Free Republic

Having watched several promising campaigns collapse in 2012 after candidates made catastrophic mistakes, national Republican leaders are leaving nothing to chance as they prepare for this year’s midterm elections. They’re summoning contenders—especially those who seem inexperienced, unpredictable or inclined to provocative opinions—to first-of-a-kind training at the GOP’s Senate campaign headquarters to learn, in part, what not to say and how not to say it. […] Since the GOP’s disappointing 2012 showing, party attention has focused on the mistakes made. In addition to the Indiana and Missouri meltdowns and presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s defeat, campaign problems contributed to unforeseen Senate losses...

On Election Night 2012, Democrats had more than the reelection of President Obama to celebrate. Karl Rove, the mastermind Republican strategist hated and feared by Democrats, had a meltdown live on Fox News. A new documentary, "Mitt," Greg Whiteley's film of Mitt Romney and his family during his 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, released on Netflix on Friday, sheds more light on that bizarre incident. Rove's famous hissy-fit took place when the network called the state of Ohio for Obama, putting the president over the 270 electoral votes needed to win reelection. Rove argued that Fox's analysts had acted prematurely.

On a conference call with Gov. Chris Christie’s most loyal donors a few nights ago, his brother, Todd, pressed for last-minute cash to pay for the governor’s inauguration, a daylong fete ending on Ellis Island. Then the governor himself came on the line, trying to convince his listeners that he was moving beyond the George Washington Bridge scandal and getting back to work, according to two participants. The next day, state investigators sent 20 subpoenas to his inner circle and the inquiry widened. This was supposed to be a season of triumph and celebration for the governor of New Jersey...

Even though Karl Rove's American Crossroads brand has been damaged after the group declared war against conservative candidates, the group will reportedly try to influence the 2014 midterm elections by bullying campaigns and creating groups that, on the surface, do not seem to be affiliated with them.

<p>It's time to see how well I did with my predictions for 2013 and to offer a set of 2014 forecasts.</p> <p>I got 10 predictions for this year right. President Obama's job approval rating did drop—from 53% at year's start to 40% this week. There was a new administration scandal, the most significant being the IRS targeting of conservative groups. And ObamaCare's implementation was indeed "ragged and ugly" and "a continuing political advantage to Republicans" as forecast.</p>

Political strategist Karl Rove congratulated himself on Wednesday for getting 10 predictions right for this year—and he forecast that Republicans will keep control of the House of Representatives and end up with as many as 51 seats in the Senate in next year’s congressional elections. For 2014, President Barack Obama’s “disapproval rating will end higher than this week’s 53 percent” in the Gallup poll, Rove said in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal. “Republicans will keep the House with a modest pickup of four to six seats. The GOP will most likely end up with 50 or 51...

A decade ago, Karl Rove was President George W. Bush's right-hand man and one of the most powerful political figures in America. And even after his fortunes briefly dipped at the end of the Bush era, Rove roared to life again, tapping into and fueling the Tea Party movement through his massive super PAC, American Crossroads. But today, with a GOP civil war raging between establishment types and upstart conservatives in the mold of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Rove's once-strong influence has begun to wane. An embodiment of the Bush-era Republicans who have fallen out of favor of late,...

Well, John ("Cornhole") Cornyn has wasted no time going after Steve Stockman. We knew Steve was vulnerable and this was going to come, but, who would have thought the attacks would come this early in the campaign. This article re: The FEC looking into Stockman's Campaign Contributions was, of all places, on the FRONT PAGE of the Beaumont (TX) Enterprise newspaper today. This will be a very nasty Primary; tighten your seat belts folks. http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/default/article/FEC-questions-excessive-donations-to-Stockman-5092723.php

A quiet but intense struggle over money and influence is roiling the Republican Party just as the 2014 election season is getting underway. At least a dozen “super PACs” are setting up to back individual Republican candidates for the United States Senate, challenging the strategic and financial dominance that Karl Rove and the group he co-founded, American Crossroads, have enjoyed ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 cleared the way for unlimited independent spending. In wooing donors, the new groups — in states like Texas, Iowa, West Virginia and Louisiana — are exploiting Crossroads’ poor showing in...

A conservative nonprofit is launching a new ad touting Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) as partners in the fight against ObamaCare. The ad, from Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, is backed by a $382,000 buy and will run for a week across the state. “For Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, fighting ObamaCare isn’t about politics. It’s a fight for the Kentucky families who are losing their health coverage,” the ad says. It adds that the two are “working together to stop ObamaCare.” The spot could give McConnell some cover on his right flank, where he faces a challenge...

