This week’s print column: How you can mesh Obamacare with Medicare, save money and improve health care–and get Republican support.

Lamar Alexander. Saxby Chambliss. Lindsey Graham. What do they have in common? Well, they’re all members of the Republican Senate sanity caucus (except for Graham’s occasional flights of neocon fantasy).  And each may be facing a crazy-nut rightwing challenge in 2014.

Barack Obama’s victory–which becomes more pronounced every day, as the final votes are counted–has obviously opened the door to a negotiation over tax increases, in which the Republicans will have to make concessions. But there are other formerly taboo subjects that need to be discussed in Washington.

The Republicans are, reportedly, outraged by President Obama’s opening bid in the fiscal cliff talks. Republicans always seem to be outraged. It’s getting boring. They need to step up and make a counter-offer.

Scott Shane has a fine piece of analysis today about the real issues involved in the Benghazi imbroglio–which is to say, the issues not being raised by the vindictive John McCain.

I have a new print column about Steven Spielberg’s splendid film Lincoln–which is an advertisement for a greasier, less puritanical form of politics.

Seems everyone in the political world was talking about Spielberg’s splendid Lincoln this weekend. It turns out to be a movie about a living, breathing, horse-trading, occasionally mendacious genius of a politician. It resurrects the noble greasiness of politics at an incredibly appropriate moment: we’re in desperate need of some …

I’ve gotten into some trouble on TV twice in the past 24 hours–yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, regarding raising the age for Medicare eligibility; just now on Morning Joe, about whether the Benghazi consulate attack was an Al Qaeda operation. I stand by what I said in both cases.