Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity Spent Record $122 Million In 2012

BY JOSH ISRAEL/Think Progress

Americans for Prosperity, the tax-exempt conservative political organization created by oil billionaires David and Charles Koch, spent $122 million in 2012 — more than it spent in all previous years combined. While the group’s $33.5 million campaign to defeat President Barack Obama failed, AFP has successfully helped like-minded candidates at the state and local level.

The Center for Public Integrity reported Thursday that from 2004 through 2011, AFP spent a total of $72 million. The group spent $21.7 million of that in 2010, after the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 Citizens United ruling made it easier for tax-exempt organizations to influence elections. But documents filed in Colorado show that number more than quintupled in 2012. The group does not disclose its donors.

While the group’s most visible expenditures in 2012 were unsuccessful — millions spent to defeat Obama and now-Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) — much of its other spending was successful. It spent at least $1.5 million to say nice things about Gov. Scott Walker (R) prior to his victory over a recall attempt. AFP and its affiliated organizations also poured about $1 million into Arkansas, where Republicans successfully captured control of the state legislature for the first time since 1874. In Kansas, the group successfully replaced moderate Republicans in the legislature with staunch conservatives.

This year, AFP and its state allies have also focused on local races, including theDouglas County, Colorado school board. Their favored slate retained control, after the AFP Foundation Colorado ran several TV ads telling voters that the current board’s education reform efforts were “working.”

In 2012 Election, African American Voters Surpassed White Turnout For The First Time Ever

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Though Republican election officials in battleground states sought to dampen voter turn out of traditionally Democratic voters through by instituting identification requirements and limiting early voting hours, a new analysis of census data by the Associated Press shows that African Americans “voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time.”

The analysis finds that had “people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly”:

The 2012 data suggest Romney was a particularly weak GOP candidate, unable to motivate white voters let alone attract significant black or Latino support. Obama’s personal appeal and the slowly improving economy helped overcome doubts and spur record levels of minority voters in a way that may not be easily replicated for Democrats soon.

Romney would have erased Obama’s nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004,according to Frey’s analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

African Americans outperformed their voter share, representing 13 percent of total votes cast in 2012 while making up 12 percent of the population — despite facing great obstacles to exercising the franchise.

A poll conducted by Hart Research poll immediately after the election reported that 22 percent of African-Americans waited 30 minutes or more to vote, compared to just 9 percent of white voters. A more thorough analysis from Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that black and hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to vote as whites. In Florida, home to the longest lines, at least 201,000 people may have been deterred from voting by the long waits.

Black youth was also far more likely to be asked to show ID, a study by professors at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis found, and many did not even try to vote because they lacked the required identification.

“The 2008 election was the first year when the minority vote was important to electing a U.S. president. By 2024, their vote will be essential to victory,” William H. Frey, a demographer who analyzed the 2012 elections for the AP, said. “Democrats will be looking at a landslide going into 2028 if the new Hispanic voters continue to favor Democrats.”

Study: Republican Gerrymandering Cost Democrats 1.7 Million Votes In Just 7 States

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

As ThinkProgress previously reported, Republicans so effectively gerrymandered congressional maps before the 2012 election that Democratic House candidates would need to win the national popular vote by over 7 points in order to win back the House. Last November, the American people preferred Democratic House candidates to Republican House candidates by almost 1.4 million votes, yet Republicans still hold a substantial House majority due in large part to partisan gerrymandering.

A new study by Princeton molecular biologist and neuroscientist Sam Wang digs deeper into the effect of the Republican gerrymander, and finds that the gerrymanders in seven states were so powerful that they are the equivalent of 1.7 million Democrats simply deciding not to show up at the polls:

[G]errymandering is a major form of disenfranchisement. In the seven states where Republicans redrew the districts, 16.7 million votes were cast for Republicans and 16.4 million votes were cast for Democrats. This elected 73 Republicans and 34 Democrats. Given the average percentage of the vote it takes to elect representatives elsewhere in the country, that combination would normally require only 14.7 million Democratic votes. Or put another way, 1.7 million votes (16.4 minus 14.7) were effectively packed into Democratic districts and wasted.

