Editor’s note: Over the next few days, First Read will be recapping the year in politics. Yesterday, we looked at the Top 10 political events of 2012. Today: the year in politics – in quotes.  "

JANUARY
Mitt Romney: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” (Jan. 9)

Rick Perry: “There is a real difference between a venture capitalist and a vulture capitalist.” (Jan. 10)

Gingrich: “No… [applause], but I will. I think the destructive, negative, vicious nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.” -- Asked during a CNN debate if he’d like to respond to allegations by an ex-wife that he wanted an open marriage. (Jan. 19)

Gingrich: “By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American.” (Jan. 25)

FEBRUARY
Romney: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” (Feb. 1)

Romney: “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life.  Uh, this is one of them.” [Laughter] – on Donald Trump’s endorsement. (Feb. 2)

Romney: “I was a severely conservative Republican governor.” (Feb. 10)

Foster Friess (Santorum supporter): “You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.” (Feb. 16)

Romney: “It seems right here, the trees are the right height. I like seeing the lakes. I love the lakes.” (Feb. 17)

Romney: “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs actually.” (Feb. 24)

Rick Santorum: “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!” (Feb. 25)

Romney: “I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners.” (Feb. 26)

Romney: “I like those fancy raincoats you bought, really sprung for the big bucks.” (Feb. 26)

MARCH
Romney: “The best thing I can do for you is to tell you to shop around.” (March 5)

Romney: “I’ve got a lot of good friends — the owner of the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets — both owners are friends of mine.” (March 12)

Eric Fehrnstrom (Romney adviser): “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.” (March 21)

Romney: "Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” (March 26)

President Barack Obama:  “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” – to Russian President Medvedev. (March 26)

APRIL
Ann Romney: “Well, you know, I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!” – Asked by a radio host about the criticism that her husband “comes off stiff.” (April 2)

Hilary Rosen (Democratic strategist): “Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.” (April 11)

Romney: “I’m not sure about these cookies. They don’t look like you made them. Did you make them? You didn’t, did you? They came from the local 7-11, bakery, or wherever.” (April 17)

Biden: “I promise you, the president has a big stick. I promise you.” (April 2012)

MAY
Ann Romney: “Stiff, he’s not, he’s funny… There’s a wild and crazy man inside there.” (May 1)

Vice President Joe Biden: “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties." (May 9 on Meet the Press)

Obama: “He probably got out a little bit over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit. … Would I have preferred to have done this in my own way, in my own terms, without, I think, there being a lot of notice of everybody? Of course. But all's well that ends well." (May 10)

JUNE
Romney: "I met a guy yesterday, seven feet tall. Yeah, handsome, great big guy, seven feet tall! Name is Rick Miller—Portland, Oregon. And he started a business. Of course you know it was in basketball. But it wasn't in basketball! I mean, I, figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport." (June 6)

Obama: “The private sector is doing fine.” (June 8)

Obama: “The highest Court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law. And we'll work together to improve on it where we can. But what we won’t do -- what the country can’t afford to do -- is refight the political battles of two years ago, or go back to the way things were.” – on the health-care law being upheld, 5-4, by the Supreme Court with Chief Justice Roberts being the deciding vote. (June 28)

JULY
Romney: “Lemon. Wet. Good.” -- asked how his lemonade was. (July 4)

House Speaker Boehner: “The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney.” (July 7)

Obama: “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” (July 14)

Romney: “There are a few things that were disconcerting.” – Romney on the London Olympics security preparations. (July 26)

David Cameron: “Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic games in the middle of nowhere.” (July 26)

Romney: “Culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference.” – on why the Palestinian economy is worse than Israel’s. (July 30)

AUGUST
Romney: “I’m not a business.” – on why he’s not releasing his taxes. (Aug. 9)

Romney: “Join me in welcoming the next president of the United States, Paul Ryan." – introducing Ryan as his vice presidential pick. Romney came back on stage: "Every now and then I'm known to make a mistake. I did not make a mistake with this guy. But I can tell you this. He's going to be the next vice president of the United States." (Aug. 11)

Paul Ryan: "I got a new bow last year. … Oh, I got a new chainsaw. It was nice. It's a Stihl." -- asked by People magazine what his last splurge was. (Aug. 12)

Biden: "They gonna put y’all back in chains." (Aug. 14)

Romney: “The fascination with taxes I paid I find to be very small minded.” – at a news conference he arranged on Medicare using a white board. (Aug. 16)

Todd Akin: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” (Aug. 19)

Ryan: “I’m a Catholic deer hunter. I am happy to be clinging to my guns and to my religion.” (Aug. 21)

Biden: “I’ve got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” (Aug. 21)

Ann Romney: “I love you womeeen!!!!” (Aug. 28)

Ann Romney: “Tonight, I want to talk to you about love.” (Aug. 28)

Chris Christie: “Tonight, we’re going to choose respect over love.” (Aug. 28)

Neil Newhouse (Romney pollster): “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” (Aug. 28)

Romney: “Four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future. It is not what we were promised.” – Romney acceptance speech. (Aug. 30)

Clint Eastwood: “What? What do you want me to tell Romney? I can't tell him to do that. That. He can't do that to himself.” (Aug. 30)

SEPTEMBER
Bill Clinton:  “Listen to me, now. No president — no president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.” And: “It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.” – DNC convention speech. (Sept. 5)

Jennifer Granholm: “Well, in Romney's world, the cars get the elevator; the workers get the shaft.” (Sept. 5)

Obama: “America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won't promise that now. Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place.” – convention speech (Sept. 6)

Romney: “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” (Sept. 12)

Romney: “I think the best answer is as little as possible.” -- when asked what he wears to bed at night. (Sept. 14)

Romney: “Middle income is $200… 250,000 or less.” (Sept. 14)

Romney: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” (Sept. 17 – when the video was first unveiled)

Benjamin Netanyahu: “Where should a red line be drawn? A red line should be drawn right here.” – speaking before the U.N. talking about Iran’s capability for a nuclear weapon and using a red marker to draw a red line on a diagram of a bomb. (Sept. 27)

OCTOBER
Romney: “And congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your anniversary. I’m sure this was the most romantic place you could imagine — here with me!” -- first presidential debate. (Oct. 3)

Romney: “Look, I’ve got five boys. I’m used to people saying something that’s not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I will believe it.” – first presidential debate. (Oct. 3)

Romney: “I like PBS, I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too.” -- to moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS in the first presidential debate. (Oct. 3)

Obama: “Well, Jim, I want to thank you, and I want to thank Governor Romney, because I think was a terrific debate.” (Oct. 3)

Biden: “With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey.” (Oct. 11)

Brad Sherman: “Do you want to get into this?” -- to fellow Democrat Howard Berman with whom he was competing for a redistricted congressional seat. (Oct. 11)

Romney: “I went to a number of women’s groups and said: ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.” (Oct. 16)

Obama: “Please proceed, governor.” (Oct. 16)

Tagg Romney: “You want to jump out of your seat and rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him.” – said of President Obama after a debate in which the two candidates exchanged verbal barbs and got in each other’s space. (Oct. 18)

Obama: “Obviously, I had an off-night.” – to Jon Stewart in reference to his first debate performance. (Oct. 19)

Obama: “Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.” (Oct. 22)

Richard Mourdock: “Life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” (Oct. 23)

