Tag Archives: karlrove

March 6, 2013 · 12:39 AM

Republicans still conflicted on who to blame for election failures

Gopasaur

In my opinion it was a combination of Tea Party hatriots, Mitt Romney’s cluelessness and the GOP’s stupidity, combined…

Daily Kos

The Republican Party is still hard at work figuring out why people seem to hate them, or at least why they’re not voting for them. Unfortunately, they can’t agree on what the problem is,which is hampering efforts to find a solution:

There’s a split between those who believe the party’s problem is cosmetic, those who believe it’s data-based and those who think it’s ideological and policy-based. Within those camps, there’s no common ground on what a better approach would look like.  […]The constant drama, a number of Republicans say, has denied the party writ large a chance to take stock amid calm. Still, the Republican National Committee is moving ahead with what Chairman Reince Priebus has at times called an “autopsy” into 2012.

The RNC efforts are just one of many, and it’s not clear the RNC opinion will hold any more weight than any of the others. The problem is that every individual group and consultancy has obvious reasons to declare that their version of what went wrong is the true one, and everyone else should therefore shut up and keep paying them money. Technophiles are convinced that the Romney campaign just needed to post more things to Twitter. Hard-right conservatives think the answer is to be more hard-right. Karl Rove knows that Karl Rove was right and should continue to be paid the big bucks, so he thinks the answer is to stop sending him candidates who so obviously suck. And every message strategist, everywhere, thinks the answer is in tweaking the messaging.

If there are any serious, credible attempts at self-reflection, however, I haven’t seen them. Yes, various party contrarians have muttered about the necessity of policy reforms and of the demographic hurdles facing the aging, perpetually cranky party; those individuals, however, are in no position to enact such reforms. Nobody is. (Even immigration reform, the supposed easiest fix for claiming a new, more inclusive base, has been stymied by the hostility of hard-right party ideologues; regardless of the much-ballyhooed breakthrough on the Senate side, Republican efforts on the issue look to be a rigged game.) Republican social policies remain captured by the hard-right base; economic policies are tied inextricably to the needs of the big donors that the party apparatus relies so very heavily on. All of this ties into our previous suspicion that the party has devolved into nothing but an elaborate grift, or at least that the party has no particular concept of the difference between true ideology and intentionally astroturfing, well, themselves. And yes, I mean that seriously.

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November 11, 2012 · 3:45 PM

How the Right-Wing Media’s Fantasy World Caused a Republican Meltdown on Election Night

Alternet

Despite all evidence to the contrary, right-wing pundits were telling whoever would listen that Romney would win by a landslide.

The greatest thing on television Tuesday evening wasn’t Obama’s victory speech. It wasn’t Romney’s concession speech. It wasn’t even John King’s gentle caress of the CNN Magic Wall.

It was the Fox News team’s collective meltdown when the network’s own analysts called theelection for Obama.

In fact, Fox might have given us the most entertaining five minutes of cable newsin television history. Karl Rove in particular couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that Romney had lost. He sent Megyn Kelly downstairs to the Fox election desk to find out what had happened. Despite one of the election desk staffers saying he was 99.5 percent sure about the outcome, Rove insisted that there must have been a mistake. If you look at the footage closely enough, you can actually see smoke come out of Rove’s ears as his brain malfunctions. At one point even Megyn Kelly couldn’t take Rove’s BS any longer and asked him if the number-crunching he was doing was “math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better.”

But it wasn’t only the on-air personalities at Fox who were shocked and appalled by the election outcome. White conservatives across the nation were caught off guard, and oh how they mourned . As the AlterNet team wrote in a post-election roundup , it’s pretty easy to see why: despite all evidence to the contrary, right-wing pundits were telling whoever would listen that Romney would win by a landslide. They attacked Nate Silver, the New York Times blogger and statistics savant, who, it turns out, nailed it . They claimed Black voters wouldn’t turn out for Obama, and plenty of other obvious nonsense. Basically, they were living in a fantasy land that did not reflect the reality of the election or the citizens of this country.

At the Christian Science Monitor , Gloria Goodale has an interesting piece on the right-wing media’s alternate version of reality. She writes:

[R]ather than the purportedly surprising election results reflecting some national subversion of the voting process, many political scientists and other analysts say this right-wing upset is dramatic evidence of a growing partisan divide in our media.

Increasingly, the public consumes media that reinforce personal views rather than give actual information about the world, says University of San Francisco political scientist Corey Cook.

“The biggest story of this election is the stories that were being told about the election,” says Professor Cook….“It was really as if places like MSNBC and Fox were talking about completely different races,” he adds.

Goodale’s sources also note that major networks like NBC share some of the blame in misleading viewers. But in their case, the deception seems to have been largely relegated to claims that the race was neck-and-neck, when in fact Obama was the clear leader in the polls; close elections are of course better for ratings.

