The Battle for Control of the Senate

Control between Democrats and Republicans right now is very close (if the election were held today):

So unless you want Harry Reid to remain majority leader, help one of the Republicans in toss up states.

Democrats are not giving up

So where is the wave?

Hillary Clinton: About that Benghazi lie, Obama told me to do it!

If this is actually confirmed this is a big deal:

Hillary Clinton says it was all the President's idea about Benghazi:“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.” […] 

“That story won’t hold up,” Bill said. “I know,” Hillary said. “I told the president that.” “It’s an impossible story,” Bill said. “I can’t believe the president is claiming it wasn’t terrorism. Then again, maybe I can. It looks like Obama isn’t going to allow anyone to say that terrorism has occurred on his watch .” 

Hillary’s legal adviser provided further detail: “During their phone call, Bill started playing with various doomsday scenarios, up to and including the idea that Hillary consider resigning as secretary of state over the issue. But both he and Hillary quickly agreed that resigning wasn’t a realistic option.

I could see Michelle and Valerie having some Chardonnay soon… 

Update:
More at Lem's Place
Smitty: How a country dies…

Karl Rove, Bill Clinton and Hillary's Brain

The Architect wants to be relevant again…

Behind the Furor: Why Karl Rove's comments exploded…

Predictable : Bill Clinton mocks Republicans over Karl Rove comments…

Update:

But wait, Bill Clinton says it took Hillary Clinton six months to recover?  Hmmmm!

And the Clintons will always have Eleanor Cliff in their corner…not that that is necessarily a good thing.

@rsmccain @ericdondero @KarlRove @billclinton @BobBelvedere @instapundit @AmPowerBlog @HillaryClinton Ouch! pic.twitter.com/jmvBTHSg4w
— Evi L. Bloggerlady (@MsEBL) May 16, 2014

The Day Obama's Presidency Died: September 11, 2012

Richard Fernandez nails it.  

Battle of Midway Cover Up

Benghazi Cover Up

The media, however in the bag for Obama, can only do so much…Really Eleanor, are you that much of a liar or just incredibly stupid?
And why did Hillary Clinton defend Boko Haram?  Hillary/Obama urged Nigerian government to show "restraint" to Boko Haram and rebuit a mosque for them.  That disconnect ties back to Benghazi too…

Update:

Never go full retard Eleanor...

Was the President doing debate prep while the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burned?

Priorities

What did the President know and when did he know it?

Prior EBL Posts:
John Boehner just appointed Trey Gowdy to lead a Select House Investigation Committee on Benghazi Updated: Mark Steyn commentsThe White House Lies About Benghazi
The Benghazi Lie: What did the President know and when did he know it?
Hillary Clinton asks: What difference does it make?

Update:
Andrew McCarthy: The AWOL Commander in Chief: Where was he when the Benghazi attack happened?
Trey Gowdy: I have evidence that there was intent by the White House to hide Benghazi documents…

TOM: A hole in the tick tock
Jonah Goldberg: Benghazi made simple…

Bill Clinton: "[Obama's] luckier than a dog with two dicks.”

From the soon to be released book Double Down:

--“Until [the] Denver [debate debacle], Clinton had watched in wonder as Obama caught break after break. … Meanwhile, Romney’s ineptness staggered Clinton. After the release of the 47 percent video, he remarked to a friend that, while Mitt was a decent man, he was in the wrong line of work. (‘He really shouldn’t be speaking to people in public.’) As for Obama, Clinton trotted out for his pals the same line again and again: ‘He’s luckier than a dog with two dicks.’”

The Myth of President Obama as a master strategist...

Update:

Bart Hall

If you're the smartest person in the room ... you're in the wrong room. First-rate leaders surround themselves with people smarter and more experienced than they are. Second-rate leaders surround themselves with third-rate people.
I'm not sure what third-rate leaders do, but sadly we're finding out.
2 hours ago Reply   Like (18) Report Abuse Link To Comment

Mark Steyn: Obama's luck may have finally run out... 

Obama lied, but he had to because you voters are stupid...
Lying to the voters?  That is a big *&^%@#~$ deal!
It must be racism why they hate Obama...
TOM: Obamacare Quagmire

The Democrats Best Friend: Karl Rove and the destruction of the GOP

The Architect

Mark Levin points to this article by American Thinker.