Such gerrymanders can exist because five conservative justices refused to block partisan redistricting in a case called Vieth v. Jubelirer.

Democratic House Candidates Now Have A Nearly 1.2 Million Vote Lead Over The Republicans

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

The day after the election last month, ThinkProgress took a preliminary tally of the total number of votes cast for candidates for the House of Representatives. We found that, despite the fact that Republicans won a commanding majority of the seats, theAmerican people cast more than half-a-million votes for Democrats. This number was based on early tallies, however, and it was especially likely to undercount many West Coast states that had less time to count ballots.

More than a month after the election, the Democrats’ popular vote lead expanded significantly. Based on current tallies,Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.

This disparity between the will of the American people and the actual outcome of the election did not happen by accident — it is largely the product of massive gerrymandering by Republican state officials. President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points, but Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats. Obama won Virginia, and Democrats took 3 of 11 House seats. Obama won Ohio, but Democrats carried only 4 of 16 seats in Ohio’s House delegation. In state after state after state, Republicans used their unconstitutional ability to gerrymander Democratic votes into meaninglessness — and they were able to do so because the conservatives on the Supreme Court refuse to do anything about it.

In just a few weeks, a misguided package of spending cuts and middle class tax hikes threatens to drag America back into recession. Just over a month after that, America risks defaulting on its debt — potentially plunging us into depression. And even if these immediate threats are averted, it could come at a very high price. In an attempt to strike a deal with recalcitrant Republicans, President Obama recently offered to take future Social Security benefits away from seniors. Meanwhile, Speaker Boehner can’t even manage the right flank of his caucus enough to hold a purely cosmetic vote intended to counter the — now entirely justified — view that Republicans care primarily about protecting millionaires from paying taxes. Because of the Republican Party’s apparently inability to negotiate in good faith in order to avert catastrophe, America now faces the very real possibility of an economic collapse once the debt ceiling comes due early next year.

All of these risks would evaporate completely if the divided 113th Congress bore any resemblance to the unified government the American people voted for.

Sore Loser Allen West: My Opponent Only Won Because He Cheated

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress

In an exit befitting his outspoken, controversial two years in Congress, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said that he only lost his re-election because his opponent cheated.

West lost narrowly to Democratic up-and-comer Patrick Murphy last month, but refused to concede for weeks, demanding a recount of ballots in St. Lucie County. Only after a re-tabulation slightly increased Murphy’s lead did West finally accept defeat just before Thanksgiving.

However, the Tea Party congressman appears to be handling the loss acrimoniously. Appearing on Mark Levin’s radio show last Thursday, West accused Murphy of only winning by breaking the rules. “I’m not going away just because of a congressional race where he seems to have to cheat to beat me,” said West. He did not specify precisely how Murphy supposedly cheated.

LEVIN: You are a national treasure. You are way too important to have something like this to happen and off you go. That can’t happen. So I’m really curious to know. Do you have further public service in mind, potentially?

WEST: The most important thing everyone has to understand is my voice is not going to be lost. We’ve gotten a lot of opportunities, a lot of offers, and we’re going to make sure we continue to have that platform. [...] I’m a warrior and I’m a statesman and I’m a servant of this republic. I’m not going away just because of a congressional race where he seems to have to cheat to beat me.

LEVIN: He sure as hell did. It’s disgusting.

Listen to it:

Anyone who knows Allen West knows that he is not a bashful man. If he actually had evidence that his opponent won through fraudulent means, he would have presented it weeks ago and Fox News would run a piece every hour on the matter. That West has not shown any evidence gives a clear indication of how truthful his accusation is.

West later wrapped up the interview by accusing President Obama of being a “Marxist, Socialist, rigid ideologue” who “believes he has some self-conceived mandate to go out and further destroy and ruin our economy.”

