Of course, it’s impossible to say with certainty which actions "Anonymous" actually pulled off, since its membership is ill-defined and anyone can claim association, not to mention that sometimes Anonymous hacktivists act alone or as part of a subgroup.  Even when Anonymous has put out one of its quintessential videos claiming responsibility for a hack or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service—shutting down a website by flooding it with requests) attack, it hasn’t always turned out to be true.

Given that, below are Anonymous’ “Top 20” for 2012. With its widening arsenal and focus, one can only imagine what these Internet denizens have in store for 2013.

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(Here’s a chart comparing 2010 and 2012.)

Analysts and others have identified redistricting as a key to the disparity. Republicans had a years-long strategy of winning state houses in order to control each state's once-a-decade redistricting process. (Confused about redistricting? Check out our song.)

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The group's application for recognition as a social welfare nonprofit acknowledged that it would spend money to influence elections, but said "any such activity will be limited in amount, and will not constitute the organization's primary purpose."

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Rove writes that Obama's positions on tax increases and additional stimulus spending are both "political" and "ideological. The president does want to expand government's size, cost and reach in order to, in his words, 'transform' America."

He continued that Obama is also hoping that by not backing down on tax increases, he can cause a rift in the Republican party:

He apparently believes that Republicans, in a weakened state and defending an unpopular position, might buckle on a central GOP tenet, opposition to any increase in marginal rates. That might kick off a Republican civil war, resulting in divisive party primaries in 2014 that leave the president's opposition even more weakened and produce more subpar candidates like this year's Republican Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri.

"This brings us to Mr. Obama's real goal: having Democrats recapture the House in 2014 and once again stave off losses in the Senate," Rove writes.

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Politico counts 27 days since Rove's last appearance on Fox, a brief hiatus that ended with last night's appearance on "Special Report" with Bret Baier.

Gabe Sherman of New York Magazine reported last week that Fox News chief Roger Ailes instructed staffers to keep Rove and Dick Morris off the air, as "a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign," as Sherman put it.

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"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger,'" he said. "By 1968 you can’t say 'nigger' -- that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites."

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My old friend Dick Armey, the former Texas congressman who made a fortune astro-turfing the Tea Party, has left the organization he helped found, FreedomWorks. David Corn at Mother Jones broke the news, and Armey depicted the parting of ways as "matters of principle." Then AP revealed that Armey will receive $8 million in consulting fees even though – or because – he left the group, and Politico explained that Armey's alleged last straw came when partner Matt Kibbe signed a book contract that paid him personally for a book largely inspired by (and partly researched by) FreedomWorks and its staff. Sounds like a matter of principle, until you look more closely.

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Fox News sources told Sherman that Rove and Morris -- who, respectively, questioned on air whether Ohio would go for President Obama even after the network's decision desk called the race for the president, and predicted a Romney landslide -- are heading to the sidelines, on orders from Roger Ailes.

Writes Sherman:

Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.

In confirming the new rules to New York, a Fox News spokesperson said "the election's over."

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1)  Fealty to manifestly discredited belief systems (cultural, economic, religious, and scientific);

2)  Fealty to disgraced, ideological leaders whose arteries are hardening, rhetorically-suicidal and/or slow to get demographic “death spirals;”

3)  Justified anxiety that “rebranding” different enough to engage newly-empowered centrists will alienate far more base zealots already feeling besieged from both sides.

4)  Reactionary robber barons will keep afloat any “anti-business Obama” gang, whatever the setbacks, with plenty more billions to secure favorable permits, subsidies, laws, and deregulation.

In a nutshell, how does a party of insular, rigid true believers, thrusting warlike middle fingers towards modernity, talk itself into modernizing just because it lost one election? Aside from putting lipstick on a pig, where’s the miraculous (earthbound) agency that modernizes angry, resentful Tea Partiers whose outrage targeted the very diverse, younger, secular crowds now crowning the future?

