Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
Really, what is to be done about this Republican Party? What force can change it—can stop Republicans from being ideological saboteurs and convert at least a workable minority of them into people interested in governing rather than sabotage? With the failed Plan B vote, we have reached the undeniable crisis point. Actually we’ve been at a crisis point for years, but this is really the all-upper-case Undeniable Crisis Point. They are a direct threat to the economy, which could slip back into recession next year if the government doesn’t, well, govern.

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
Let's get something straight from the start. Plan B wasn't going to lead to any deal anyway. Suppose it had gotten 218 votes last night, instead of being the epic failure that it was. Okay. That would have left Republicans at $1,000,000 on tax rates, with Obama at $400,000. That's still an extremely wide gulf, and if the GOP had to fight that hard to get to 218 on $1 million, what on earth would make anyone think there'd be votes in the GOP caucus for a compromise-on-the-compromise figure like $500,000 or $600,000? No chance.And that's just tax rates. Plan...

Paul Begala, The Daily Beast
"Political speech and writing," George Orwell wrote in a biting and brilliant critique, "are largely the defense of the indefensible." The most political of writers bemoaned the fact that "political language"”and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists"”is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell was reacting to the desperate euphemisms employed by members of the British...

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
Is it too early to talk about 2016? Of course it is. It's preposterous. So I'm not talking about 2016. Instead, I'm talking about something much bigger: I'm talking, let us say, about the great march of history, the ineluctable links of causality, the tempora and the mores, the old mole working both underground and above. And in this context, this context of keeping history moving forward, Hillary Clinton has not just the chance to run in 2016. She has the obligation to do so. Her party, and her country, will need her then, to consolidate gains and prevent the backsliding...

Hedrick Smith, The Daily Beast
Washington's fiscal-cliff breakdown again shows politicians shouldn't draw our voting lines. Hedrick Smith, author of Who Stole the American Dream?, on what gerrymandering wrought.If the latest Washington gridlock rankles you, turn your eyes to the structural flaw in American elections that perpetuates these stalemates and that will plague us for another decade, unless we fix it.

Megan McArdle, Daily Beast
Carol (left) and David Gilbert look out the window to a courtyard from the living room of their home at a senior community in Palo Alto, California, on November 16, 2011. (Eric Risberg / AP Photo )Over the weekend, Ross Douthat published a column arguing that we are unbreeding ourselves into extinction.  This attracted a fair amount of criticism from fairly predictible quarters, along the lines that Douthat is a misogynist troglodyte who doesn't understand that women have better things to do than bear huge broods of children, and also, that people are bad for the planet....

Joshua Green, Bloomberg BW
One fascination in a presidential race mostly bereft of intrigue was the strange, incessant, and weirdly overfamiliar e-mails that emanated from the Obama campaign. Anyone who shared an address with the campaign soon started receiving messages from Barack Obama with subject lines such as "Join me for dinner?" "It's officially over," "It doesn't have to be this way," or just "Wow." Jon Stewart mocked them on the Daily Show. The women's website the Hairpin likened them to notes from a stalker.But they worked. Most of the...

Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast
It was soon after the job of running CNN Worldwide became available that Jeff Zucker got a text message. Phil Kent, the president of Turner Broadcasting, told him that since everyone already believed that they were talking about the job, perhaps they should get together.They did, and continued to meet periodically in New York, even as Kent also huddled with others on his short list for the high-profile post.

Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast
Things maybe aren't looking so great for Susan Rice. The throw-down yesterday by Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who extended the Republican case against Rice back to the Clinton years, is one of those Washington smoke signals, and it's not a positive one. Let me therefore set aside for a day the question of the merits of Rice and raise another one: Who would make for some credible, interesting, outside-the-box choices to run Foggy Bottom? There are ample non-Rice options that would provide the nation with a strong chief diplomat and would piss off the wingnuts in the bargain. Here...

Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph
It is not only the anti-government protesters in Egypt's Tahrir Square who should be concerned about President Mohammed Morsi's audacious power grab. Mr Morsi's claim at the weekend that "God's will and elections made me the captain of this ship" has echoes of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's claim during the 1979 Iranian revolution that his mission to overthrow the Shah enjoyed divine guidance.Since his announcement that he was granting himself sweeping new powers, Mr Morsi has been trying to reassure sceptical Egyptian voters that he has no ambition to become...

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
On the one hand, it's possible to look at all these Republicans distancing themselves from Grover Norquist and his famous pledge as an encouraging sign that they can read and understand election results. On the other, let's not get carried away. The "compromise" they are offering is no compromise at all, really. And what they want in return from Democrats -- which they are keeping intentionally vague -- shows very clearly that they haven't yet quite accepted the idea that elections have consequences.It's nice to see Norquist's Maginot Line holding about as...

James Warren, The Daily Beast
When Attorney General Eric Holder kept word from President Obama about investigating then-Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus, he took what he deemed a high road in following protocols governing when it's appropriate to inform the White House of criminal probes.Several former Justice officials, all Democrats, agreed. All declined to have their names used. And they neither disparaged Holder's honesty nor impugned his motives. But while they conceded that a strict constructionist take on department rules or perceived policy could justify not telling Obama far earlier,...