Obama: “If you say you love American cars in the debate, but you wrote an article called ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,’ you might have Romnesia.” (Oct. 23)

Obama: “The second thing I'm confident we'll get done next year is immigration reform. And since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community.” (Oct. 24)

Romney: “The President's campaign has a slogan: it is ‘forward.’ But to the 23 million Americans struggling to find a good job, these last four years feel a lot more like ‘backward.’ We cannot afford four more years like the last four years." – Romney economic speech (Oct. 26)

Christie: “The president has been all over this and he deserves great credit” – on the response to Hurricane Sandy (Oct. 31)

NOVEMBER
Obama: “Don't boo. Vote! Voting is the best revenge.” (Nov. 4)

Romney: “I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.” – Romney concession speech (Nov. 6-7)

Obama: “Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.” – Obama victory speech (Nov.6-7)

Romney: “The president’s campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift — so he made a big effort on small things. … You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge.” (Nov. 14)

Stu Stevens: “[H]e was a charismatic African American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical.” (Nov. 28)

DECEMBER
Tagg Romney: “He [Mitt Romney] wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to . . . run.” (Dec. 22)

Editor's note: Over the next few days, First Read will be recapping the year in politics. Our first entry: what we consider the Top 10 political events of 2012.

1. "47 percent": A surreptitiously recorded video of Mitt Romney, released on Sept. 17 by Mother Jones, didn't lose the presidential contest for the Republicans. But it cemented the impression of Romney that the Obama campaign wanted to portray -- as a multi-millionaire whose business history and policies ignored average Americans.

In the video, from a closed-door fundraiser in May, Romney tells wealthy donors that the "47 percent" of the country that doesn't pay income taxes, that is dependent on government, and that believes "they are victims" will vote for President Obama no matter what. He adds in the video: "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Romney first responded that his comments were "not elegantly stated," and he later said they were "completely wrong." But the damage was done. The Obama campaign and its allies pounced on the "47 percent" comments in numerous TV ads (like here and here). In the end, according to the exit polls, 53 percent of voters said that Obama was more in touch with people like them than Romney was, and another 53 percent said Romney's policies would generally favor the rich. The irony: Romney won just 47 percent of the popular vote.

2. The Democratic convention: This year was another reminder that political conventions do matter in presidential contests. After the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. -- which featured well-received speeches by First Lady Michelle Obama, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, former President Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama -- the Dem ticket got a noticeable bump in state and national polls. The convention also served as a turning point for Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, who delivered a primetime address. (Before the speech, Warren was trailing in most polls; afterward, she jumped into the lead.)

By comparison, Romney received little to no bump in the polls after the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla. Indeed, Romney's own acceptance speech was overshadowed by Clint Eastwood's impromptu -- and bizarre -- remarks to an empty chair (which he pretended to be Obama) on the convention's final night.

3. The Denver debate: After the convention season and after the "47 percent" video surfaced, Romney's presidential candidacy hung by a thread -- polls showed Obama pulling away and news reports uncovered turmoil within the Romney camp. But just about two weeks later, Romney would have his strongest moment of the presidential campaign. At the first presidential debate, in Denver on Oct. 3, Romney shined and Obama fell flat. Afterward, Romney began to gain on Obama in national and some state polls, and his campaign touted that it had the momentum in final weeks, even after Obama was viewed as the victor in the other two debates. But in the end, the Denver debate wasn't enough to erase Romney's rough summer and September.

4. The Supreme Court's health-care decision: Here's a thought exercise: Imagine if the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down Obama's landmark health-care law. Such a ruling would have deprived the president of his signature domestic achievement, and would have allowed Romney to charge that Obama wasted his first year in office on an unconstitutional endeavor. It's impossible to know how the presidential election would have turned out after that hypothetical outcome, but it's safe to say that such a ruling probably wouldn't have helped Obama.

In the end, however, the Supreme Court upheld the health-care law by a narrow 5-4 majority on June 28. And the ruling served as a sort of turning point in the summer: Before, Obama's campaign was struggling (the news from the monthly jobs reports were disappointing, and Republicans pounced on Obama's "the private sector is doing fine" remarks). After, it was the Romney campaign that struggled (the scrutiny over Romney's tax returns and work at Bain Capital, plus the mixed reviews of his overseas trip to Europe and the Middle East).

5. Hurricane Sandy: Here's a second thought exercise: What if Hurricane Sandy had never pummeled the East Coast in late October and hadn't allowed the incumbent Obama to demonstrate presidential leadership or bipartisanship (with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) after a natural disaster? While the hurricane probably wasn't a decisive event in the election -- Romney's momentum after the first debate was already waning -- it helped Obama. According to the exit polls, 42 percent said the president's response to Sandy was important in their vote, and Obama won those voters by a 68 percent-to-31 percent margin.

Larry Downing / Reuters

President Barack Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie talk with survivors of Hurricane Sandy in a community center while touring damaged areas in Brigantine, N.J, Oct. 31, 2012. Obama and Christie put aside partisan differences to visit storm-swamped parts of New Jersey together and oversee relief efforts after the devastation of the storm Sandy.

6. "Legitimate rape": If the "47 percent" tape cemented the impression of Romney as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire, then Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" remark put an exclamation mark on the Republican Party's struggles with female voters. In an interview on Aug. 19, Akin -- the GOP nominee in Missouri's Senate contest -- explained his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, saying that pregnancies by rape are rare. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Akin went on to lose his race against endangered incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. (Republicans also lost another winnable Senate race, in Indiana, after the GOP nominee made another controversial comment on rape.) And in the presidential contest, Obama won female voters by 11 percentage points, 55 percent to 44 percent.

7. The Michigan primary: You might not remember it, but there was a time -- in February -- when it wasn't clear that Mitt Romney would be the GOP's presidential nominee. Back then, according to some polls, Romney was trailing Rick Santorum in the upcoming Feb. 28 Michigan primary. A loss in Romney's native state would have sent Republican leaders into a panic, and might have sparked a movement to draft another Republican into the race. In the end, however, Romney edged Santorum in Michigan by three percentage points, 41 percent to 38 percent, and he later went on to wrap up the GOP nomination.

8. The South Carolina primary: But there also was a time when it appeared that Romney would wrap up the nomination early. He won the Iowa caucuses by the narrowest of margins and then triumphed in New Hampshire's primary. A win in the next contest -- in South Carolina on Jan. 21 -- would have effectively ended the fight for the nomination and would have given Romney more months to prepare for a general-election fight against Obama.

But then came adversity for Romney: Newt Gingrich routed him in South Carolina's primary, and then it was determined that Santorum -- and not Romney -- had won in Iowa. Romney later regrouped in Florida and Michigan. But instead of the general election beginning in earnest in January or February, Romney didn't essentially clinch the GOP nomination until April, when Santorum suspended his campaign. 

9. Benghazi: On Sept. 11, attacks were launched on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt and a consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Obama administration officials gave the impression that an anti-Muslim video sparked both attacks. (And Romney was criticized for firing off a statement blasting the embassy in Egypt for condemning the "efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.")

But as it was later determined, the Benghazi attack was a coordinated terrorist act, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. Under intense GOP criticism for initially linking the Benghazi attack to the anti-Muslim video, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice in December withdrew her name from consideration of being Obama's next secretary of state.