Update:
This comment did not post but I got it by email so I will post it here:

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Anonymous <noreply-comment@blogger.com> wrote:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Democrats Best Friend: Karl Rove and the destr...":

Utter nonsense. The Republican party's problems go back much farther and are much deeper than those caused by Rove. Rove is just trying to deal with the effects of that long term dysfunction, particularly Republican collaboration in open borders. I would remind you that Romney won the white vote by a landslide, and would have been President if we had the same sort of population that we had in 1980. It was Reagan not Rove who gave 3 million illegal aliens amnesty in the 1980s and started this decline rolling much faster. Demographics is destiny, sweetheart, and the gutless failure of The American Thinker and their ilk to deal with that reality, including in this article, is the real cause of the Republican implosion. They're just making Rove a scapegoat.

I agree there have been demographic changes.  I agree that Reagan amnesty was a mistake and letting things go as long as they have been going is a mistake too.  But that is the reality we are dealing with and letting the status quo continue is a decision too.  But this reader is wrong about Karl Rove.  While getting Bush elected over Gore was a good thing, Rove gave Bush a lot of bad advice while in office and has been consistently wrong since Bush left office.

Why did Romney lose?

The Blogmocracy explains.

That the American people liked Obama more, however, just blows me away...

Update:
John Hawkins found this gem:  Top 10 things to say to an Obama voter who got laid off...

What Mitt Romney lacked...

Instead of  Mitt Romney being like this...

Mitt Romney came off like this.

And I am (I hope obviously) not suggesting Mitt Romney needed to become Deanna Troi in appearance or (God forbid) décolleté.  Mitt needed to convey some of Deanna Troi's empathy.  There was not enough of this stuff shown.  This is really too bad because the truth is Mitt Romney is probably more empathetic to people than Barack Obama in real life. But in messaging, Mitt Romney failed to convey that and also let the Democrats define him as uncaring and cold.  So that messaging of Shamus the Dog on the roof of the car, Bain Capital, the 47%, was all about killing Romney's chances with those voters who ultimately went overwhelmingly with Barack Obama.  

This is interesting:

Haidt’s research further elucidates the particular importance of care as a moral foundation. His study of anthropology and evolutionary theory led him to the conclusion that humanity possesses six moral foundations: care, fairness, liberty, authority, sanctity, and loyalty. In over 130,000 individual interviews on how relevant each of these moral foundations are to determining right and wrong, Haidt found that conservatives respond to each of them whereas the center and the left appreciate essentially only two: care and fairness.
With the shrinkage of the Republican base by 9 percent over the last few years increasing the importance of attracting voters beyond the base, it is critical that Republicans frame the discussion of their policies in the context of these two moral foundations that resonate with the entire country. That, or they can slip into permanent minority status. 

Rick Perry did not do well in the GOP Primaries.  But Governor Perry is promoting policies that are conservative, pragmatic and also convey that he gets what voters are facing out there.  That is very important.  I am not saying Gov. Perry should be our next nominee (that is not my point).  What I am saying is who ever we run in 2016 needs to recognize how important reaching out to all voters is.    

Low Information Voters: The GOP did not target them...

This is a warning the GOP should heed.  And while Mitt Romney (and the other GOP candidates with the possible exception of Herman Cain) was not the best candidate to woo these voters, there is no reason our nominee in 2016 cannot do it.

Update:
Here is a related point.  Not that all Hispanic voters are low information, but some are.  Guess what, the Hispanic vote probably did not cost Romney the election.  Although reaching out and trying to recruit Hispanics is a very good idea for Republicans, falling over themselves for some sort of immigration deal is not.  I want to see expanded legal immigration with an effort to recruit the best and brightest from all over the world to the United States and the end of the current quasi legal system which is nuts.

h/t:  Instapundit

Revenge of the Nerds: How Obama's Narwhal succeeded while Romney's ORCA ended up dead on the beach...

Obama's Tech Team: Think of them like computer athletes...

Read the whole thing.  The Obama Narwhal GOTV system worked, the Romney GOTV system ORCA had an epic fail.  It is unclear if that alone cost Romney the election, but it sure did not help in battleground states.  The lesson here is Team Obama pre-tested and debugged their system.  The Romney consultants who created ORCA, with way too much hubris, did not.  I take The Atlantic with a grain of salt, but NRO's Michael James Barton's post failure review of ORCA pretty much shares the same views expressed above.

The Democrats had some serious (and similar) failures of their systems in 2008, which is why they brought their computer experts in house for 2012. The GOP really needs to learn from its mistake.  The GOP should not abandon attempts at using new technology, but it has to combine that with basic old school on the ground politics and rigorous testing.

The GOP needs to think long and hard about who should be hired back.  And who to listen to...

Obama hugging his Tech Team leader:  I think I love you...

Karl Rove Explains What The 2012 Election Teaches The GOP...