Karl Rove is slamming Martin Bashir for his “disgusting and vile” comments against Sarah Palin that ultimately led to the MSNBC host’s resignation. “This was beyond the pale. Sure, we are going to have harsh comments about political figures from people who don’t share their views, but this was a disgusting and vile and highly personal and offensive comment,” Rove said Wednesday on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” Bashir resigned Wednesday for comments he made on his Nov. 15 broadcast during which he called Sarah Palin “a world class idiot” and referenced a diary of a former plantation manager who...

In response to the news that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is funding Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) to the tune of $26 million in 2012, Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin told Breitbart News that Rove cannot buy his way into the conservative movement. “The old adage 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' is more relevant in today’s political arena than ever before,” Martin said. “It is not surprising that there are groups we thought were in this fight with us have been shown to have ulterior motives."

Tax documents from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS show that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is largely funded by Rove, ProPublica’s Kim Barker reports. -snip- On its 2012 tax return, Barker reported, the biggest grant Rove’s Crossroads GPS gave to anybody was a $26.4 million grant it gave to Norquist’s ATR for “social welfare.” -snip- ATR spokesman John Kartch and Rove spokesman Jonathan Collegio both declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica about the grant.

Americans for Tax Reform, the politically active nonprofit headed by longtime antitax activitst Grover Norquist, raised and spent nearly $31 million in 2012, according to its tax filing for the year -- a new record for the group. -snip- In addition, the vast majority of ATR's funds -- $26.4 million, or 85 percent -- came from Crossroads GPS, the 800-pound-gorilla among conservative dark money nonprofits that are highly politically active and don't disclose their donors. That means that ATR used at least a sizable portion of the Crossroads grant to fund its political ads, even given the fact that it...

On its 2012 tax return, GOP strategist Karl Rove’s dark money behemoth Crossroads GPS justified its status as a tax-exempt social welfare group in part by citing its grants of $35 million to other similarly aligned nonprofits. (Here’s the tax return itself, which we detailed last week.) The return, signed under penalty of perjury, specified that the grants would be used for social welfare purposes, “and not for political expenditures, consistent with the organization’s tax-exempt mission.” But that’s not what happened. New tax documents, made public last Tuesday, indicate that at least $11.2 million of the grant money given to...

Trumpeting the ever-increasing weight of outside political organizations, Karl Rove's campaign groups out-fundraised the Democratic National Committee during the 2012 election cycle, according to a draft tax return obtained Friday by the Wall Street Journal. American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, Crossroads GPS, together raked in more than $325 million during the 2012 campaign. The DNC, by contrast, raised $316 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. -snip- Expenditures for Crossroads GPS included donations to other conservative groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and a $538,000 salary for its president, Steven Law.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on a conference call organized by Karl Rove’s Crossroads organization for large donors and their advisers on Oct. 30 that the Tea Party movement, in his view, is a “nothing but a bunch of bullies” that he plans to “punch … in the nose.” On the call, according to a donor who was on it, McConnell personally named Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) as Tea Party conservatives he views as problematic for him. “The bulk of it was an attack on the Tea Party in general, Cruz in particular,” the source,...

Former George W. Bush strategist and presidential adviser Karl Rove visited Fayetteville on Wednesday to raise money for Thom Tillis, the state House speaker and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. The soiree was held at the home of Terry and Rosalind Hutchens and open to people donating $1,000 to $2,600. The event was closed to the press; neither Rove nor Tillis granted interviews before the fundraiser.

The Obama administration is offering a "thinly described illegal bribe" to entice insurance companies to reinstate plans they have canceled, GOP operative Karl Rove says. Appearing Thursday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren," Rove held up a three-page letter sent out Thursday by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services explaining that the "risk corridor program" would be expanded to help companies "ameliorate unanticipated changes in premium revenue." The problem, Rove said, is that the risk corridor program applies only to "qualified plans" under the Affordable Care Act – not to grandfathered plans. "What they're saying...

In a Quinnipiac poll, just 30% of independents approve of ObamaCare. This problem will get worse and poses a dilemma for Mr. Obama and Democrats. A March analysis by Healthpocket.com estimated that less than 2% of individual plans comply with ObamaCare's mandates. A Nov. 7 study by McClatchy Newspapers suggests as many as 52 million people, including many covered by their employers, could lose their plan. Until now, many people who disagreed with Mr. Obama's agenda still liked him. But a late October Fox poll found his personal favorability at 45% and his unfavorability at 50%. Duplicity will do that....