Reid Moves to Limit GOP Filibusters

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he will try to push through a change to Senate rules that would limit the GOP’s ability to filibuster bills.

Speaking in the wake of Tuesday’s election, which boosted Senate Democrats’ numbers slightly, Mr. Reid said he won’t end filibusters altogether but that the rules need to change so that the minority party cannot use the legislative blocking tool as often.

“I think that the rules have been abused and that we’re going to work to change them,” he told reporters. “We’re not going to do away with the filibuster but we’re going to make the Senate a more meaningful place.”

Republicans, who have 47 of the chamber’s 100 seats in the current Congress, have repeatedly used that strong minority to block parts of President Obama’s agenda on everything from added stimulus spending to his judicial picks. A filibuster takes 60 senators to overcome it.

Leaders of both parties have been reluctant to change the rules because they value it as a tool when they are in the minority.

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Romney Blasted After Loss for Not Campaigning as Conservative

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WASHINGTON – Conservative leaders are steaming that Republicans failed to make President Obama a one-term president and are criticizing Mitt Romney for not pursuing a conservative enough agenda in the presidential race.

At a news conference at the National Press Club the day after the election, Richard A. Viguerie, the chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, even called for the removal of Republican leaders like RNC chairman Reince Priebus, National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman John Cornyn, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

“Republican leaders behind the epic election failure of 2012 should be replaced with leaders more in tune to the conservative base of the Republican party,” he said.

Viguerie also argued that Romney aides including Ed Gillespie, Stuart Stevens, Neil Newhouse and even unaffiliated Republican strategist Karl Rove “should never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again.”

As for Romney not campaigning conservatively enough, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, says the Republican nominee should not have shied away from a debate on social issues.

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2012 Turnout Dramatically Lower than 2008

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photo credit: KAZVorpalDespite all the talk about voter intensity surrounding the presidential election, 13 million fewer people voted in 2012 than in 2008.

131 million voters cast their ballots in the 2008 election in which Barack Obama defeated John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin. Obama received 69.4 million votes, while McCain received 59.9 million.

In 2012, Obama defeated Romney by a 50% to 48% margin. Obama received 59.8 million votes, and Romney received 57.1 million votes — 2.7 million fewer than Obama in 2012, but also 2.8 million fewer than McCain in 2008.

Surprisingly, President Obama’s 2012 vote total — 59.8 million — was 100,000 less than the 59.9 million John McCain received in 2008.

Even though President Obama received 10 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008, the Democrats were able to win where it mattered. Once again, they mounted a better ground game to turn out the vote on election day than Republicans managed to, especially in a dozen key swing states. A look at the final 2012 electoral college map shows that very little changed between 2008 and 2012. Only two states “switched” from one candidate to another: traditionally Republican Indiana, which Obama won in 2008, went for Romney in 2012, and North Carolina, a surprise win for Obama in 2008, also went to Romney in 2012. All the other key swing states — Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado, Nevada — went to Obama by narrow margins in 2012.

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Stock Market Repudiates Obama: Suffers its Worst Day in a Year

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photo credit: kastiko2012Investors cast their own vote on the presidential race Wednesday, and the result was a landslide rout that could have lasting repercussions beyond Tuesday’s results.

A day after President Barack Obama stormed past Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the stock market sent a clear message: There’s still a lot more to do than win a campaign.

Market experts said a confluence of factors are poised to make for a difficult environment that could last well into 2013, which traditionally would be a slow year outside of all the present headwinds.

Theories abounded on why the market tumbled. They ranged from worries over the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts, as well as troubles in Europe, a slowdown in the U.S. and questions over the efficiency and effects of Federal Reserve policy.

More broadly, the aggressive sell-off came as little surprise considering the array of challenges Obama faces in his second term and the record of infighting between the White House and Congress.

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Erick Erickson: Status Quo Ante (+video)

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Like when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, we now know what happens when a candidate so weak anybody can beat him meets a candidate so weak he cannot beat anybody. Americans vote for the status quo. $6 billion later, Americans voted for the status quo. Karl Rove, call your donors.

Republicans will keep the House. Democrats will keep the Senate. Obama will keep the White House.

It is what it is. The next two years are going to be some of the most fun and exciting years within the modern American conservative movement.

We know in American politics that nothing is permanent. The question we are going to have to assess is whether Barack Obama’s coalition is a Democratic coalition or a Barack Obama coalition. My personal opinion is that Barack Obama built a winning coalition for Barack Obama and it may not translate to a long term Democratic coalition. Just ask Minority Leader Pelosi and that now endangered creature known as the Democratic Governor.

As the jockeying for 2016 begins soon (and it will begin very soon) we will find out. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a prescient video with Erick Erickson, Joe Miller, and Rich Galen from earlier this year. If you don’t have time for the full video, skip forward to 5:45.

Dollar Falls As News of Obama’s Win Sinks In

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The dollar fell against the yen on speculation Barack Obama’s re-election as president will boost chances the U.S. will maintain monetary stimulus policies that tend to weaken the greenback.

The euro erased gains as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the Europe’s crisis is affecting Germany. The U.S. currency was mixed versus its major peers as Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney, who disagreed with current Federal Reserve policy. Obama now faces the so-called fiscal cliff, $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to be implemented in 2013.

“The size of the victory was perhaps at the upper end of what people were expecting, so that may mean that his negotiations with the Republicans to stop us going over the fiscal cliff might be a bit easier,” said Paul Robson, a senior foreign-exchange strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “The idea of unchanged Fed policy is slightly supportive for equities, slightly weaker dollar, and I think that’s how people are playing it today.”