The Architect

This is what Karl Rove just said the WSJ.  Here is the real lesson:  Don't Listen to Karl Rove.

I don't normally tout the NYT, but ouch.

Okay, that is an over statement.  Karl Rove was not the only one who blew the Election 2012 prediction.  Hell, I wanted to believe too (and convinced myself it was true).  But Karl Rove was flat out wrong.

We need to remember Karl Rove is often wrong.  Rove was especially wrong in talking W into that Medicare prescription drug expansion back in the day.  Rove is wrong, the prescription drug plan was not a good idea--it was an unfunded increase of entitlement obligations intended to buy votes in Florida.  Guess what, it is not helping us either politically or as a matter of policy.  That is an issue every conservative needs to remember.

That said, at least Rove is admitting he was wrong this time and is saying it is time to look at objective evidence to figure out what went wrong.  Karl points out that he did not take a salary or even expenses from Crossroads.  While commendable, Crossroads did not perform as planned.  I do not trust Karl (alone) to do it, we do need to look objectively at what went wrong.  Update:  How to prevent another ORCA

Take it with a grain of salt.  Or a fifty pound bag.

Update:
Federalism is not the same as federalize!
Rodan at the Blogmocracy says conservative money may be better spent on this...
Prior EBL Post:  What happens to loser GOP consultants? 

The Petraeus Gate Flow Chart

Hilary Sargent Ramadei Does An Excellent Job

h/t: BoingBoing (it has a more appropriate title for what is going on) and via Instapundit RT

The Obama Team used behavioral science to woo voters in swing states...

This is an interesting article and well worth reading:  

For example, Dr. Fiske’s research has shown that when deciding on a candidate, people generally focus on two elements: competence and warmth. “A candidate wants to make sure to score high on both dimensions,” Dr. Fiske said in an interview. “You can’t just run on the idea that everyone wants to have a beer with you; some people care a whole lot about competence.” 

Mr. Romney was recognized as a competent businessman, polling found. But he was often portrayed in opposition ads as distant, unable to relate to the problems of ordinary people.
When it comes to countering rumors, psychologists have found that the best strategy is not to deny the charge (“I am not a flip-flopper”) but to affirm a competing notion. “The denial works in the short term; but in the long term people remember only the association, like ‘Obama and Muslim,’ ” said Dr. Fox, of the persistent false rumor. 

The president’s team affirmed that he is a Christian. 

At least some of the consortium’s proposals seemed to have found their way into daily operations. Campaign volunteers who knocked on doors last week in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada did not merely remind people to vote and arrange for rides to the polls. Rather, they worked from a script, using subtle motivational techniques that research has shown can prompt people to take action. 

“We used the scripts more as a guide,” said Sarah Weinstein, 18, a Columbia freshman who traveled with a group to Cleveland the weekend before the election. “The actual language we used was invested in the individual person.” 

Simply identifying a person as a voter, as many volunteers did — “Mr. Jones, we know you have voted in the past” — acts as a subtle prompt to future voting, said Dr. Cialdini, a foundational figure in the science of persuasion. “People want to be congruent with what they have committed to in the past, especially if that commitment is public,” he said.

Read the whole thing.  The concept that the GOP or conservatives have to significantly change their positions is not correct. This election was not lost over big issues, but on small tactical gains.  

The mysterious case of the missing white Ohio Republican voters...

Byron York is on the case...

They must have gone somewhere!  

Ace raises an interesting possibility:  Could it have been as simple as cable tv advertising?
Allahpundit:  Sandy did not doom Romney (and if that is the case, then neither did the weepy Fat Man).  

Project ORCA: The necropsy

John E at AoSHQ explains what went wrong with ORCA...

I haven't been this sad since Free Willy died...

So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity's sake.

The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that.

I'm on Twitter at @JohnEkdahl if you have any questions.

The Orca story—it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse: commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/09/rom… @commentary
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) November 9, 2012

ICYMI: Team Romney tries to excuse their ORCA failure. I respond. minx.cc/?post=334825
— John Ekdahl, Jr. (@JohnEkdahl) November 10, 2012

 From the Commentary story:   

Was ORCA’s failure the reason why Romney lost Virginia by almost 116,000 votes, Ohio by 103,000, Iowa by 88,000 or why Florida is still, days later, too close to call? It’s impossible to know what a Romney campaign with working GOTV technology would have been able to accomplish. Ekdahl explained that with the failure of Project ORCA’s organization and its later meltdown on Election Day “30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc.” The possibility that all of the efforts of Romney’s campaign, all of the enthusiasm, went unharnessed and dormant on Election Day when they could’ve at least led to a closer election result, if not a victory, is becoming beyond frustrating for thousands of his staffers, for the millions of Americans who gave their time and money to elect Mitt Romney president as they come to learn just what a disaster ORCA seems to have been.

