Posted on 10/08/2014 2:41:59 AM PDT by goodn'mad
Karl Rove recently tried to advise Republicans on how the party can more effectively take back the Senate in November. He made two main suggestions.
One was that Republican candidates must “make the case for electing someone new who will be a check and balance in the Senate on Mr. Obama and his agenda, rather than returning a Democratic loyalist who toes his line.” Rove’s second suggestion was that the party should “offer a positive, optimistic conservative agenda to make independents who disapprove of Mr. Obama comfortable voting Republican.”
Rove is right on both counts, especially about offering a positive and optimistic conservative agenda.
But there’s one big problem. This advice is coming from Karl Rove.
Rove has never cared about conservatism and has spent his entire career opposing any Republican who might be successful in promoting or implementing a conservative agenda.
Rove belongs to the same tradition of moderates who fought Barry Goldwater in 1964, who pushed back against Ronald Reagan in 1976 and did everything they could to stop Reagan again in 1980. They said Reagan would be a disaster for the party and even the country.
Today, Reagan is one of the most well-remembered American presidents and remains the standard-bearer for what it means to be a conservative Republican, popularizing a small government message that GOP moderates said was too extreme to resonate with voters. As with Rove’s predictions about Mitt Romney’s chances in 2012, GOP moderates couldn’t have been more wrong about Reagan.
Rove and his ilk have opposed every significant conservative leader who has ever dared to challenge liberal or moderate Republican orthodoxy. A history lesson: Moderates wanted Gerald Ford and then George H.W. Bush over Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980. Similarly, Karl Rove and his friends wanted Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2010. They wanted Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio in 2010. They wanted David Dewhurst over Ted Cruz in 2012.
Karl Rove kneecapped tea party candidates in 2010. He called Rick Perry’s policy prescriptions, many which have had great success in Texas, “toxic.” Rove said Sarah Palin lacked “gravitas.” He has said Rand Paul “causes GOP squeamishness.”
And what does he think about conservatives in general? He’s called us the Republican Party’s “nutty fringe.” This is the same man Media Matters has dubbed the Republican “voice of reason.”
When Rove founded his “Conservative Victory Project” last year, conservatives everywhere laughed. We knew this was a man who had spent his whole life making sure conservative ideas never saw the light of day.
Rove basically admitted as much, when he said his reason for forming this group was to “protect” the GOP from challenges from “far-right” conservatives and tea party enthusiasts.
In other words, Rove wanted to continue, true to form, to ensure that conservatives would have no influence on the Republican Party.
It’s now time conservatives make sure Karl Rove no longer has any influence on their party.
The last thing the GOP needs right now and in the future is for the anti-conservative professional political class to continue infecting its ranks, and the last thing we need, as conservatives, is having these same moderates infiltrating ours.
As a party, we must work together as a coalition to win elections. This has never been in dispute. But that coalition can no longer be comprised of conservatives always being told to stand down in promoting their agenda, while moderates like Rove continue to lose elections in spectacular fashion.
Conservatives have had enough. Our days of playing second fiddle to moderates are over. We should always be open to good and helpful advice — but with the hindsight and history of knowing that none of it will ever come from Karl Rove.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/karl-rove-is-ruining-the-gop-111674.html#ixzz3Fbk1QiMl
FMCDH(BITS)
Agree with your list but would add Boehner, with great emphasis.
As a drunken sniveling crawling Speaker he has done more damage to conservatism than possibly all the others, with the exception of Rove.
Every good Speaker is out in public, making his claims, staking his turf, pounding on the enemy-—the enemy in the White House, in the Senate, even those in his own party if they need a good slap or two. Think Tip O’Neill, Newt, even Tom Delay who wasn’t Speaker but House Majority Leader.
McConnell may be a panicky little dipstick but with the majority we have in the House Boehner ought to be out front leading a positive, ruthless, victorious charge.
Instead the slobbering little sot is hiding away, ceding issue after issue if not race after race.
He has squandered so much that might have been ours.
Rick Santorum was with Rove on that, he also quietly supported Specter in 2010.
His type certainly is. Not for the good of the nation but what is in it for me attitude.
Yup I wrote this in a hurry on my smart phone. Had I had the time BONER surely would have been included. I don’t know who cries like a baby more, Boner or Glum Beck.
I recommend a trip by a phalanx of conservatives to the 2016 RNC convention like Abby Hoffman and the Yippies did to the DNC back in 1968 (only without the pot or the feces throwing....well ok....smoke ‘em if you got ‘em)
Time to either take bank the party or make a new better one.
Beck blubbers because he can’t drink anymore while Boehner does ‘cause he can...lol.
I knew that 12 years ago. Brent’s a little late to the party.
The fight for control of the party is an old one going all the way back to the days of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and JP Morgan before the McKinley/Rockefeller election trying to rule the nation. That is actually where the term Rockefeller Republican originated. He was a Progressive as in meaning a Liberal. Rockefeller for all practical purposes after Lincoln was the father of expanded federal government and federal powers.
This passage of Scripture gives me hope. God misses nothing. This is an apt description of the left if I’ve seen one. Their days are numbered. I’d rather that they experienced radical changes in their hearts but failing that...God gets the last word. “When I consider that God is a just God, I fear for my nation.” Can’t remember who said it...Thomas Jefferson, I think.
Isaiah 30:12-14
Therefore, The Holy of Israel says this:
“Because you scorn this Message,
Preferring to live by injustice
and shape your lives on lies,
This perverse way of life
will be like a towering, badly built wall
That slowly, slowly tilts and shifts,
and then one day, without warning, collapses—
Smashed to bits like a piece of pottery,
smashed beyond recognition or repair,
Useless, a pile of debris
to be swept up and thrown in the trash.”
Clarification: A Rockefeller Republican back in the days of John David Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Carnegie, was supporting William McKinley a fiscal Conservative. They manipulated that election by having Teddy Roosevelt as VP and were betting Teddy would never be POTUS. They lost. Nelson later on was the Liberal Republican and where the term Rockefeller Republican was to mean Liberal. After the bust up of Standard Oil it seems Carnegie and Rockefeller got into a charity competition and thus the generations to follow leaned liberal including Nelson Rockefeller. Here is some interesting info on the Rockefeller causes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_family
I love when he's doing his tedious gig 'cause I can get the dinner dishes in the dishwasher and settle back on the sofa with a hot cup of coffee after he's finished his evening drone.
Leni
Fox should have gotten rid of Rove and kept the toe sucker, Dick Morris. Morris was ever so much more entertaining.
Leni
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