10. The Ryan pick: Not since John F. Kennedy tapped Lyndon Johnson to be his running mate in 1960 has a VP selected greatly impacted a presidential contest, at least in a positive way for the ticket. And that streak held true in 2012 after Romney picked Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan on Aug. 11 to be his VP sidekick -- Romney, after all, ended up losing Wisconsin by seven points, 53 percent to 46 percent. But the selection ended months of speculation about Romney's eventual choice, and it further elevated Ryan into the national spotlight.

For years, Republicans have adhered fiercely to their bedrock conservative principles, resisting Democratic calls for tax hikes, comprehensive immigration reform and gun control. Now, seven weeks after an electoral drubbing, some party leaders and rank-and-file alike are signaling a willingness to bend on all three issues.

What long has been a nonstarter for Republicans — raising tax rates on wealthy Americans — is now backed by GOP House Speaker John Boehner in his negotiations with President Barack Obama to avert a potential fiscal crisis. Party luminaries, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, have started calling for a wholesale shift in the GOP's approach to immigration after Hispanic voters shunned Republican candidates. And some Republicans who previously championed gun rights now are opening the door to restrictions following a schoolhouse shooting spree earlier this month.

"Put guns on the table. Also, put video games on the table. Put mental health on the table," Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said last week. Other prominent Republicans echoed him in calling for a sweeping review of how to prevent tragedies like the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Among those who were open to a re-evaluation of the nation's gun policies were Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

"You've got to take all these things into consideration," Grassley said.

Recommended: Obama, Congress set for one last effort on fiscal cliff

And yet, the head of the National Rifle Association, silent for a week after the Newtown shootings, has proposed staffing schools with armed police, making clear the NRA, which tends to support the GOP, will continue pushing for fewer gun restrictions, not more.

Meanwhile, Boehner's attempt to get his own members on board with a deficit-reduction plan that would raise taxes on incomes of more than $1 million failed last week, exposing the reluctance of many in the Republican caucus to entertain more moderate fiscal positions.

With Republican leaders being pulled at once to the left and to the right, it's too soon to know whether the party that emerges from this identity crisis will be more or less conservative than the one that was once so confident about the 2012 elections. After all, less than two months have passed since the crushing defeat of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who moved far to the right during the primary season and, some in the party say, lost the general election as a result.

But what's increasingly clear is that the party is now engaged in an uncomfortable and very public fight over whether its tenets, still firmly held within the party's most devout ranks, conflict with the views of Americans as a whole.

Many Republicans recognize that to remain relevant with voters whose views are changing, they too must change.

"We lost the election because we were out of touch with the American people," said John Weaver, a senior adviser to past presidential candidates John McCain, the GOP nominee in 2008, and Jon Huntsman, who ran for the nomination this year.

The polling suggests as much.

While Republican candidates for years have adamantly opposed tax increases on anyone, an Associated Press-GfK poll earlier this month found roughly half of all Americans supported allowing George W. Bush-era tax cuts to expire on those earning more than $250,000 a year.

Most GOP candidates — Romney among them — also long have opposed allowing people in the country illegally to get an eventual path to citizenship. But exit polls from the Nov. 6 election showed most voters favored allowing people working in the U.S. illegally to stay.

And gun control has for decades been anathema to Republicans. But a Washington Post/ABC News poll published last week, following the Connecticut shooting, showed 54 percent of Americans now favor stronger restrictions.

This is the backdrop as Republicans undergo a period of soul-searching after this fall's electoral shellacking. Romney became the fifth GOP nominee in six elections to lose the national popular vote to the Democratic candidate. Republicans also shed seats in their House majority and lost ground to majority Democrats in the Senate.

Of particular concern is the margin of loss among Hispanics, a group Obama won by about 70 percent to 30 percent.

It took only hours after the loss for national GOP leaders to blame Romney for shifting to the right on immigration — and signal that the party must change.

Jindal, a prospective 2016 presidential contender, was among the Republicans calling for a more measured approach by the GOP. And even previously hardline opponents of immigration reform — like conservative talk show host Sean Hannity — said the party needs to get over its immigration stance heavily favoring border security over other measures.

"What you have is agreement that we as a party need to spend a lot of time and effort on the Latino vote," veteran Republican strategist Charlie Black said.

When Congress returned to Washington after the election to start a debate over taxes and spending, a number of prominent Republicans, including Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, signaled they would be willing to abandon their pledges against raising taxes — as long as other conditions were met — as part of a package of proposals to avoid a catastrophic budget meltdown.

Leading the effort was Boehner, who has told Obama he would allow taxes to be increased on the wealthiest Americans, as well as on capital gains, estates and dividends, as part of a deal including spending cuts and provisions to slow the growth of entitlements. Obama, meanwhile, also has made concessions in the talks to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff by agreeing to a higher income threshold for tax rate increases, while insisting that Congress grant him the authority to raise the debt ceiling. Both sides have spent the past several weeks bickering over the terms.

While some Democrats quickly called for more stringent gun laws, most Republicans initially were silent. And their virtual absence from the debate suggested that some Republicans who champion gun rights at least may have been reconsidering their stances against firearms restrictions.

By the Monday after the Connecticut shooting, MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, called for reinstating the ban on assault-style weapons, which he had opposed. The ban expired in 2004, despite support for the ban from Republican President George W. Bush. Referring to the shooting, Scarborough said: "I knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want, that I demand, for my children."

The next day, Grassley and Kingston were among the Republicans saying they were at least willing to discuss stronger gun laws.

"The party is at a point where it wants to have those discussions in public, where people feel comfortable differing from what is perceived as the party orthodoxy," Republican consultant Dan Hazelwood said.

If silence is a signal, shifts on other issues could be coming, chief among them gay marriage, which the GOP base long has opposed. Exit polls found half of all Americans say same-sex marriage should be legally recognized.

After three states — Washington, Maryland and Maine — voted to legalize gay marriage last month, the Republican leadership generally has remained quiet on the issue. And there has been no effort in the House or Senate to push major legislation, only narrower proposals, such as a move in the Armed Services Committee to bar gay marriages at military facilities.

But in a sign that the fight over gay marriage also may be waning within the GOP base, Newt Gingrich said it was time for Republicans to accept shifting public opinion.

The former House speaker, who oversaw passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in Congress and helped finance state campaigns to fight gay marriage in 2010, said in a Huffington Post interview that the party should work toward acceptance of rights for gay couples, while still distinguishing them from marriage.

"The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to . accommodate and deal with reality," Gingrich said.

Playing their formal role in the ritual of choosing the president, electors in each state are gathering in their state capitols Monday to cast their votes.

Toby Talbot / AP

Members of Vermont's electoral college take their oath of office on Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 in Montpelier, Vt.

On Election Day voters in all 50 states picked a slate of electors, loyalists chosen by the leaders of the respective parties. 

On Monday those party-chosen electors play their brief but crucial part in the process of selecting the man who’ll serve as president for four years.

Based on the results of the balloting on Nov. 6, President Barack Obama won 332 electoral votes and Republican Mitt Romney won 206. A total of 270 electoral votes are required to win the presidency.

There are 538 electors in all, with each state getting a total equal to its number of House members and its two senators. Hawaii, for instance, has four electors, while Texas has 38.

The electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia never meet in one place at the same time. The Framers of the Constitution feared that if the electors met in one place, they’d be vulnerable to "cabal, intrigue and corruption," as Alexander Hamilton put it.