Disgruntled Republicans, and Romney, react to the election

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Defeated Once Again, Right-Wing Media Wage War...On Voters

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters for America

Raise your hand if you thought conservatives would respond to President Obama's convincing re-election victory by lashing out at voters and the country as a whole, denouncing the presidential pick as the act of a greedy, lazy nation. 

Well, that was part of Sean Hannity's media message yesterday, as the Obama basher tried to make sense of the president's surprisingly easy victory on Tuesday. Having spent the last four years smearing and denouncing the president with every passing breath on the radio and on Fox News, Hannity was faced with the humiliating reality that most voters paid him no mind.

"Americans, you get the government you deserve," the talker told listeners yesterday, his words dripping with contempt.  "And it pains me to say this, but America now deserves Barack Obama."

Hannity wasn't alone in lashing out at voters. The disdain has been completely unvarnished. Perhaps it flows from the fact so many people dismissed the far-right warnings about Obama.

And that's the box the GOP Noise Machine built for itself: During Obama's entire first term they depicted him as a business-hating, class warfare socialist who despises the American way of life.

But if that's true, why did Obama just score his second electoral landslide in four years?

Either 60 million voters just rejected the Noise Machine's endless, and often hysterical, claims about Obama, or all of those voters are part of the socialist problem in our "maker vs. taker" society. Faced with that choice, and refusing to admit their messaging futility, the right-wing media have opted for the latter: Americans are the real problem!

Tens of millions of them.

Never hesitating to question whether they were the ones out of step with the mainstream, and if their Doomsday warnings about the center-left president were too extreme to be taken seriously by most voters, far-right talkers and writers set their sights on the populace and berated the nation for picking the wrong candidate, and for being selfish, thoughtless people on the prowl Tuesday for "free stuff" from their "Santa Claus" government, as Rush Limbaugh put it.

"People feel that they are entitled to things," Bill O'Reilly lamented on Election Day, as he launched a pre-emptive attack on voters. Led by Hispanics, blacks and women, O'Reilly claimed there's a whole country filled with moochers who vote Democratic.

"Put bluntly, the takers outnumber the makers," blogged John Hinderaker.  

Have we ever heard such a contemptuous, post-election attack on American democracy? 

Voters weren't simply misguided in choosing Obama and the Democratic agenda, we're told they revealed themselves as deeply flawed people. And it wasn't just politicians, partisans or minorities (the usual far-right targets) who were the focus of the wrath. It was tens of millions of Americans, half the voting public for this election, who have been denounced. They are the ones who allegedly fell for Obama's "fruitful political strategy" of "offering" voters a "check" in exchange for their support.

Yes,  conservatives blamed the media for Mitt Romney's loss. After the votes were tallied they called forimpeachment and revolution, while continuing to spew insults at Obama. (National Review Online: "A political narcissistic sociopath"; "a skillful demagogue.") They also blamed the weather and a popularRepublican governor, denouncing Chris Christie as "gelatinous clown."

But probably the most startling response was the decision to blame Americans. To blame democratic participants for endorsing Obama's alleged brand of give-away socialism. (i.e Auto bailouts, health insurance, unemployment, etc.)

The lashing out didn't come as a complete surprise given the awkward reckoning that awaited the right-wing media on Election Day: How were they going to explain Obama's re-election if they'd spent the previous four years portraying him a un-American? Why would Obama be able to capture virtually every swing state if, as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have claimed, the president hates America?

The gulf between the right-wing portrayal of Obama and how he's seen by most Americans has always been enormous. Election Day simply quantified that disconnect and forced his most partisan critics to venture outside their echo chamber and to choose whether they had been wrong about Obama, or if the voters had been.

Verdict: The voters had been wrong. So wrong, in fact, that they'd instantly turned America into "the shallowest country in the history of man."

Limbaugh substitute Mark Steyn complained this week on Fox & Friends that "there's nothing compassionate or humanitarian about saying, as they do in Greece, I got mine and I don't care if it bankrupts the state." He claimed that's what American voters did on Tuesday.  