Paul Begala, The Daily Beast
I used to think Republicans were a monochromatic monolith specializing in Group Think, though without the Think part. The Republicans' reaction to the reelection of Barack Obama, however, has shown a surprising diversity in GOP thought. At least five distinct -approaches have emerged.Since the election, Speaker John Boehner has looked with favor on passing immigration reform. (Olivier Douliery / Getty Images-pool)The Vince Lombardi Republicans. Political parties exist to win, this group says. If you don't win, you can't enact your agenda, can't protect your values,...

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
When someone in any social cohort decides to act like Ebenezer Scrooge, it’s easy and quite natural for everyone else to fall into the role of Bob Cratchit. This is what several Republicans are now doing in reaction to Mitt Romney’s remarks about Barack Obama and his “gifts” to his core constituencies. But Republicans allegedly competing for the loyalties of the 100 percent is a movie we’ve seen. It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for a straightforward reason: free-market solutions to many of the problems faced by the 47...

Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast
Ending the speculation about her future, at least for now, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi informed her caucus on Wednesday that she would run again to be their leader. Then she held a press conference to tell the world—purposefully surrounded by dozens of women lawmakers whose presence on Capitol Hill she had helped engineer over the years through the force of her personality and her fundraising prowess.“Understand that you are looking into the future,” she said proudly, crediting millions of women’s votes for a Democratic caucus that for the first time...

Mickey Kaus, The Daily Caller
Let your friends help you discover the best news, features and videos on TheDC. Publish what you read and maintain full control.We’ll dilute our way out of it! Republicans did poorly among Hispanics last week. How to address that problem? The answer, they’re told by Washington savants, is to back an immigration reform that … increases the number of Hispanics! It’s a plan so crazy it just might be crazy.

Paul Begala, The Daily Beast
At his final rally, Barack Obama stood before 20,000 adoring Iowans, just yards from the Des Moines headquarters where his 2008 Children's Crusade began. Something happened. Something we have rarely seen: Obama wept. A few elegant tears slowly descended from his left eye, perhaps in appreciation of the ­enormity"”and the ­improbability"”of what he was about to accomplish. Within 24 hours those tears had turned into dancing. The reelected president was more exuberant, more ­ideal­is­tic, even, than the sober, somber...

Nile Gardiner, Daily Telegraph
The world needs powerful American leadership, the bedrock of which rest upon a sound economy, limited government and free enterprise, as well as a strong national defence. But it certainly won't be provided by Obama's imperial presidency. In his first term of office, an administration that worshipped bailouts and big government built up staggering levels of debt that threaten to saddle future generations with the profligate spending of their forefathers. Instead of hope, President Obama offered only the heavy fist of government intervention, rising taxes, increasing poverty and...

Tucker Carlson & Neil Patel, The Daily Caller
Mitt Romney ran about as impressive a campaign as he could have under the circumstances. Romney turned out to be a terrific debater, a champion fundraiser and a man of impressive self-restraint. Toward the end, when it became clear he could win but was still in fact losing, he resisted the natural temptation to go vicious and low. He ought to get credit for that. Plus he gave a dignified concession speech.But it was a flawed candidacy from the start. Romney’s caution and ever-shifting policy positions made him seem fearful, which is to say weak. His biography hurt him. During a...

John Baer, Philadelphia Daily News
MY ONLY PRAYER for next week's election is that it ends with a winner.I say this because of the threat of an unresolved result, an Electoral College tie.That would set the stage for (pick one) arm-twisting, blackmailing or bribing electors to change their votes on or before meeting Dec. 17, or House/Senate action in January producing a Romney/Biden administration.

Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast
I made the following claim: that if Virginia and Florida and North Carolina flip back to the GOP from Obama this November, as now looks likely, Romney will have won every state in the Confederacy. And if you look at the current electoral map without toss-up states, and only the states that were in existence in 1861, you get this comparison:

Bob Shrum, The Daily Beast
We have now witnessed the penultimate phase of Mitt's moderate makeover tour. He pleaded nolo contendre in the final presidential debate - perhaps wisely because his comprehension of foreign policy evidences all the depth of a sound bite. Every time he's touched Libya, for example, he's been burned"”and that night, even as he all but endorsed President Obama's foreign policy, he occasionally strayed off script with stunning observations such as the claim that Syria is Iran's opening to the seas. Mitt, ever heard of the Persian Gulf?Previously he had...

Toby Harnden, Daily Mail
If you had been on an extended vacation for the past four years, you would have been forgiven for watching this debate and thinking you were viewing a President Mitt Romney being challenged by a pretender called Barack Obama.It's not that Obama did not have command of foreign policy issues or did not make some telling points against an opponent who was vague at times and occasionally uncertain. But Obama clearly came into the debate believing he had to score points and change the dynamic of the race.