‘Project ORCA’
Via Reader BK, here’s a good behind-the-scenes look at what happened at Mitt’s election-night HQ in Boston. He also gets into the Romney camp’s vote-tracking “Project ORCA” fiasco. Here’s more blistering criticism of “Project ORCA.” … Not many people truly believe the Orca system’s failure is the main reason for Romney’s loss. But it's a piece of the failed-campaign puzzle.

Via Reader No. 1, here's a good Peggy Noonan piece, largely arguing Democrats ultimately wanted it more than Republicans:

While GOP voters were proud to assert their support with lawn signs, Democratic professionals were quietly organizing, data mining and turning out the vote. Their effort was a bit of a masterpiece; it will likely change national politics forever. Mr. Obama was perhaps not joyless but dogged, determined, and tired.

She's also calling for, or hoping for, some genuine soul-searching among Republicans and conservatives:

The great challenge for the Republican Party now is how to change its ways without changing its principles. Its principles are right and have long endured because they're right. But do all the party's problems come down to inadequate marketing, faulty messaging, poor candidates? Might some of it be policies, stands, attitudes? 

That will be a subject here in the future. For now, in politics as in life, you have to play the hand you're dealt. You have to respect reality. Which is where conservatism actually starts, seeing what is real.

As I've noted before, I'm not sure Tuesday's defeat was clear and decisive enough to bring about genuine and necessary soul-searching on the right. The problem in the past has been the "conservative movement's" meshing of hyper-partisanship with principles and, humans being humans, the hyper-partisanship almost always trumps the principles, obscuring realities. It's tribal emotions trumping rational intellect. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: I'll bet you some conservatives are reading this right now and are roughly thinking, But liberals do it too! Which is exactly my point about how everything seems to come back to partisan/tribal points of views and arguments. That isn't soul searching. That isn't sticking to principles. That's finger pointing. That's tit-for-tat partisan tribalism. That's not the type of reality they should be focusing on.
  ¶ 8:03 AM