Since the first election in 1789, only 11 electors have voted for a candidate other than the one to whom they were pledged. In 2004, for example, a Minnesota elector who was pledged to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry instead voted for Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards.

All but two states, Nebraska and Maine, use a winner-take-all system in which the person getting the most popular votes gets all of the state’s electoral votes.

In October, Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced a constitutional amendment that would award 29 bonus electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote.

“The election for president should be an election for the whole country, not just the swing states,” Israel said, adding that “we would be better served in the future if presidential candidates had an incentive to campaign in places like New York and Texas as well as swing states like New Hampshire and Iowa. By giving a bonus vote of 29 electoral votes, swing states would remain important, but states like New York would have a meaningful voice too.”

Israel said he chose 29 as the bonus number since it is big enough to break an electoral vote tie, but not enough to undermine the influence of small swing states in the electoral vote tally.

In Pennsylvania, Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi plans to introduce legislation to award Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes proportionately to the popular vote in the state, rather than by using the winner-take-all system. “This advantage of this system is clear: It much more accurately reflects the will of the voters in our state,” Pileggi said.

In 2004 Democrats in Colorado proposed a ballot initiative that would have scrapped the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes and changed to proportional allocation, but Colorado voters rejected it.

It's a voting bloc as big as Hispanics, 18- to 24-year-olds and the staunchest pro-lifers, and it broke for the Democratic presidential nominee by a margin of 44 points. 

"Religiously Unaffiliated Voters For Obama" doesn't really have a bumper-sticker catchiness to it, but it rang true in 2012. 

Larry Downing / Reuters

President Barack Obama acknowledges supporters while addressing his election night victory rally in Chicago, November 6, 2012.

Voters who say they don't have a specific affiliation with a particular religion -- increasingly referred to with the minimalist moniker "the nones" --  made up 12 percent of the electorate in 2012 and 2008, a share that has more than doubled since 1980 and is up by 3 percent since 2000. Even more, 17 percent of 2012 voters said they never attend church. 

Pew study: 'Nones' on the rise

"This is a big group, it's a growing group, and it's politically a pretty important and consequential group in that the religiously unaffiliated are one of the strongest Democratic constituencies in the population," said Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life. 

And there are many more who haven't shown up to the polls. In a new study, Pew found that in 2012, nearly one in five survey respondents nationwide classified themselves as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular." 

All of that adds up to a substantial chunk of the American public in a country that just nominated (but didn't elect) its first non-Protestant presidential ticket this year. The unaffiliated bloc is comparable with the share of the electorate made up by either black or Hispanic voters. They make up nearly a quarter of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters. In 2008, they were as reliable a constituency for Barack Obama as white evangelical Protestants were for John McCain.

That's not to say that the Democratic Party has gone out of its way to court them. 

Lauren Anderson Youngblood, spokesperson for the Secular Coalition for America -- which lobbies on behalf of atheists, agnostics and other "nontheistic" citizens -- says that Democrats have been, at best, confused about how to reach out to non-believers, if not completely dismissive of the "nones" as a group. 

"If you want to reach out to someone, you will. If you want to work for their vote, you will," she said. "We're still a very stigmatized community that people don't necessary want to be associated with because the word 'atheist' has all of these negative connotations." 

Broderick Johnson, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign who concentrated on outreach to Catholics, said that while the campaign concentrated on messages of societal values that may appeal to unaffiliated voters, there was not a specific effort to court them as a unique constituency during the 2012 race. 

"I don't know of an effort which was predicated on the idea that there was a large group of people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion, and the way to them was to talk about a certain set of issues," he said. 

Data show that these voters' liberal affiliation comes primarily from social issues, like LGBT and abortion rights. Socially liberal but divided on issues of government and public life, religiously unaffiliated voters are far more likely than the general public to embrace same-sex marriage and to believe that all abortions should be legal.  

But at the same time, half of them also say that they prefer a smaller federal government that provides fewer public services. One in five calls their political ideology "conservative," and another 40 percent describe themselves as "moderate." 

"That segment really feels ignored," Youngblood said. "This is viewed as a very liberal movement, but there is also a segment that would identify as Republicans if it weren't for a lot of these social issues. It's really the intermingling of religion and government that's turning nontheistic Americans and religiously unaffiliated Americans off from the Republican Party." 

The formal institutions of secular thought aren't exactly over the moon with the current president, either. While it clearly favored Obama over Romney, the Secular Coalition for America gave Obama an overall "C" grade in its presidential "election scorecard" this year, with failing marks for the categories of "Discrimination by religious organizations receiving taxpayer funding" and "Role of religion in decision making as president." 

Those grievances reflect one of the common threads that link the "nones," even those who say they believe in God in some form: a distrust of institutionalized religion's exertion of political influence. 

Fully two-thirds of the group said that churches and other faith-based organizations are too involved in politics, and 70 percent say that religious institutions are "too concerned with money and power." 

Of course, money and power -- or at least the organizational structures that foster it -- are what make faith groups like evangelical Christians and Catholics ripe for targeting by campaigns that can gather data from churches about potential voters, plugging into the vast communication networks that unite congregants.

That's one advantage that unaffiliated voters, who have little formal structure outside of groups like the Secular Coalition, don't have. 

"It's hard to know how, organizationally, they might be reached or mobilized, " Smith said. "That's the question." 

The Republican National Committee today launched an effort -- dubbed the "Growth and Opportunity Project" -- to examine what worked and what didn't in the 2012 election. The news was first reported by Politico.

The effort -- which will look at things like the ground game, messaging, fundraising, and the primaries -- be chaired by these five Republicans:
-- RNC member Henry Barbour of Mississippi
-- RNC member Zori Fonalledas of Puerto Rico
-- RNC member Glenn McCall of South Carolina
-- Florida political strategist (and Jeb Bush adviser) Sally Bradshaw
-- former Bush 43 White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer

The full release:

WASHINGTON - Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus today launched an initiative to grow the Republican Party and improve future Republican campaigns.

The effort, known as the Growth and Opportunity Project, will be chaired by five GOP leaders and is charged by Priebus with initially reviewing past practices and also making critical recommendations for the future in these eight key areas: 1) campaign mechanics and ground game; 2) messaging; 3) fundraising; 4) demographic partners and allies; 5) third party groups; 6) campaign finance issues; 7) presidential primaries; and 8) lessons learned from Democratic campaign tactics.

The group will reach out to hundreds of individuals including RNC Members, grassroots activists, donors, elected officials, community leaders and other important partners to gain insight and help the Republican Party form a solid path going forward. These leaders will be involved in one or more of these critical areas.

The Growth and Opportunity Project is co-chaired by five prominent Republican leaders:
Henry Barbour, National Committeeman from Mississippi
Zori Fonalledas, National Committeewoman from Puerto Rico
Glenn McCall, National Committeeman from South Carolina
Sally Bradshaw, Veteran senior strategist in Florida and national politics
Ari Fleischer, Former White House Press Secretary

They will report their findings to Chairman Priebus and make recommendations for a long-term strategy for the future.

"The Growth and Opportunity Project will recommend a plan to further ensure Republicans are victorious in 2013, 2014, 2016 and beyond," said Chairman Priebus. "I've appointed a talented group of individuals to study eight key areas, and I look forward to working with these outstanding Republicans as they conduct rigorous analysis and engage in important conversations. The work of the Growth and Opportunity Project will be critical as we move forward as a Party and take our message to every American."