And Fox News' Eric Bolling bemoaned America's choice: "I have to sit back and go, Americans -- 50 percent of people who voted, voted for more of that?" Shorter Fox News: What is wrong with these people?

On and on the whining has gone, as conservatives turned their anger on everyday voters and citizens, mocking them as lazy hangers-on.

Writing at Vanity Fair, James Wolcott noted the GOP's jarring about-face:

Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.

...

The Average American turns out to be a dumb patsy fattened up for the slaughter by too much government cheese and other freebies.

Obama's victory represents a clear rebuttal of the conservative media. Outlets could have marked the occasion with some actual introspection. Instead, its leaders embraced two hallmarks of the movement: personal attacks and a refusal to take responsibility for their actions.

GOP moving through stages of grief

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Mitt Romney Campaign Aides Had Credit Cards Canceled Late On Election Night

By Cavan Sieczkowski/Huffy Post

Mitt Romney delayed conceding the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, even with the writing on the wall. Once he admitted defeat, however, his campaign went into shutdown mode, quickly dismantling and even canceling the credit cards of campaign aides late on election night.

NBC's Garrett Haake described the abrupt transition of the Romney campaign after the GOP nominee gave his brief concession speech:

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

"Fiscally conservative," one Romney campaign staffer told NBC.

Although Romney's staffers' credit cards were canceled, there are still loose ends to tie up. Papers need to be filed with federal commissions and bills need to be paid, Forbes' Helaine Olen notes.

That staff also has to deal with the wrath of Romney donors, who allege they weredisillusioned by the chances the Republican party had to win.

On Wednesday, Romney had a post-defeat breakfast with some of his wealthiest and most loyal donors. At the private gathering, the donors allegedly unloaded on Romney staff for its failed "junior varsity operation."

“Everybody feels like they were a bunch of well-meaning folks who were, to use a phrase that Governor Romney coined to describe his opponent, way in over their heads,” one member of the campaign’s national finance committee told the Washington Post's Philip Rucker. “Romney World will fade into the obscurity of a lot of losing campaigns.”

Republican pundits also answered to those donors.

Karl Rove's Crossroads allegedly called the campaign's biggest donors to explain the loss on Thursday, according to Politico. “Obviously, somebody made a mistake and didn’t do things right. There’s no question about that,” Stan Hubbard, a Minnesota media mogul and mega-donor, told Politico's Ken Vogel.

On Tuesday night, Romney thanked his staff in his concession speech.

"To the team across the country -- the volunteers, the fundraisers, the donors, the surrogates -- I don’t believe that there’s ever been an effort in our party that can compare with what you have done over these past years," he said. "Thank you so very much."

Why Americans Actually Voted For A Democratic House

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Although a small number of ballots remain to be counted, as of this writing, votes for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives outweigh votes for Republican candidates. Based on ThinkProgress’ review of all ballots counted so far, 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate for the House and only 53,402,643 were cast for a Republican — meaning that Democratic votes exceed Republican votes by more than half a million.

Two caveats are necessary in considering these numbers. The first is that all ballots have not been counted, so these numbers will change somewhat as more returns trickle in. (Because the remaining ballots are more likely to be from Democratic-leaning west coast states, it is likely that the Democrats’ margin will increase somewhat over time.) The second caveat is that these numbers include several California districts where two members of the same party ran against each other, and they do not include districts where a single candidate ran unopposed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the nation is very closely divided over which party should control the House, with Democrats appearing to enjoy a slight edge.

The actual partisan breakdown of the 113th Congress will be very different, however. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 233-192 advantage over Democrats, with 10 seats remaining undecided. That means that, in a year when Republicans earned less than half the popular vote, they will control a little under 54 percent of the House even if Democrats run the table on the undecided seats.