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A release claiming to be from hacker collective Anonymous alleges there was more behind Rove's freak-out than first met the eye. The group says that it foiled Rove's attempt to steal the election in Florida, Virginia and Ohio by using the GOP's ORCA system.

Two weeks prior to Election Night, a typical Anonymous video was released warning Rove against rigging the election. "We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor," Anonymous' ubiquitous Guy Fawkes character warned.

Then, following Obama's win and Rove's very public outburst, a group calling themselves "The Protectors," believed to be comprised of Anonymous hackers, sent a letter to election transparency non-profit, Velvet Revolution, claiming to have thwarted attempts by GOP strategists to flip votes and rig the election in three swing states.

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The president, Romney told a group of campaign donors on a November 14 conference call, won re-election by promising free stuff to his homeboys and women’s libbers and brown people who inconveniently declined to self-deport -- or words to that effect.

“What the president -- president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government,” Romney told his fat cats, apparently unaware that reporters were listening in. Soon that particular cat leapt out of the proverbial bag, and it was the 47 percent all over again -- offering a vision of the majority of the electorate that voted for Obama as a bunch of moochers. The one difference, of course, was that no longer the party’s presidential contender, Romney learned that Republicans were free to kick him to the curb, which they did with steel-toed boots.

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Ailes recalled watching the footage: "I turn on the TV and the first thing I see is Rove saying something like, ‘you called Ohio too early.’ And I thought, ‘What the? What is this?’”

Ailes told TVNewser that he gave the command to keep the cameras running throughout the awkward interchange: "So I quickly called [EVP of News] Michael Clemente and I said, ‘Michael, whatever you do, don’t go to commercial. Don’t leave the screen.'"

“As it turned out, Rove was wrong. He backed down. Our guys were right," said Ailes.

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We had seen signs of stress within the party and its adherents leading to to the election, and since then we’ve seen everyone from members of the GOP elite to right-wing foot soldiers go through the first four Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. (Whether they’ll get to acceptance remains to be seen.)

Below are several examples of how conservatives at all levels have gone off the deep end in the days leading up to and following the election.

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Watch:

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Watch:

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Perhaps the biggest recipient of that schadenfreude is Karl Rove. Rove has had a rough week, to put it mildly. After his infamous meltdown on Fox News Tuesday night – at one point in the evening Fox anchor Megyn Kelly asked him if his calculations were “math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better” – things have just continued to go downhill. Here’s how.

1. Researchers find that Rove’s super PAC was one of the election’s biggest losers.

Researchers at the watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation found that Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC came in second to last, ahead of only the NRA, in terms of how much “bang for their buck” they got in this election. TheAmerican Prospect explains:

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And indeed, Tuesday was a terrible no good awful night for most of the biggest super PACs and other assorted "outside" groups, as most of them are Republican-aligned and Republicans lost big. Hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain and with nothing to show for it.

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The study, based on FEC reporting, found that the NRA backed 27 winning candidates, but only 0.42 percent of the $11,787,523 it spent on the election went to those candidates. Instead, 78 percent of the money went to opposing Democrats. From the report:

- 0.81% of $10,955,688 spent in the general election and ending in the desired result.
- Supported 27 winning candidates ; 0.42% of money went to supporting winning candidates.
- Opposed 5 losing candidates; 0.39% of money went to opposing losing candidates.

Sunlight also highlights that the Karl Rove-tied American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS poured over $200 million into the elections, but supported no winning candidates.

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Or at least it was. Tuesday night may have shattered the Myth of Rove, just as it shattered Rove himself when he had a meltdown in front of millions on Fox News viewers after the network called Ohio for Obama. The moment, which has since gone viral, was the perfect encapsulation of Emperor Has No Clothes realization that Rove is now experiencing. Rove was proven wrong. On live TV. By Fox News. And of course, that wasn’t the only thing he got wrong. He blew the whole election, predicting Romney would win.

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