"This is a time of great opportunity for the Republican Party," said Co-Chairman Sharon Day. "I am excited for the future of the GOP and am confident this project will strengthen our cause tremendously in the coming years."

NEW YORK -- Less than a month after Mitt Romney's bid for the White House was suddenly snuffed out, his vice-presidential nominee and another top surrogate -- and fellow potential 2016 presidential candidate --delivered dueling speeches Tuesday that attempted to reframe Republican philosophy in what was a strikingly "Un-Romney" tone.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) spoke first at the dinner, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who was receiving an award from the foundation of Ryan's mentor, former Rep. Jack Kemp. Ryan's speech -- his first public address since the Nov. 6th loss -- echoed themes from his late October speech in Ohio on economic mobility, but little else from the fall campaign.

"We have a compassionate vision based on ideas that work - but sometimes we don't do a good job of laying out that vision. We need to do better," Ryan said Tuesday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, an almost word-for-word recitation of what he said Oct. 24th in Cleveland.

It was in that policy speech just two weeks before Election Day that a glimpse of what the post-election Wisconsin congressman would look like. The Ohio speech was Ryan's brainchild on the trail, reflecting his personal passion for the topic, and the idea of an upwardly mobile society that could be built on Republican principles.

The speech was the only one of its kind Ryan gave during the 80-plus days he was on Romney's ticket, and perhaps reflecting concerns that Ryan's remarks were off the nominee's messaging, Romney held his own event during Ryan's speech that day, which soaked up news coverage.

But speaking at the Kemp dinner Tuesday evening, the seven-term congressman launched himself back onto the national stage without Romney or his advisers guiding the message.

While Ryan praised Romney by name as someone who he felt "would have been a great president," he also very publically distanced himself from his former ticket mate’s "47 percent" remarks to donors at a private fundraiser last spring.

In the remarks, captured by surreptitious video recording, Romney claimed 47 percent of Americans are "dependent upon government" and would therefor only vote for President Barack Obama and his vision of a larger government.

"Both parties tend to divide Americans into 'our voters' and 'their voters,'” Ryan said. “But Republicans must steer far clear of that trap. We must speak to the aspirations and anxieties of every American. I believe we can turn the engines of upward mobility back on, so that no one is left out from the promise of America. But it's going to require a bold departure from the approach that government has taken for the last five decades."

If Ryan was cautiously backing away from the GOP ticket's rhetoric in his remarks, Rubio turned on his heel and walked away from it completely. In his 4,185 words of prepared remarks, two words were notably missing: Mitt and Romney.

The Florida senator and Tea Party darling focused his remarks on a segment of the population whose imagination the Romney campaign tried, and largely failed, to capture: the middle class.

Praising the large and stable middle class as something uniquely American, Rubio took aim at what he called a growing "opportunity gap" between those born into the middle class and those who are left to struggle from humbler means to try and get there.

"For those of us blessed with the opportunity to serve our country in government, one of the fundamental challenges before us is to find an appropriate and sustainable role for government in closing this gap between the dreams of millions of Americans and the opportunities for them to actually realize them," Rubio said, according to prepared remarks.

"The key to a vibrant middle class is an abundance of jobs that pay enough so that workers can provide for themselves and their families, enjoy leisure time, save for retirement, and pay for their children’s education, so they can grow up and earn even more than their parents."

Compare that to Romney's own comments on what he called the "opportunity society" he hoped to create, which focused more on the idea of government getting out of the way of business, which could lift up the American people.

"I will spend the next four years rebuilding the foundation of our opportunity society, led by free people and their free enterprises," Romney said in a speech in Wisconsin March 30th. "The only real solution to help communities devastated by lost jobs is more jobs. President Obama never seems to have understood the basic point that a plant closes when the business starts to lose money. So when the president attacks businesses for making money, and when his policies make it more difficult for businesses to make money, he's also attacking the very communities he wanted to help."

Romney's rhetoric toward the middle class focused, as did much of his campaign, on creating jobs. His five-point plan for creating jobs and helping the middle class touched on macro issues like controlling debt, supporting free trade and the amorphous phrase "champion small business."

That type of tone, appealing to the “job creators” more than those looking for work could have led to the polling data First Read noted this morning: Obama beat Romney by 10 points (53%-43%) on which candidate was more in touch with people like you, and, 53% said Romney's policies would favor the rich (compared to just 10% for Obama).

And while Rubio's policy prescriptions rarely deviated from Republican orthodoxy (he noted he opposed tax increases, and praised faith-based and community organizations as key to stemming "societal breakdown,") he used even his personal story -- and son-of-immigrants background -- to create a contrast with the former Republican standard bearer and paint the Republican Party as not just the party of the wealthy.

Whereas Romney infamously noted his well-to-do friends (NASCAR and NFL team owners have dubious mentions in the campaign record) and regularly highlighted successful entrepreneurs he had met on the campaign trail, Rubio closed with an anecdote of someone further down the income ladder.

"A few weeks ago, I was giving a speech at a fancy hotel in New York City,” he said. “When I arrived in the banquet hall, I was approached by a group of three uniformed employees from the hotels catering department. They had seen my speech at the Republican Convention, where I told the story of my father the ‘Banquet Bartender.’ And they had a gift for me. They presented me with this name tag, which says, ‘Rubio, Banquet Bartender.’ That moment reminded me that there are millions of Mario Rubios all across America today. They aren’t looking for a handout; they just want a job that provides for their families."

With both men striking similar notes it seems clear that at least these top Republican leaders see an inclusive message as a possible path back from the wilderness. Whether either of Tuesday's speakers will become the messenger, remains to be seen. 

Garrett Haake and Alex Moe were both 2012 presidential campaign embeds for NBC News. Haake covered Mitt Romney and Moe covered Paul Ryan and others.

Almost a month has passed since Mitt Romney’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election, but the finger pointing continues. 

Some Republicans charge that Romney was a flawed candidate, while others insist the party’s image was a drag on the ticket.

The White House / Getty Images

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney shakes hands with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office November 29, 2012 in Washington, DC.

There’s the argument that the Romney campaign was outmaneuvered by the Obama effort, versus the belief that the country’s changing demographics ultimately doomed the former Massachusetts governor.

And then there’s the opinion of Romney chief strategist Stuart Stevens, who suggested that Republicans shouldn’t be pointing fingers at all.

But as the party begins looking ahead to the next presidential contest in 2016 and tries to learn from the lessons of November, the explanation for Romney’s loss is perhaps much simpler: all of the above.

“You win and lose as a team,” Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said in an interview on MSNBC last week. “We have to look at everything we do -- from logistics to turnout to technology to message to tone.”

Indeed, top Republican strategists interviewed for this article attribute Romney’s defeat to a combination of factors, including the candidate’s inability to better define himself, the Republican Party’s unpopularity, the country’s changing demographics and a campaign whose tactics seemed stuck in the 20^th century.

Blaming the messenger and the message
There's an adage in American politics: Don't allow your opponent to define you before you define yourself.

But that's exactly what happened to Romney and his campaign, especially when it came to his business background.