There is a simple explanation for how this happened: Republicans won several key state legislatures and governors’ mansions in the election cycle before redistricting, and theygerrymandered those states within an inch of their lives. President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points, but Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats:

Similar stories played out elsewhere. Obama won Virginia, and Democrats took 3 of 11 House seats. Obama won Ohio, but Democrats carried only 4 of 16 seats in Ohio’s House delegation.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), however, cannot simply thank Republican state lawmakers for enabling him to keep his job. He can also thank the conservatives on the Supreme Court. Partisan gerrymandering exists for one purpose: to cut off the ability of people who disagree with a state’s ruling party to influence future elections. It is a a clear violation of the First Amendment, which absolutely prohibits viewpoint discrimination. Yet the Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to end this discrimination in its 5-4 decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer, where the conservative justices tossed out a lawsuit alleging that Pennsylvania’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally drawn to maximize Republican representation in Congress.

Americans voted for a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and, barring significant shifts in the vote tally, a Democratic House. Instead, they will get a House majority similar to the one that held the entire nation hostage during last year’s debt ceiling hostage crisis. If the American people wanted this to happen, they would have said so at the polls on Tuesday. Instead, Republican state lawmakers took away their right to democratically legitimate leadership — with a big assist from the conservatives on the Supreme Court.

Maddow: Conservative Groups Funneled Millions Into 2012 Race And Have Almost Nothing To Show For It

by Josh Feldman/Mediaite

One detail of the 2012 election race that has been of much talk on both sides has been the rising influence of money in politics. Conservative groups and individual millionaires gave quite a bit of money to Republican candidates in the 2012 cycle, and asRachel Maddow pointed out tonight, most of their picks ended up losing. Republican candidates supported by wealthy billionaires lost their races, and Maddow concluded that all of the outside money in the race “was not money well spent.”

Maddow reminded viewers of the game-changing Citizens United ruling, before pointing out that the vast majority of the outside money spent in the 2012 race came from conservative groups, outspending groups 3 to 1. But for all the liberal worry and conservative excitement about how all the money on the Republican side would influence the race, Maddow noted that for the most part, none of it actually worked.

She brought up Karl Rove, whose Super PAC ran ads in support of a number of GOP candidates, none of whom won reelection. And all eleven Democratic targeted for defeat by the Chamber of Commerce secured victories last night, though one of the Republican candidates they supported did end up winning.

But what of the wealthy individuals who threw money into the race? Billionaire Sheldon Adelson lost first backing Newt Gingrich then Mitt Romney, and didn’t even get Romney to score a victory in his own state of Nevada. Meanwhile, the Koch brothers threw a lot of cash into the race as well, but Maddow said the math showed “it was not money well spent.”

Overall, Maddow concluded, it was a giant waste of money, and she wondered what these individuals and groups would do if they got the money back somehow.

Watch the video below, courtesy of MSNBC:

WaPo's Jennifer Rubin Admits She Misled Her Readers

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America

Jennifer Rubin has endured no shortage of criticism for using herWashington Post blog to blatantly and counterfactually shill for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. And in the aftermath of Romney's electoral defeat, she's tacitly acknowledging as much. Today Rubin offers her post-mortem of the Romney campaign, casting it as ineffectual and unequal to the task of removing an incumbent from the White House -- an assessment that flatly contradicts her aggressively pro-Romney pre-election writing.

Here's Rubin's November 7 take on the Romney-Ryan campaign:

Until October it was the Perils of Pauline campaign. It moved in fits and starts on foreign policy. The message was rarely consistent from day to day. Gobs of ads were aired to no apparent effect. The convention speech was a huge missed opportunity. Romney made a lunge now and then in the direction of immigration reform and an alternative health-care plan without giving those topics the attention they deserved. The communications team was the worst of any presidential campaign I have ever seen -- slow and plodding, never able to capitalize on openings. It was hostile, indifferent and unhelpful to media, conservative and mainstream alike.

Matters did improve once Ed Gillespie moved forward to take charge of the message. A message at least became discernible. The ads certainly were simpler, more direct and more attuned to making a case for Romney's agenda. But if not for a stunning series of performances in the debates and unexpected eloquence on the stump in the last month, Romney almost surely would have done worse than he did. A presidential race needs more than a good month to be successful.

