memeorandum: Meet The Mandela RINOs: Republicans Who Lost Their R-Card For Praising Mandela (Tom Kludt/Talking Points Memo)

9:15 PM ET, December 6, 2013

Top Items:

Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:

7 Nelson Mandela Quotes You Probably Won't See In The U.S. Media — The former South African president, who died Thursday, was a revolutionary and a deep skeptic of American power. — Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters — “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

Discussion: ThinkProgress, The Daily Caller and Spectator

Hunter Walker / Talking Points Memo:

South Carolina Sheriff Refuses To Lower Flag For Mandela — Rick Clark, the sheriff of Pickens County, S.C., vowed on Friday to defy President Obama's order that U.S. flags be lowered to half staff in honor of deceased South African leader Nelson Mandela. — Clark made his promise …

Discussion: The Hinterland Gazette, Liberaland, NPR and The Raw Story

The Atlantic Online:

Apartheid's Useful Idiots — Nelson Mandela died yesterday, and all around the world, much-deserved hosannas are coming in, praising the life of one of the most important figures in modern Western history. That last bit reflects my own bias. What's become clear in all my studies …

Discussion: msnbc.com, Daily Kos, Washington Monthly, ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES and Balloon Juice

ThinkProgress:

The Right Wing's Campaign To Discredit And Undermine Mandela, In One Timeline — The world is celebrating Nelson Mandela as a selfless visionary who led his country out of the grips of apartheid into democracy and freedom. But some of the very people lavishing praise on South Africa's …

Discussion: Informed Comment and The Impolitic

Tom Kludt / Talking Points Memo:

Meet The Mandela RINOs: Republicans Who Lost Their R-Card For Praising Mandela — Republican politicians have tried to pay homage on Facebook to the late Nelson Mandela since his death on Thursday, but many of their conservative supporters want to hear none of it.

Discussion: American Prospect

Anneta Konstantinides / ABC News:

Ted Cruz Criticized for Praising Nelson Mandela — While much of the world was eulogizing Nelson Mandela, some of Sen. Ted Cruz's followers were fuming that the man who defeated South Africa's apartheid and won the Nobel Peace Prize should be reviled as a communist and a terrorist.

Discussion: ABC News, The PJ Tatler and Twitchy

Leslie Larson / NY Daily News:

Sen. Ted Cruz's praise for Nelson Mandela met with criticism by supporters — The Texas senator posted a message on his Facebook page saying that Mandela would ‘live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty,’ but some of the comments posted called the former South African leader a 'terrorist …

Discussion: The Hinterland Gazette, p m carpenter's commentary, Liberaland and Joe. My. God.

Lucy McCalmont / Politico:

Rick Santorum ties Obamacare, Nelson Mandela — As condolences and reflections followed the passing of Nelson Mandela, Rick Santorum linked the injustices the former South African president fought and Obamacare. — “He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument …

Discussion: CNN, The Lead with Jake Tapper, The Moderate Voice, The Hinterland Gazette, The Dish, Outside the Beltway, p m carpenter's commentary, The Reaction, Connecting.the.Dots, ABC News and The Democratic Daily

Facebook:

Ted Cruz · 562,730 like this — Nelson Mandela will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography …

Discussion: Daily Kos and BOR

Nick Wing / The Huffington Post:
Dick Cheney Didn't Regret His Vote Against Freeing Nelson Mandela, Maintained He Was A ‘Terrorist’

Discussion: The New Republic, The Immoral Minority, CNN, Liberaland, Gawker, Brains and Eggs, Right Wing Watch, Hullabaloo, US Department of State, Mediaite, Londonderry Patch News, ThinkProgress, Daily Kos, National Review, ≠ Inequality Matters and New York Times

Washington Free Beacon:
Matthews to Sharpton: McConnell Worse than de Klerk

Discussion: The PJ Tatler

Jacob Fischler / BuzzFeed:
South Carolina Sheriff Refuses To Lower Flag For Nelson Mandela

