DAY’S END ROUNDUP

The first White House leak from President-elect Barack Obama’s team earns top billing on the Drudge Report and criticism from conservative bloggers. Bloggers on the right also don’t buy David Brooks’s latest column, which divides conservatives into traditionalists and reformers. Liberal bloggers begin assessing where senators stand ahead of next week’s vote to strip Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) of his Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairmanship.

There’s “Bush anger” at the Obama team for leaking to reporters details about the president and president-elect’s White House meeting on Monday, according to the Drudge Report. The leak about what was supposed to be a confidential meeting is a preview of the ruthlessness that Obama will engage in as president, writes Townhall’s Carol Platt Liebau. The efficacy of the leak, which led to stories about Obama’s lobbying for aid for automakers, isn’t clear, writes Firedoglake’s Emptywheel.

Brooks, in his New York Times column, writes that backward-looking, Rush Limbaugh-loving traditionalists will rule the Republican Party in the short term until forward-looking reformers come in and fix things. Those reformists, however, will never get anything done without the support of the Religious Right, according to Crunchy Con’s Rod Dreher. Brooks’s dichotomy doesn’t hold for many unresolved issues within the party, such as illegal immigration, writes Contentions’ Jennifer Rubin.

Whether Lieberman keeps his committee gavel depends on a vote by the Senate Democratic Caucus. According to Chris Bowers‘s whip count on Open Left, Lieberman will get the backing of Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.) and the seven centrist members of the Gang of 14, while he’ll be opposed by the caucus’s top three members, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.). The most likely senators to vote against Lieberman are the ones who backed Democrat Ned Lamont in Lieberman’s 2006 race, writes Bowers. A compromise that could work for kos would be to strip Lieberman of the Homeland Security chairmanship and give him the top post on a lesser committee, such as the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee.

FROM THE BLOGS:
Bush Anger: Obama Aides Leak Details – Drudge Report
Sign of Things to Come? – Carol Platt Liebau, Townhall.com
New Obama-Rahm Leak Policy? – Emptywheel, Firedoglake
Class V. Campaigning – Moe Lane, RedState
Conservative Reform Won’t Come Soon – Rod Dreher, Crunchy Con
Conservative Coalition Building – Jim Manzi, The Corner
Brooks and Plight of Reformist Republicans – N. Scheiber, The Stump
Traditionalists V. Reformers – Jennifer Rubin, Contentions
Lieberman Whip Counting – Chris Bowers, Open Left
Caucus Will Vote on Whether Joe Keeps Chair – Josh Orton, MyDD
‘Compromise’ and the Lieberman Fiasco – kos, Daily Kos

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:
Obama Transition Team Announcing Lobbyist Ethics Rules – The Hill
Most in Poll Confident Obama Will Fix Economy – Associated Press
Pelosi Calls for Emergency Aid for Autoworkers – Associated Press