Let's take what she's written here, in the cold reality of a Romney loss, and compare it to what she wrote when the Romney campaign was still in full swing.

Rubin now: "The convention speech was a huge missed opportunity."

Rubin then: "Mitt Romney accepted the nomination of his party for president with a speech that showed he can rise to an occasion, and let us see a side of him that was compelling and heartbreaking." [Right Turn, 8/30]

Rubin now: "Romney made a lunge now and then in the direction of immigration reform and an alternative health-care plan without giving those topics the attention they deserved."

Rubin then: "The media are doing their best to disguise the unpleasant fact that Mitt Romney has been more forthcoming on immigration than the president has in more than three years in office." [Right Turn, 6/24] "This isn't that hard: Romney will repeal Obamacare. He has always favored protection for people with preexisting conditions who move from one employer-provided plan to another or from an individual-purchased to an employer-provided plan." [Right Turn, 9/10]

Rubin now: "The communications team was the worst of any presidential campaign I have ever seen -- slow and plodding, never able to capitalize on openings."

Rubin then: "The Romney team, to a greater degree than most campaigns, has been criticized and lampooned. Too timid. Too unfocused. Too slow. Too inept. But this week demonstrated that the campaign officials are more skilled than they have been depicted, and their errors and stumbles have in large part been obliterated in the lingering glow of the convention. There is some personal vindication for them as well." [Right Turn, 8/31]

Rubin now: "But if not for a stunning series of performances in the debates and unexpected eloquence on the stump in the last month, Romney almost surely would have done worse than he did. A presidential race needs more than a good month to be successful."

Rubin then: "We've made the case that not only the first presidential debate but the debates as a whole recast the race and vaulted Mitt Romney into a position to win the race. Pollster Charlie Cook is the latest election guru to agree." [Right Turn, 10/31]

Obama win a vote for the country's path

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GOP stuck in denial stage

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Rush Limbaugh eats humble pie: ‘We are outnumbered and we are losing ground’

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

Republican radio figure Rush Limbaugh announced Wednesday that, far from the Republican Party simply failing to turn out its base on Tuesday night, “we are outnumbered” now in the country, calling President Barack Obama’s overwhelming reelection victory “the trend” from now on.

“We have to face some truths, we have to face some reality,” he said. “We are outnumbered and we are losing ground. This was not a glitch. This is the trend. That happened last night. This is the trend. We are outnumbered. Whether you want to put it in terms of, ‘Have we lost the country or not?’ There’s no other explanation.”

This audio is from “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” broadcast Wednesday, November 7, 2012, as clipped by DailyRushbo.com.

The Ten Worst Predictions Of The 2012 Election

By Zack Beauchamp/Think Progress

Not everyone predicted President Barack Obama’s victory in the 2012 election. In fact, though the polls showed Obama gaining steam in the finals days of the election, many pundits claimed that the numbers oversampled Democratic voters and explained that voters were more enthusiastic for Mitt Romney. It’s worth immortalizing who said what, and why they did. Here’s a list of ten of the most egregiously blown calls:

1. Dick Morris: “This is going to be a landslide.” The former Clinton adviser predicted a dominant Romney win, calling it “the biggest surprise in recent American political history.” Claiming that polls were oversampling Democrats, Morris wondered if “it will rekindle the whole question on why the media played this race as a nailbiter.”

2. Roger Kimball: “Obama is toast.” The publisher of prominent right-wing book imprint Encounter Books and a frequent contributor to conservative outlets, Kimball boldly predicted that Romney “is going to win, big time.” It was easy, he could “tell you in three syllables and a few numbers…Ben-gha-zi.” Though the Benghazi story played big in right-wing media before the election, a vanishingly small number of voters reported foreign policy being the top priority in the election – let alone the Embassy issue, which the Romney campaign had completely dropped in the stretch.