Discussion: Mediaite

Max Boot / Commentary Magazine:
The Character of Nelson Mandela

Discussion: The Monkey Cage, Slate, The Daily Caller, News Desk, The Dish, TIME, Spectator, The New Republic, National Review, Betsy's Page and BREITBART.COM

Noah Rothman / Mediaite:
Matthews: South Africa's White Apartheid Leaders Were More Patriotic Than GOP

Discussion: Hot Air and National Review

Adam Peck / ThinkProgress:
Rick Santorum Compares Obamacare To Apartheid

Discussion: Austin Chronicle, Mediaite, The Week, No More Mister Nice Blog, Washington Monthly and Shakesville

Jennifer Epstein / Politico:
Nelson Mandela funeral: George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton to attend Mandela memorial

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and TheBlaze.com

Dylan Scott / Talking Points Memo:
Santorum: Fight Against Obamacare Like Fight Against Apartheid

Discussion: Jezebel, Gawker and Liberaland

Deroy Murdock / National Review: Nelson Mandela, R.I.P

Brendan Sasso / The Hill:

Patriot Act author: Obama's intel czar should be prosecuted — Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress. — “Lying to Congress is a federal offense …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Politico, Hot Air, Firedoglake, Hit & Run, The Switch, Talking Points Memo, SiliconBeat, The Gateway Pundit and CNN

Travis Gettys / The Raw Story:

Sarah Palin: ‘Angry atheists’ are trying to ‘abort Christ from Christmas’ — If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, Sarah Palin said, he would probably go on Fox News to complain about the war on Christmas. — The former half-term governor of Alaska and failed vice presidential candidate appeared Thursday …

Discussion: Mediaite, Liberaland, Right Wing Watch and Jezebel

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Carney criticizes report on Sebelius — The White House on Friday criticized as misleading a report in POLITICO Magazine claiming that President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met just once since the signing of the Affordable Care Act more than three years ago.

Discussion: PostPartisan, Hot Air, National Republican … and Taegan Goddard's …

Justin Sink / The Hill:
White House: Obama won't insist on jobless aid in budget deal

Discussion: The Agonist and Politico

Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:

Exclusive: The Obamacare Error Rate Has Fallen Dramatically — Some perspective on the latest ACA freak-out — These days it seems like everybody following Obamacare is talking about the 834s. Those are the personal data files that healthcare.gov sends insurance companies, in order to notify them of new enrollees.

Discussion: Firedoglake, Washington Monthly, Reuters, Daily Kos, National Review, Hit & Run, Talking Points Memo and Hot Air

Brian Beutler / Salon:

GOP hits pathetic new low: “47 percent” thinking creeps even deeper — Ideology, not civility, is the problem — Of the three certainties in life (death, taxes and horrifying Republican expressions of the conservative worldview) the key question to ask is whether all of them can be deferred until after the next election.

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and The Moderate Voice

Jonathan Martin / New York Times:

Challenged by Tea Party, Veteran Mississippi Senator Seeks 7th Term — WASHINGTON — Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who was first elected to the Senate in 1978, set up a generational and ideological clash in the state's Republican primary when he announced Friday that he would seek a seventh term in 2014.

Discussion: USA Today, Washington Monthly, Talking Points Memo and Althouse

Clarion-Ledger:
Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran said Friday he will run for re-election next year.

Discussion: NPR, Business Insider, Politico and CNN

Art Swift / Gallup:

Majority of Americans Want Major Changes to Health Law — Fifty-two percent want Congress to repeal or scale back the law — WASHINGTON, D.C. — After two months of glitches with the new federal healthcare website and attempts to fix it, the percentage of Americans who prefer that Congress scale …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Firedoglake, Hot Air, The Plum Line, Weasel Zippers, Business Insider, Weekly Standard, Reuters and JustOneMinute

Antoni Slodkowski / Reuters:

Insight - Fukushima water tanks: leaky and built with illegal labor — (Reuters) - Storage tanks at the Fukushima nuclear plant like one that spilled almost 80,000 gallons of radioactive water this year were built in part by workers illegally hired in one of the poorest corners of Japan …

Discussion: Crooks and Liars