Through television advertisements, its surrogates, and conference calls with reporters, the Obama camp and its allies portrayed Romney as an out-of-touch multi-millionaire who made his fortune, in part, by taking over companies that later laid off employees or cut their benefits.

One of the chief examples: “Mitt Romney made over $100 million by shutting down our plant and devastated our lives,” a man said in a TV ad by the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action. “Turns out that when we built that stage [to announce the company moves], it was like building my own coffin, and it just made me sick.”

Yet Romney’s campaign didn’t mount much of a defense -- particularly on the TV airwaves -- beyond arguing that such attacks smeared free enterprise. In fact, just a fraction of the ads aired by the Romney campaign and its allies portrayed the GOP candidate in a positive light.

“They did very, very little to prevent or defensively rebut the image Democrats put out there of Romney as the guy who laughed all the way to the bank with the mega-millions he made buying up companies and laying you/your dad/your brother off,” said one Republican consultant who requested anonymity to speak more candidly.

“There were voters there who should have voted for the Republican, but were never going to get behind Romney because of this perception. And that was predictable from the primary stage of the campaign."

What’s more, that perception of Romney was only reinforced by his infamous “47 percent” comment, the scrutiny over the release of his tax returns, and even his campaign's message, which seemed more targeted to entrepreneurs and business owners -- rather than teachers, firefighters or factory workers.

“We will champion small businesses, America’s engine of job growth,” Romney said at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla. “That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most.”

What was the eventual result?

While the Romney campaign’s Stuart Stevens observes that exit polls showed the former Massachusetts governor winning a majority of voters from households earning $50,000 or more, Obama beat Romney by 10 points (53 percent to 43 percent) on the question of which candidate was more in touch with people like you.

In addition, 53 percent said Romney’s policies would favor the rich (versus just 10 percent who said the same about Obama). And the Republican candidate’s favorable/unfavorable score was 47 percent/50 percent (compared with Obama’s positive 53 percent/46 percent).

“At the end of the day, messenger and message matters in American politics,” said a Republican strategist who also requested anonymity.

Party crashing

But it wasn't just Romney who was unpopular; so was his party.

In one of the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls before the election, just 36 percent of registered voters said they had a positive opinion about the Republican Party, versus 43 percent who held a negative view.

By comparison, the Democratic Party’s favorable/unfavorable rating in that same late October NBC/WSJ poll was in positive territory, at 42 percent/40 percent. 

In fact, the last time the GOP’s favorable/unfavorable rating wasn’t below water in the survey was back in Dec. 2010 – two years ago.

And during that time span, the party endured negative headlines involving its politicians and candidates. Consider:

• The GOP presidential candidates engaged in about 20 debates, with them often trying to prove who was more conservative on social issues, immigration, taxes and foreign policy

• In Feb. 2012, Virginia’s GOP-controlled General Assembly passed legislation requiring transvaginal ultrasounds for those wanting an abortion in the state.  

• In August, Missouri Senate nominee Todd Akin explained his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, saying that pregnancies are rare. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

• And in October, about two weeks before Election Day, Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock said this while justifying his opposition to abortion, even in the case of rape: “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." Both Akin and Mourdock lost their Senate contests.

What’s more, problems with the Republican Party’s brand go beyond what took place in the last two years. According to the exit polls from last month’s election, 53 percent of voters blamed George W. Bush more for the country’s current economic problems. Just 38 percent blamed Obama.

Then there’s the GOP’s problem with Latino voters. While Romney’s poor performance with that demographic has received plenty of attention -- he won just 27 percent of these voters -- the party as a whole isn’t faring much better.

In an October NBC/WSJ/Telemundo survey of Latino voters, only 22 percent held a positive view of the GOP (compared with 63 percent who did for the Democratic Party).

And by a 65 percent to 23 percent margin, Latino voters in that same poll said they preferred a Democratic-held Congress to a Republican-held one.

"The party has got to learn from this,” said GOP strategist Liz Mair. “We've now had two successive presidential elections and two midterms where the party's stance on issues that are important to Hispanics has hurt us in key areas."

And the GOP finds itself trailing on key issues – some of which are pillars of today’s Republican Party.

According to the exit polls from the election, a combined 59 percent of voters said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Sixty percent said that taxes should be increased either for all or for income above $250,000.

The good news for the GOP on the issues: A plurality of voters favored repealing some or all of the 2010 health care law, and a majority said the government is doing too many things that are better left to businesses and individuals.

Demography is destiny

Despite his inability to better define himself and despite his party’s unpopularity, Romney won white voters by a whopping 20 points, 59 percent to 39 percent -- higher than any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

As Republican pollster Glen Bolger points out, Romney also won white women (by 14 points points) and independents (by 5 points), better than a victorious George W. Bush did in 2004.

But Romney still lost in last month’s election – and by a more decisive margin than Democrat John Kerry did in that ’04 election.

The reason for this: the country’s demographics have changed.

As the Obama campaign had long assumed, the white portion of the electorate this year dropped to 72 percent -- from 74 percent in 2008 and 77 percent in 2004 -- and the president won fewer than four in 10 of those voters.

Yet he carried a whopping 93 percent of black voters (representing 13 percent of the electorate), 71 percent of Latinos (representing 10 percent), and 73 percent of Asians (3 percent).

What’s more, despite all the predictions that youth turnout would be down, voters ages 18-29 made up 19 percent of the voting population -- up from 18 percent four years ago -- and Obama took 60 percent from that group.

“So, if you win the swing groups but lose the election, that means the Democrats have a clear home field advantage,” Bolger writes. “There are more Democrats.”

“That underscores that we have to do better as a party with Hispanics … It’s simple math, but it’s hard to do. We have to start today.”

Romney even acknowledged that reality at a closed-door fundraiser in April overheard by NBC News. "We have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party," he said, warning back then that polling showing Latinos breaking in huge percentages for Obama "spells doom for us."

‘A late 20^th century campaign’

The GOP also has to start today regaining a tactical advantage in presidential campaigns, Republicans say.

Whether it was its advertising, its polling or its get-out-the-vote effort, the Romney campaign paled in comparison to the Obama juggernaut.

"The Republicans basically ran a late 20th century campaign," said one advertising expert.

A case in point was ad buying. Even though the Romney campaign and GOP outside groups outspent the Obama camp and its allies in ad dollars, the Obama campaign still was able to run more advertising spots.

That was possible in part because the Obama camp bought its ads in advance -- often at a discount rate -- while the Romney effort was buying them the week before and not getting the discount.

For instance, in the last week of the election, a single advertising spot on the 5:00 p.m. local news in Raleigh, N.C., cost the Obama campaign $550 (because it was purchased in advance), while a spot on the same program cost the Romney camp $2,665 (because it was bought the week of).

So the Romney campaign here paid four times as much for the same programming slot, a practice which in the long run negated any kind of financial advantage it enjoyed.

Another example was the placement of those TV ads. One of the contributing factors why Romney lost big among Latino voters was that the Obama campaign outspent the Romney camp on Spanish-language TV by nearly 2-to-1 (and the margin was even greater during the summer).

And finally, there's the reality that the Obama campaign's ground game was more sophisticated than the one from the Republican Party.

“Future discussions about voter contact need to fit the times,” said Republican political consultant Phil Musser, who worked on Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign and Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 primary effort.

