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Longtime Republican operative Karl Rove is putting front-and-center the issue of Hillary Clinton’s age and health, contending that a fall she took in 2012 gave rise to a brain injury that she needs to disclose more fully, according to a person who heard him discuss the matter at a closed-door event last week.

In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, Fox News moved quickly to purge itself of its most troubled assets: Dick Morris, unquestionably the worst pundit of the cycle, was pushed out. Sarah Palin, a star fast fading, "parted ways" with the network. Karl Rove, who famously refused to concede Ohio to Obama even after Fox News called it for him, was temporarily sidelined. Rove came back, of course. A top Republican strategist with major political influence, he was too valuable to give up. But now, as the next presidential election cycle gets under way, Rove has once again found...

Over the weekend, Karl Rove repeatedly suggested that Hillary Clinton has had a brain injury, dredging up an early conspiracy theory questioning Clinton's ability to run for president.“Thirty days in the hospital?" Rove told a conference audience, according to Page Six, "And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.” A spokesperson for Clinton's team responded that her heath was "100 per cent. Period," adding, "Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying."

Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton may have brain damage.*SNIP* The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.” Rove repeated the claim a number of times to the audience. Clinton’s rep said, “Please assure Dr. Rove she’s 100 percent.”

<p>Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton might have brain damage.</p> <p>Onstage with Robert Gibbs and CBS correspondent and “Spies Against Armageddon” co-author Dan Raviv, Rove said Republicans should keep the Benghazi issue alive.</p> <p>He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012.</p>

Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton might have brain damage. Onstage with Robert Gibbs and CBS correspondent and “Spies Against Armageddon” co-author Dan Raviv, Rove said Republicans should keep the Benghazi issue alive. He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012. The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up...

The problem with the pledge recently crafted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which asks lawmakers to vow not to support immigration reform that would include amnesty, is that it's not an issue that all Republicans can get behind, says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. In 1986, Americans for Tax Reform put together a pledge for lawmakers to sign promising to "vote against and oppose all efforts to raise taxes."

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis won the Republican Senate nomination in the Tar Heel State on Tuesday evening, comfortably surpassing the 40 percent threshold to win the nomination. His victory ratifies the aggressive strategy adopted by establishment-oriented outside groups, led by American Crossroads, to spend millions on behalf of favored candidates and attack their rivals when necessary. North Carolina was the opening battleground in the fight between the Republican Party's two main factions, and it's a sign the establishment's no-holds-barred strategy is paying off. American Crossroads spent $1.6 million on behalf of Tillis, significantly more than the resources of...

The two Republican lieutenant governor candidates, David Dewhurst and Dan Patrick, faced off Friday night in a runoff debate. The debate took place at the studios of Houston Public Media. The runoff is May 27. The latest polls show Dewhurst, the current lieutenant governor, far behind Patrick, a state senator. Here’s a look at the race from KUHF, Houston’s public radio station: It's unusual for the incumbent to be unseated, but Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is as many as 20 points behind state Sen. Dan Patrick in the polls.

And yet just when the news is getting good, Rove is calling Silver's whole methodology into doubt. On Wednesday, he tweeted a link to a National Journal column titled "Why I Don't Agree With Nate Silver: Number-crunching Senate prediction models are fun to follow but are not very useful." "Smart piece: may disagree w/ some specifics, but major point is correct," Rove wrote. The major point is that the methodology behind Silver's projections is flawed: "Unlike baseball, where the sample size runs in the thousands of at-bats or innings pitched, these models overemphasize a handful of early polls at the...

Caught on a flight from Washington to Texas Sunday, Karl Rove, the guru of the GOP political establishment, was not pleased with a statement by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, a member of the House Republican leadership team, which sounded like a surrender in the fight to overturn Obamacare. Asked if the comment by Republican leadership acquiescing to the continuation of the Affordable Care Act was helpful to GOP chances in November, Rove said, “It doesn’t. It absolutely doesn’t.” Rove had not had a chance to read the article in the Spokane Spokesman-Review that quoted McMorris Rodgers as saying...

Oh, good grief! Karl Rove believes Jeb Bush is “the biggest thinker” in the Republican party today. Rove was asked today if Jeb Bush was going to run for president. “If I were betting I’d say yes. But, here’s the thing. He’s a very deliberate thoughtful guy. He’s the biggest thinker on our side. I’m glad he’s thinking about doing it.” Via FOX News Sunday: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Here are a few examples of Jeb Bush’s big thinking ideas: ** Illegal immigrants come to US in an “act of love” ** Illegal immigrants are “risk takers” ** Ted Cruz needs to have...

You've seen him on Fox News or read his seasoned opinions in The Wall Street Journal. He's one of the most prominent GOP strategists and a powerful voice for conservatives across the country.

Months away from Election Day, the Democrats are already cutting and running away from Obamacare. Clinton is the man to help them embrace it, attack obsessed Republicans—and win.Let Bill do it. With Democrats facing a daunting midterm season, it’s time to bring in the Big Dawg, not just as a campaigner but as a strategic driving force with the resources to deploy and dominate the message wars from coast to coast. Put him in charge of one of the existing super PACs—which would instantly multiply its fundraising—or form a new one that can operate on a genuinely super scale, with...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Friday responded to contentious remarks made by Jeb Bush last weekend, in which the potential 2016 Republican presidential rival said that illegal immigrants who come to the United States seeking a better life for their families often do so as "an act of love." “I think it wasn’t the most artful way of saying something, but I think he was well-intentioned,” Paul said in an interview with RealClearPolitics. “If I were to make the same point, I would say that people who seek the American dream are not bad people, but that doesn’t mean you...

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) leads a crowded Republican field for the right to face Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in November, according to a new survey conducted for a super PAC backing his campaign. Tillis scored 27 percent of the vote, compared with 16 percent for physician Greg Brannon and 10 percent for state Baptist Convention President Mark Harris. A handful of other candidates received only single-digit support.

Democratic San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, both expressed optimism on Tuesday that Congress could pass comprehensive immigration reform this year. Speaking at the Civil Rights Summit in Austin, Barbour said such reform is in the country's best interest, and told reporters it was too early to count the federal legislation out.

Via BuzzFeed, a vignette from the big Bushworld confab over the weekend to honor Bush 41. Imagine if the “tea-party era” in Republican politics, which began after eight years of Dubya and the nomination of John McCain, produced Mitt Romney and then Jeb Bush as presidential nominees. I’m treating the prospect of another Bush nomination as a test of whether the Republican grassroots, realistically, has any influence at all over who their party chooses. Say what you will about O but his win over Hillary six years ago proved that it’s still possible for the establishment favorite to be beaten...

One year ago, the Karl Rove-backed super PAC American Crossroads announced the creation of the Conservative Victory Project, an initiative it promised would torpedo Senate candidates who were too flawed to win a general election. The days of Todd Akins and Sharron Angles costing the party winnable Senate seats were over, so its backers said. But as activists ridiculed CVP as doomed to fail, it didn't raise any money from donors last year, and most activists forgot the once-ballyhooed project even existed

I have no objections to Jeb Bush running for president. He obviously has a wide appeal as a potential candidate. With a Mexican wife, and as a man who speaks fluent Spanish, he would be able to increase the Hispanic vote in the GOP column. On the other hand, many in the Republican base find his position on immigration untenable, and would fight him tooth and nail during primary season. He is also a serious advocate of education reform. His support of Common Core, however, will also find many who are in the conservative ranks objecting, since they fear that...