3. Karl Rove: “At least 279 electoral votes.” “It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney,” Rove wrote in a WSJ op-ed ignoring the fact that most polls showed growing momentum for the president. He predicted that Romney will win 51 percent of the popular vote and “at least 279 electoral votes.”

4. Peggy Noonan: “There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now.”Noonan is one of the most respected political columnists in the country despite her penchant for deciding things based on her gut rather than actual data. But her Romney prediction wasn’t exactly well thought out even by her own standard. According to Noonan, “all the vibrations [were] right” for a Romney win because “something old was roaring back.” While this might be the right way to open an H.P. Lovecraft novel, it probably isn’t the best way to think about presidential elections.

5. Larry Kudlow: “Yes, that’s right: 330 electoral votes.” CNBC personality Larry Kudlow bet Romney would “sweep the Midwest,” a point on which Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio beg to differ. He was so excited about his prediction that Romney would get 330 votes that he repeated it twice — despite the fact that he was making the call two weeks out from the election.

6. Fred Barnes: “Romney will be elected the 45th president of the United States.” Barnes, the editor of the Weekly Standard, didn’t attach a particular number to his prediction, but his reasoning for betting on Romney was beyond silly. According to Barnes, despite the fact that “there’s no empirical evidence” that undecided voters break for the challenger before the election, “it helps Romney.” He also bet that Romney would win because of significant advantages among seniors, evangelicals, and gun owners — that is to say, Republicans.

7. Michael Barone: “Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections.”Considered by many to be the dean of Washington politics coverage, Baronepredicted a 315-223 Romney blowout in which Romney took easy Obama states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Barone’s principal reason for calling it huge for Romney, the economic fundamentals, looks even stranger, as they actually favored Obama.

8. Dean Chambers: “The race has shifted profoundly in favor of Mitt Romney.”It appears the election has unskewed the unskewer. Chambers, the proprietor of the famous “correcting biased polls” UnskewedPolls.com, made two predictions before the election. While both obviously called a Romney win, the first one predicted a landslide — 359 electoral votes, even larger than Barone’s — the second, more sober assessment called a more modest 275. Chambers may owe Nate Silver, whom he described as “a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program” in what appeared to be a takedown piece, something of an apology.

9. Newt Gingrich: “A Romney landslide.” The former House Speaker predicted that Romney will take 53 percent of the popular vote and at least 300 electoral college votes. “My personal guess is you’ll see a Romney landslide, 53 percent-plus . . . in the popular vote, 300 electoral votes-plus,” Gingrich said. He also predicted that Republicans “may come very close to capturing control of the Senate.” He apologized for the faulty call the morning after the election.

10. Jim Cramer: “The presidential race is nowhere as close as the polls suggest.” The Mad Money finance “expert” famous for being humiliated by Jon Stewart predicted an Obama landslide, 440-98 in the electoral college and 55-45 in the popular vote. To put this in perspective, Obama would have had to win every semi-competitive state and, er, Texas, Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia.

Fox News’ Election Night Meltdown And Megyn Kelly’s Legs

By Alyssa Rosenberg/Think Progress

Gabriel Sherman has an amazing piece about the on-air meltdown at Fox News over the decision to call Ohio for President Obama last night, which contains this charming detail:

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.

I suppose when a substantial part of your brand, in addition to hiring commentators for their inflammatory qualities rather than actual credentials, is hiring extremely attractive women, it makes sense to use the assets you’ve invested in. But the decision by the channel last night to break the firewall between its anchors and its decision team on behalf of a contributor, Karl Rove, who helped shepherd hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the outcome of an election and didn’t want to hear the final verdict on his investment, was already a sham, another illustration of a conservative allergy to facts and data. Sending an attractive woman to do that embarrassing work–rather than letting her continue to do her anchoring job, at which Kelly is frequently a credit to the network–on Rove’s behalf, to fake concern for the integrity of election results, and to send her in part so you can get her legs out from behind her desk, is strikingly juvenile and strikingly retrograde.