“Traditional door knocks and robo-calls are important, but are not what major donors want to hear about,” he added, referring to constant GOP references about the number of doors volunteers had knocked during the campaign. “They want to hear that our strategies reflect the more comprehensive, bottom-up, digital approach that the Obama campaign clearly excelled at.”

Of course, one of the big reasons for the Obama campaign's tactical advantage was its head start -- incumbents (especially those who don't face a primary challenge) simply have more time to prepare for the general election.

"Having four years to plan for an election is incredibly beneficial," said a Republican strategist who worked on the Romney campaign.

Is the White House’s offer really a laughing matter?... It seems to be sending two messages to Republicans: 1) accepting the middle-class tax extension is less painful than the other proposals, and 2) you need to drag us to entitlement reform… Obama hits the road, delivering remarks on the fiscal negotiations in Hatfield, PA at 12:05 pm ET… Ted Cruz and 2016?... VA GOP blasts Bolling… And “Meet” to interview Geithner on Sunday.

*** A laughing matter? After Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s individual meetings yesterday with congressional leaders in the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Republicans leaked to reporters what the Obama White House is offering: 1) $1.6 trillion in tax increases and revenues, 2) a permanent end to Congress’ control of the debt limit, 3) additional stimulus of at least $50 billion, and 4) $400 billion in savings in Medicare and other programs to be worked out next year. Republican aides dismissed the offer as “unbalanced” and “unreasonable,” NBC’s Luke Russert notes. A House GOP aide adds to First Read that the $1.6 trillion is TWICE the revenue that President Obama campaigned on (by not extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy); that the debt-limit demand is a “pipe dream”; and that the revenue in the offer ($1.6 trillion) is four times greater than the spending cuts ($400 billion). The Weekly Standard even reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “burst into laughter” after Geithner offered the plan.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, accompanied by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., left, and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., gestures while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov, 27, 2012.

*** The White House’s two messages: But is the offer really a laughing matter? From what we understand, the White House is sending two messages from the offer it presented yesterday. One, it’s trying to force House Republicans to pass the middle-class extension of the Bush tax cuts -- with the idea of punting everything else until next year. The message: Extending the middle-class tax cuts is MUCH LESS painful than the other revenue, the debt-limit demand, and additional stimulus. (Think Team Obama has learned from its past negotiating offers, when it started out negotiating from the middle?) Two, the White House is sending the message that if Republicans want entitlement reform, they’re the ones who will have to propose it. After all, the administration’s offer is very specific when it comes to taxes, but not specific at all when it comes to entitlements. In other words, the White House is saying: We’re dragging you to agreeing to higher revenues, but you guys need to drag us to entitlement fixes. It is very possible that the White House’s sky-high offer could blow up in its face. But it’s also quite possible that it forces Republicans to think long and hard about the middle-class extension and what they exactly want on entitlements.

*** Road trip! Meanwhile, as we’ve already reported on this week, Obama hits the road today, taking his fiscal message on the road to Hatfield, PA (the Philadelphia suburbs), where he speaks at 12:05 pm ET. Per the White House, the president will make his case “by visiting a business that depends on middle class consumers during the holiday season, and could be impacted if taxes go up on 98% of Americans at the end of the year. The president will tour and deliver remarks at The Rodon Group manufacturing facility, the sole American manufacturer for K’NEX Brands, a construction toy company whose products include Tinkertoy, K’NEX Building Sets and Angry Bird Building Sets.  The Rodon Group and K’NEX Brands, both third-generation family businesses, employ over 150 people at their Hatfield facilities.”

*** Ted Cruz and 2016? Wow, Sen.-elect Ted Cruz (R) hasn’t even been sworn in yet, and he’s already stoking 2016 speculation. Politico: “Texas Sen.-elect Ted Cruz advised the Republican Party to rebrand itself under a banner of ‘Opportunity Conservatism’ during a sweeping speech Thursday night that will only stoke speculation about a 2016 presidential run. Speaking before the conservative American Principles Project dinner at a downtown Washington hotel, Cruz said the GOP’s thumping in the 2012 elections was more the result of poor messaging and communication than the wrong ideology.” We’ve seen plenty of new senators come in with plenty of hype and attention (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Marco Rubio), but those worked hard to keep expectations down. This is something else entirely…

*** VA GOP blasts Bolling: Yesterday, we wrote that Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling -- who had exited Virginia’s gubernatorial contest, meaning that Ken Cuccinelli would be the GOP’s nominee next year -- hadn’t closed the door to mounting an independent bid. And that in part explained this pretty stunning statement from the Virginia GOP chair: "I am disappointed by Lt. Governor Bolling's remarks over the past 48 hours... The proper venue for challenging a fellow Republican is during a nomination contest. Lt. Governor Bolling chose to suspend his campaign. I hope he will take his own words to heart and work to bring our Party together." Usually, that type of message is delivered through private channels, not via a press release. Bottom line: Bolling isn’t happy, and that’s a problem for the GOP.

*** On “Meet” this Sunday: Finally, NBC’s David Gregory interviews Treasury Secretary Geithner on “Meet the Press” this Sunday.

Click here to sign up for First Read emails.
Text FIRST to 622639, to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter. Follow us @chucktodd, @mmurraypolitics, @DomenicoNBC, @brookebrower

As Obama and Romney have lunch at 12:30 pm ET, not everyone is moving on from the ’12 race… Romney chief strategist Stu Stevens explains Romney’s loss by essentially suggesting Obama was black and poor people voted overwhelmingly for him… As it turns out, Obama’s victory was more decisive than Bush’s in ’04… Tom Cole and the cover he gives to John Boehner… NYT: Other Benghazi-related questions get lost in all the attention on the talking points… 112^th Congress on track to be least productive Congress since 1947… And the importance of Virginia and its gubernatorial contest.

*** Moving on? At 12:30 pm ET today, President Obama holds a private lunch with Mitt Romney -- their first meeting since the election and just seventh overall according to our count. The lunch allows both men to bury the hatchet and show that this country is able to move beyond its elections. But not everyone is moving on. In a Washington Post op-ed published yesterday, Romney chief strategist Stu Stevens defended Romney and his campaign. “Over the years, one of the more troubling characteristics of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self-loathing. It would be a shame if we Republicans took a narrow presidential loss as a signal that those are traits we should emulate.” It was more than appropriate for Stevens to write about Romney and the campaign after the election; in fact, Stevens speaks today at Harvard along with the top officials from the Obama campaign to discuss the 2012 race. But what’s especially striking about Stevens’ op-ed is that it doesn’t contain an iota of introspection about why the Romney campaign was unable to win a winnable race. It was an odd tone for Stevens to strike, and it will be curious to see if he’s just as defiant today at Harvard.

*** Explaining Romney’s loss -- Obama was black and poor people voted overwhelmingly for him: Indeed, the entire piece appears to rationalize that the campaign’s strategy was right. (And for the reporters who received emails from Stevens during the campaign, the tone was very, very familiar.) In the op-ed, Stevens essentially suggests Romney lost because poor people overwhelmingly voted for Obama. “On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters.” Yet that analysis ignores that those making less than $50,000 represented 41% of the electorate in 2012, and many of those people probably would argue that they’re in the middle class. Stevens also seems to argue that Obama won because he’s a black man whose campaign and party raised $1 billion. “[H]e was a charismatic African American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical. How easy is that to replicate?” But that also leaves out the fact that Romney was a white man who had a famous name in American politics and whose effort also raised close to $1 billion. By the way, there’s a lot of contradictory evidence to suggest the president carried the middle -- the swing suburban counties. In every swing state, the largest major suburban county tipped to the president.

