans treat harsh immigration rhetoric the way a smoker treats cigarettes,” lamented GOP strategist Todd Harris. “You know it’s going to kill you, but you do it anyway.”

More on the next post.