Outlets manufacturing a false sense of drama to make more money is loathsome, but the fallout from the right-wing media’s trip to la-la land seems to be much more profound for conservatives who were given a false sense of hope. Whether many conservatives will disavow Fox and its ilk over its election lies remains to be seen. But it’s entirely possible that this time the right-wing media has gone too far. As Amanda Marcotte wrote in a blog post earlier today, “Without lies, what does the right wing media have? Not much.”

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November 8, 2012 · 1:17 PM

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

The Huffington Post

Karl Rove, American Crossroads Desperately Try To Explain How They Blew $300 Million On A Losing Campaign

No one lost as much on election night as Karl Rove.

Although he wasn’t running for office, his Crossroads organizations spent more than$300 million on Republican candidates in the 2012 election, with some of the biggest spenders in the conservative movement putting their hopes — and dollars — in the care of Rove. Combined, his groups were the largest single outside force of the 2012 election.

The results were bleak. According to the Sunlight Foundation, American Crossroads, Rove’s super PAC, saw just a 1 percent return on its investments. Crossroads GPS, the political nonprofit arm, saw a 14 percent return.

Rove remained in denial about GOP misfortunes on election night. Even after the networks had called Ohio for President Barack Obama, Rove continued to insist onFox News that Republicans could win the state.

Rove was back on Fox News Wednesday morning after his election night meltdown. He didn’t address his reaction to the Ohio call or Crossroads’ failures but instead argued that Republicans need to do a better job in reaching out to the Latino community.

“Obama kept the coalition that he had in 2008, only it was a little bit smaller,” he said. “This will be the first president reelected sent to second term with a smaller percentage of the vote than he got the first term. In fact, there are only two states — two states in the union — where he got a higher percentage of the vote this time around than he got the first time. One is Mississippi, by one quarter of 1 percent, and Hawaii by less than one fifth of 1 percent. Otherwise, he basically held together that coalition, which means if we’re going to win in the future, Republicans need to do better among Latinos and they need to do better among women — particularly single women.”

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September 16, 2010 · 2:26 AM

Right-Wing Media Turn On Rove For “Trashing” O’Donnell

Karl Rove Assistant to the President, Deputy C...

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Media Matters  

Malkin: “Rove came across as an effete sore loser.” In a September 14 post, Malkin wrote that Rove “trash[ed]” O’Donnell during the Hannity segment and he “[m]ight as well have been [Keith] Olbermann on MSNBC.” Malkin later wrote that “Rove came across as an effete sore loser instead of the supposedly brilliant and grounded GOP strategist that he’s supposed to be.” Malkin, citing The Freedomist blog, also wrote that “Rove had met with Delaware 9/12-ers and Tea Party folks to try and convince them to back the ‘more electable’ candidate.”  

Warner Todd Huston: “The Veracity of Karl Rove’s Political Analysis is Suddenly Suspect.” In a September 14 Gateway Pundit post titled, “The Veracity of Karl Rove’s Political Analysis is Suddenly Suspect,” Huston cited the Freedomist post and wrote: “Rove is certainly entitled to his opinion and if he truly believes that O’Donnell cannot win in the general, then he should feel free to say so and we should accept it as such. But in this case we have a problem believing that Rove’s analysis is simply his honest opinion when we find out from The Freedomist that Rove was trying to cut a pre-primary deal to help Mike Castle to win the primary.” Huston further wrote that “Fox News should require Rove to answer to this charge”:  

Fox News should require Rove to answer to this charge. If he really did act as a helpmate for Rep. Mike Castle this damages Rove’s veracity as an analyst. He has just made himself suspect. You can’t be both a political player and an autonomous, disinterested analyst. Will Fox suspend Rove over this? They certainly should if he really did work to help Castle, in any case.  

Erickson: Rove “in full on meltdown” on Fox News. In a September 15 RedState post, Erick Erickson wrote: “It is a delightful morning. The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the GOP Establishment, including Karl Rove in full on meltdown last night on Fox News, has been beaten yet again in Delaware by the supposedly crazy girl from the fringe who could not possibly take out the 12 time elected Republican Mike Castle.”  

Levin says he will discuss Rove’s “war against the Tea Party movement and conservatives.” In a September 15 Twitter post, right-wing radio host Mark Levin stated he would discuss Rove’s “was against the Tea Party movement and conservatives”.  

Buchanan: Rove “trashing” O’Donnell is a “horrible mistake.” On the September 15 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Pat Buchanan stated: “This is going to be a crucial test of how the Republican Party handles the tea party. And what we heard Karl Rove say, really trashing this woman, is a horrible mistake.”  

NewsBusters: “[P]essimisitc” Rove “continued to rip” O’Donnell. In a September 14 post, NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein wrote: “Even after Fox News called the Delaware GOP senatorial primary for Christine O’Donnell tonight, Karl Rove continued to rip the winner, questioning everything from O’Donnell’s ‘rectitude’ to her ‘character.’ ” Finkelstein further wrote that Hannity “defended O’Donnell staunchly, but was met with a litany of Roveian criticism.”  

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