*** Obama’s victory was more decisive than Bush’s in ’04: And here’s one final observation about the 2012 race. Per the excellent work by the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman, Obama’s national lead over Romney continues to expand as votes keep on coming in. It’s now Obama 50.9%, Romney 47.4%. That’s a bigger (and more decisive) margin than Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004 (which was Bush 50.7% and Kerry 48.2%). What’s more, the president’s lead has grown to close to 3 points in Ohio, 4 points in Virginia and 6 points in Colorado. One doesn’t win Colorado by six points without winning swing voters; there isn’t a big-enough Democratic base to make that argument.

Mike Segar / Reuters

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney arrives to deliver his concession speech during his election night rally in Boston, Massachusetts, November 7, 2012.

*** Cole gives cover to Boehner: In today’s “fiscal cliff” news, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is meeting individually with top Democratic and Republican congressional leaders. Bloomberg News: “Geithner will meet separately with each of the four top leaders in Congress: House Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Rob Nabors, the administration’s director of legislative affairs, will accompany Geithner.” And speaking of Boehner, GOP Rep. Tom Cole -- who on Tuesday said that Republicans should extend the Bush tax cuts for only those making $250,000 or less -- did a big favor for the House speaker. Why? It gives him A LOT more space to cut a deal with the Obama White House. After all, when is the last time that a conservative (albeit an establishment) House member go to the left of Boehner? Bottom line: Cole’s move gives Boehner more negotiating flexibility than he had previously. Also, don't miss David Gregory's interview with former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, who is very critical of Geithner.

*** Other Benghazi-related questions get lost in all the attention on the talking points: For weeks now, there’s has been so much attention on Susan Rice and those CIA-drafted talking points about the attack on the Benghazi consulate. And after more critical comments from GOP senators, Obama showered praise on Rice during a photo spray of his cabinet meeting yesterday. “Susan Rice is extraordinary. I couldn’t be prouder of the job that she’s done.” But the New York Times makes a pretty good point: Lost in all of the attention over the talking points are bigger and perhaps more important questions. “Were requests for greater security for diplomats in Libya ignored? Even if Al Qaeda’s core in Pakistan has been decimated, what threat is posed by its affiliates and imitators in other countries where they have taken refuge? How can crucial diplomacy be conducted amid the dangerous chaos that has followed the toppling of dictators across the Arab world?” Also, while this hasn’t been the best P.R. week for Rice, it does look like she can survive a confirmation process. The person who may have had a worse week in these meetings? CIA acting dir. Mike Morrell.  He could end up the real political loser in all this.

*** Do-Nothing Congress? NBC’s Kyle Inskeep notes that this 112^th Congress is headed to achieve a dubious distinction: the least productive Congress since the 1940s. With just weeks left, this Congress (2011-12) has passed just 196 bills into law (and many of those have been ceremonial pieces of legislation, like the naming of courthouses). The previous low was set by the 104^th Congress (1995-96), which passed just 333 bills into law. So to avoid earning the distinction as the least productive Congress since 1947, 138 bills must move through the House and Senate before the end of the session next month -- an unlikely feat. Then again, reaching a deal on the fiscal negotiations would be a big legislative accomplishment. Also, there are plenty of conservatives who would argue that NOT passing bills actually means this was a productive Congress. It’s all eye-of-the-beholder stuff.

*** The importance of Virginia its gubernatorial race: Virginia has arguably become the most important swing state in the country (in the past two presidential elections, the state has exactly matched the national popular vote). And Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial contest has recently set the tone for the party of out of power. In 2005, Tim Kaine (D) won his race by appealing to independents and the suburbs -- a model the Democrats replicated in 2006 and 2008. In ‘09, the socially conservative Bob McDonnell (R) focused like a laser on the economy, which congressional Republicans followed in ’10 and even Romney tried to replicate in ‘12. Yet here’s the conundrum for Republicans in 2013: The very conservative and outspoken Ken Cuccinelli is going to be the face of the GOP next year. Now it’s more than possible that Cuccinelli runs a strong race that national Republicans will copy in 2014. Or it’s also possible that his candidacy reinforces some of the negative stereotypes that the party wants to erase. By the way, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling -- whose exit cleared the way for Cuccinelli’s nomination -- isn’t going away quietly. Per the Roanoke Times, he isn’t ruling out a gubernatorial bid as an independent.

Click here to sign up for First Read emails.

Text FIRST to 622639, to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter. Follow us @chucktodd, @mmurraypolitics, @DomenicoNBC, @brookebrower

Despite talk of Mitt Romney’s momentum in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama cruised to a wide Electoral Vote victory and his popular-vote margin wound up closely mirroring George W. Bush’s 2004 victory.

In fact, voter confidence in the president consistently improved as Election Day neared and was nearly the identical level Bush had before his reelection, a review of data for the NBC News Voter Confidence Index shows.

President Obama’s VCI score was -11 for the month of October, exactly the same as Bush’s score in October 2004.

Despite his first debate performance and Romney’s claim of momentum, Obama never saw a drop in that period in the VCI. Obama’s VCI went from -29 in August to -15 in September to -11 in October and -10 in the first week of November.

And that improvement was squarely because Americans told pollsters in the fall they felt better about the direction of the country.

The VCI uses a combination of the president’s job approval rating, the direction of the country, and the so-called generic congressional ballot, which tracks voter preference between parties rather than individual candidates. There is equal weight given to all three questions. The difference between two sets of numbers in each question is calculated and then added up.

For example, Obama’s average job approval rating for the month of October was +2; the direction of the country average score was -14; and the generic congressional ballot was +1 for a -11.

Obama’s average approval rating remained fairly consistent throughout the 2012 campaign. It hit its lowest point (-8) right after the debt-ceiling debacle in September 2011. Combining the bad direction of the country score (-52) with the generic ballot (Republican were ahead by 3 points that month), Obama had his worst VCI score of his presidency : -63.

No president had ever been reelected with a VCI that bad. Jimmy Carter had a -72 VCI right before the 1980 election he lost. George H.W. Bush was -84 right before the 1992 election he lost.

The successful presidents reelected since 1980 – Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – enjoyed high VCI scores. Reagan stood at +62 in 1984 before his landslide victory. Clinton was at +45 before his sweeping reelection over Republican Bob Dole.

The generic ballot portion of the VCI in 2012 also remained consistent with Democrats holding a slight lead most months.

But direction of the country is what really moved and likely buoyed the president to a second term. More Americans said they were more optimistic about the direction of the country as November 2012 neared. It went from a nadir of -56 in October 2011 to -23 in March by the time the GOP presidential primary wrapped up.

The VCI score for direction of the country stayed in the -20s through July, dipped to -30 in August and then began to break through that plateau after the parties' conventions. The score improved to -19 in September, the best since May 2011 – the month Osama bin Laden was killed.

Before that, direction of the country hadn’t been that strong since January 2010. And at that point, it was trending in the other direction.

The direction of the country average improved again in October to -14 and again in that first week of November to -13.

It’s clear that how people feel about the country -- whether it’s headed off on the wrong track or in the right direction -- is perhaps the most telling indicator of whether a president will be reelected.