Twitchy:  Epic Orca Disaster 
Gateway Pundit:  With the classic Oregon DOT blowing up the dead beached whale video...
The Other McCain:  Romney's Killer Fail
Gay Patriot:  New media micro targeting may be more effective than visual image...
More from Andy at AoSHQ
Ben Howe at Red State
Jerry Wilson at Goldfish and Clowns notes a target rich voter block that is going un-mined, like an oil field only reached by fracking.
Ouch.
How to prevent another ORCA beaching
Checkmate?

Bill Quick Unleashed...

Bill makes a lot of sense:

In closing, here is what I view as the next battle. The pressure on the GOP House to capitulate to Obama and the Democrats will be enormous. And I view John Boehner as a very weak reed. So if we are to have any hope of limiting the wreckage President Obama will now try to inflict, spines in the House will have to be stiffened by any and every means we can come up with – not to mention the Senate, which will make the decisions on whatever hard-line leftists Obama nominates to the Supreme Court. And understand well: the RINO Ruling Class is already rolling out the meme that Romney’s defeat was caused by his refusal to court Latinos by offering a national amnesty, and by other “conservative” notions he advanced.  In their view, the path to victory is to become just like the victors.  That sound to me more like the path to an early political grave.

I agree no surrender in the House.  We have to take a stand there, win or lose.  We fight on principle and do not compromise when it means giving up on principle.  

I agree immigration reform as visioned by the left is a mistake, but the status quo is killing us now and we do not have the mussel muscle to reform things the way we may want.  So I say go with expanded legal immigration (and if the unions don't like it, pound sand), with a path to citizenship/assimilation and with an emphasis on skills and education rather than refugee/family status (sorry, we have enough Somalis already).  Oh does that make me racist?  Well I am not, it is a religious cultural bias on my part.  Go with a farm worker program for Mexican and Latin American nationals who want to do agricultural work and seasonal landscaping.   Give up on trying to round up illegal for deportation and emphasize fining employers who hire illegals.  It is jobs that draw illegals.  

We also lost Asians to Obama.  So it is not just immigration reform, it is messaging.  And the message is Republicans are white people.  We are trying though candidates like Mia Love and Allen West, and despite their losses last Tuesday, we need more of that not less.  

Update: 
Red State's:  The Keyser Soze Option...

Separated at Birth: Santa Claus and...?

Some of you have been naughty
and some have been nice.
(there will be a lot of coal in 
stocking because no one 
can sell it)

I am making a list and
checking it twice...

Obama knows how to take care of his friends.  Guess who is paying for it?  

"Barack-O-Claus" - coined by Rush Limbaugh...Perfect!
— Jamie L. Melton (@MrJamieMelton) November 9, 2012

Are Hispanics natural conservatives? Maybe not...along with the rest of the country.

Good piece by DrewM at Ace of Spades HQ:

Maybe Not...This is depressing because how do you fix this?

The loss in this election was more about candidates and tactics than it was about ideas...

Baseball Crank makes a lot of sense with this advice:

Many commentators will now rush to declare Republicans an endangered species and pin the blame for the party's woes on conservative ideas. When Ryan was added to the ticket, for example, there was much talk that the Obama campaign would sink Romney by tying him to the unpopular House GOP. But as it turned out, the House GOP fared a lot better than the presidential or Senate tickets, losing seats but easily retaining its majority, and we still have a commanding lead in state Governorships. Obama's 'permanent majority' coalition is actually razor-thin and couldn't retake the House even with its vaunted voter-turnout operation. And now, Obama enters his second term, which are hardly ever better than the first; Republicans are no more doomed by the prospect of an Obama second term than Democrats were by the Bush and Nixon second terms, or even Republicans after the Clinton and LBJ second terms. I don't ascribe to the theory that anybody should ever want to lose elections, but just as with his first term, Obama's second term offers increasing opportunities to frustrate and splinter his coalition, further alienate independent voters and bleed job approval, factors that won't bode well for Democrats in 2014 and 2016. My concern is not for the future of the party, but the country, as four more years gives Obama a lot more time to place increasing numbers of issues outside the reach of democratic self-government, either through judicial activism or inter-generational entitlement programs that are fiscally nearly impossible to unwind. 

That's not to say Republicans should do nothing to re-evaluate our agenda. I remain convinced, for example, that the party needs to find a moderate middle ground on immigration. But at the end of the day, the 2012 election was a failure of candidates, not of ideas.