The U.S. currency depreciated 0.3 percent to 80.08 yen at 7:44 a.m. in New York after declining to 79.81 yen, the weakest level since Nov. 1. The dollar rose 0.4 percent to $1.2764 per euro after falling 0.1 percent yesterday. The euro slipped 0.8 percent to 102.20 yen…

“Monetary policy will remain loose under Obama so the dollar will be sold,” said Michiyoshi Kato, senior vice president of foreign-currency sales at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. in Tokyo. “Dollar selling may not last that long as the U.S. faces the fiscal cliff.”

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Report: China Eyeing Strategic Atlantic Island Base to Threaten American Mainland

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On June 27, a plane carrying Wen Jiabao made a “technical” stop on the island of Terceira, in the Azores. Following an official greeting by Alamo Meneses, the regional secretary of environment of the sea, the Chinese premier spent four hours touring the remote Portuguese outpost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Wen’s Terceira walkabout, which followed a four-nation visit to South America, largely escaped notice at the time, but alarm bells should have immediately gone off in Washington and in European capitals. For one thing, Wen’s last official stop on the trip was Santiago, the capital of Chile. Flights from Chile to China normally cross the Pacific, not the Atlantic, so there was no reason for his plane to be near the Azores. Moreover, those who visit the Azores generally favor other islands in the out-of-the-way chain.

Terceira, however, has one big attraction for Beijing: Air Base No. 4. Better known as Lajes Field, the facility where Premier Wen’s 747 landed in June is jointly operated by the U.S. Air Force and its Portuguese counterpart. If China controlled the base, the Atlantic would no longer be secure. From the 10,865-foot runway on the northeast edge of the island, Chinese planes could patrol the northern and central portions of the Atlantic and thereby cut air and sea traffic between the U.S. and Europe. Beijing would also be able to deny access to the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

And China could target the American homeland. Lajes is less than 2,300 miles from New York, shorter than the distance between Pearl Harbor and Los Angeles.

Lajes is certainly the reason Wen went out of his way to win friends in Terceira. For years his country has been trying to make inroads into the Azores and waiting for opportunities to pounce. There is nothing the Chinese can do if the U.S. stays, but Pentagon budget cutters, according to some observers, are planning to make Lajes a “ghost base.”

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Video: Gingrich-Obamacare Will Resemble Obama’s Sandy Response

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The Obama administration’s response to Hurricane Sandy is an example of how President Obama’s healthcare law would work, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in a Tuesday morning interview with MSNBC.

“I think as people watch the continuing devastation, it reminds [them] that Homeland Security as a department has once again failed, as it failed in Katrina,” Gingrich said. “And remember: This is the government that Obama wanted to have deliver your healthcare. So as you watch the long lines, you watch the failures, you watch the excuses, do you really want that to be the source of your healthcare?”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has lavished praise on the administration’s Sandy response, and on Obama specifically. Read more from this story HERE.

“Extraordinary Measures” Necessary Before End of 2012 as Debt Limit is Reached Again

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The U.S. Treasury quietly warned at the end of a statement issued last Wednesday that it expects the federal government to hit its legal debt limit before the end of this year–which means before the new Congress is seated–and that “extraordinary measures” will be needed before then to keep the government fully funded into the early part of 2013.

On Aug. 2, 2011, President Obama signed a deal he had negotiated with congressional leaders to increase the debt limit of the federal government by $2.4 trillion. But, now, after only 15 months, almost all of that additional borrowing authority has been exhausted.

Although Treasury revealed in its statement on Wednesday that it was likely to hit the debt limit by the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Geithner failed to respond to a letter that Senate Finance Ranking Member Orrin Hatch and Senate Budget Ranking Member Jeff Sessions sent to him on Oct. 15 demanding that he notify them by Nov. 1 what he believes to be the exact date Treasury will hit the debt limit and the date he expects to begin using “extraordinary measures” to avoid it.

“Treasury continues to expect the debt limit to be reached near the end of 2012,” says the tenth paragraph of the “Quarterly Refunding Statement” put out by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets Matthew Rutherford.

“However, Treasury has the authority to take certain extraordinary measures to give Congress more time to act to ensure we are able to meet the legal obligations of the United States of America,” said the statement. “We continue to expect that these extraordinary measures would provide sufficient ‘headroom’ under the debt limit to allow the government to continue to meet its obligations until early in 2013.”

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Yesterday’s Vote: Both Sides Lost

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Though Obama failed to win a majority in the popular vote–and may even have lost the popular vote outright–he won enough votes in the Electoral College to claim victory. The same constitutional peculiarity that brought George W. Bush into office in 2000 may have returned Obama to the White House.

The voters also re-affirmed the results of the historic Tea Party election of 2010, returning Republicans to power in the House of Representatives. And yet the voters also retained Democrats in control of the Senate, preserving the results of the anti-war wave election of 2006.

The U.S. Congress is now divided between two parties whose members were elected on platforms of protest, each determined to stop the other from pursuing its policies.

In the days that follow, great efforts will be spent on explaining the results as consequences of many factors, big and small.

Perhaps Obama would have lost if not for Hurricane Sandy. Perhaps Romney would have won if he had fought harder over Benghazi or pushed back against personal attacks. Perhaps the GOP is out of touch with the country’s changing mores and demographics. Perhaps Democrats have not yet reckoned with fiscal reality.

Read more from this story HERE.