Quoting legendary chocolatier Willy Wonka, Jon Stewart on Tuesday had a message for secession enthusiasts and business owners who threatened employees over President Obama’s re-election: “Stop. Don’t come back.” In the wake …

Election Aftermath Is A Critical Period For 2016 Race

It may not feel like it days after President Obama’s re-election, but the 2016 Republican primaries are already well under way. Not only that, these first few weeks may be among the most critical moments in the race.

The Rise Of The Anti-Secession Petitions

Thousands of petitioners are demanding the White House let them secede from America. Thousands more are petitioning the White House to just kick them out already and be done with it.

Conservative Leaders Reject Secession Talk In Wake Of Obama’s Election

If hardcore conservatives are looking for generals in their post-election civil war, they may have to look beyond some of the biggest names on the right.

It’s Still Election Day: 7 House Races Remain Outstanding

Election Day has come and gone, ballots have been cast, winners and losers have been declared. Right?

Wrong. There are still a handful of congressional races still yet to be decided, due to a variety of reasons — ongoing counting in some districts, Louisiana’s run-off system, and candidates who refuse to concede even though all the votes are in.

Here’s a look at the races still being fought for the People’s House in Congress, even though it was determined last Tuesday night that Republicans would remain in control of the lower chamber.

The Best Of Mitt Romney’s 2012 Run, For Pete’s Sake

Since the day Mitt Romney announced his latest presidential run in June 2011, he fought a hard battle, first against a raft of Republican primary challengers, then against President Obama himself.

It was a long 17 months, filled with debates, gaffes, secret videos, out-of-context statements, binders and Big Bird.

TPM compiled our favorite moments from Romney’s run into one handy reel. So sit back and enjoy the official ending of the 2012 presidential race.

Forget Nate Silver: Meet The Guy Who Called 2012 In 2002

Calling all 50 states the day before the election as Nate Silver did is one thing — predicting President Obama’s winning majority 10 years in advance is hard to top.

But that’s what Ruy Teixeira did. Since 2002, when Democrats were at a low point and sinking lower, Teixeira has consistently argued that long-term demographic trends pointed to brighter days ahead for the party. He and John Judis published a book that year, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” that envisioned a governing majority in the next decade consisting of three rapidly growing voting blocs — women, minorities, and professionals.

Clinton, Christie Lead First Polls Of 2016 N.H. Primaries

For much of the American electorate, the culmination of the 2012 campaign has provided a much-needed respite from politics. But for the prolific pollsters at Public Policy Polling? Let the 2016 race to the White House begin!

Karl Rove Defends His $300 Million Disaster

Karl Rove boasted on the eve of Tuesday’s election that all signs pointed towards an electoral college landslide. He was right about the result, just wrong about the candidate. And now it’s up to Rove to explain to donors why, after blowing through $300 million of their money, President Obama is still President Obama and Harry Reid still runs the Senate.

Judging by Rove’s election night tantrum on Fox News, this was not a situation he was well prepared for. In a surreal stretch of television, he refused to believe the network’s call of Ohio, lashed out at producers for making it, then spouted a blizzard of county by county statistics to justify his increasingly untenable case.

“Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?” Fox host Megyn Kelly asked at one point, “Or is this real?” Given Rove’s prior history on election predictions, it was a logical question.

As Rove’s complaints dragged on, Kelly marched over personally to Fox’s election experts who told her live that they had “99.95%” confidence in their projection, no matter what the network’s on-air talent thought. The segment was passed around endlessly the next day and nearly caused Jon Stewart to die of laughter.

Two days later, Rove started the hard work of explaining why the Democrats were simply too much for any one billionaire-funded super PAC to handle.

He offered up a litany of culprits behind Obama’s victory in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday. People to blame included:

•Mother Nature: Don’t like the election result? Blame God: “Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.” Rove telegraphed this argument even before election day, but the fact remains that there’s almost no polling evidence at all for it. Obama’s swing state lead had stabilized well before the storm hit.

•Editors: “Then there was the anonymous New York Times headline writer who affixed “Let ‘Detroit Go Bankrupt’ to Mr. Romney’s November 2008 op-ed on reorganizing the auto companies, which the Obama campaign brought up again and again in the industrial Midwest. The president made it appear that Mr. Romney favored liquidation of the companies (which he did not), instead of an orderly reorganization (which he did).”

•The Hired Help: “A hotel employee with a cellphone camera taped Mr. Romney talking at a May fundraiser about the “47%” of the population that do not have any federal income-tax liability. When released in September, the video added to public doubts about Mr. Romney’s wealth and character.”

He also offered up another pair of juicy targets on Fox News the same day.

•Dirty Tricks: Rove told Fox that Obama won by “suppressing the vote.” Not by, say, imposing voting restrictions that disproportionately affect certain demographics, but by running mean ads about Bain Capital. And while Rove did the best he could (“The first group to respond to attacks on Bain was American Crossroads”) the real problem was….

•Mitt Romney: Rove said the Republican nominee ran a “valiant race,” but suggested that the failure to rebut the Bain attacks was exclusively a Romney issue. “We don’t do defense all that well,” he said. “It’s better to have the candidate [respond].”

Whether ultra-wealthy donors like Sheldon Adelson will decide Rove’s most recent writings are more credible than such recent gems as “Can We Believe the Presidential Polls?” is an open question. At least one billionaire isn’t buying it:

Congrats to @karlrove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @crossroadsgps ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

In the meantime, Democrats are happy to watch him twist in the wind.

“I would think there will be reluctance in the future when Mr. Rove and others come knocking on the door,’ David Axelrod told reporters on Thursday.

David Axelrod: GOP Has Some ‘Soul Searching’ To Do

Reflecting on Tuesday’s big victory, David Axelrod said the president’s success should force Republicans to reconsider whether they can succeed with their current makeup.

In the campaign’s final conference call with reporters, Axelrod said that the GOP had “soul searcing to do as to whether they’re going to represent the United States of America as the United States of America is and not based on some 50-year-old model.”