Posted on 09/16/2010 9:46:36 AM PDT by mnehring
Like many of you, I am very concerned about the rumblings of the Republican power base, specifically Karl Rove. They seem to be sending some very negative messages towards Tea-Party candidates like O'Donnell. In addition what what we've seen, I believe they are floating negative comments to see how people react.
However, I have been thinking- is there a different strategy behind this?
First, about Rove- what do we know?
1. Unlike what he is portraying with O'Donnell, Rove has never had a problem working with candidates with baggage. The financial charges against O'Donnell are minuscule compared to the accusations against Bush.
2. Rove has, in the past, supported the under-dog Conservative over the establishment Republican. A great example of this is his early on support of Rubio even when common sense hinted Crist would walk away with it.
3. Rove is very much a state-by-state strategist, always working messages to how the state trends.
Some other things we know are:
4. Delaware is a very Blue state.
5. O'Donnell has massive grass-roots support, with independents trending towards her.
6. No one can deny the wave of the tea-party candidates recently.
With those thoughts- what if Rove has a completely different strategy.
1. He knows that O'Donnell is running in a blue state, so his strategy is to help position herself as not party of the Republican establishment but as an average person- thus appealing to more than just Republican voters but also disgruntled Dems.
2. He can't deny that a LOT of the tea-party movement is against the establishment. By making her appear to be an anti-establishment with a common opponent of both Establishment Republicans and Democrats- it fires up the tea-party and average Joe base behind her. No one can deny that this opposition to her by the establishment has fired up the base- look at her donations in the past two days.
3. Rove and Rush are close friends. Before this primary, Rush was strongly pushing for O'Donnell and already working the message about her being opposed to the Republican establishment. All of these messages have worked together well.
I would be impressed if you were right, but I don't think that Rove is that clever a strategist. Nor do I think he is that bad at reading people - the words he chose would hurt O'Donnell with any voter who took him seriously.
Well, if it is the latter, it completely flopped, lol.
No, Rove’s candidate for 12 could be running against Palin.
This is prob the beginning of a primary fight.
Is that Castle that Gollum-Reid is holding?
But I don't think so. I certainly think Rove is helping O'Donnell very much and making it likely that she will win. But I believe Rove is doing this by accident. I consider him a pure Republican establishment guy and I think he is the enemy.
Bingo! The long, hairy but well-coiffed arm of Dirty-Tricks Romney?
For the “magnificent bastard” tactic to be useful I’d think he’d have distanced himself with words not so useful to the ‘Rats
He was too personal and vicious and specific, and now his words will be used against O’Donnell during the next 7 weeks
I think you pose an intriguing possibility, but if that’s what he was up to he went way overboard
Did it? She went from polling behind by -25 to -11 in one day and she went from raising only $50K through the entire primary to almost $1Million in one day.
Rove is going to voluntarilly allow his reputation to be totally destroyed in the minds of most conservatives just to help out a politician he was actively trying to defeat not long before?
Sorry. I'm not buying that.
Coons. Reid said Coons was “my pet”.
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Rove didn’t favor her, because he didn’t (doesn’t) think she can win.
Now that’s funny.
That’s not the behavior of any political supporter or friend. That’s someone doing a dirty deed for a dirty professional purpose.
Given the fact that Christine O'Donnell's opponent is apparently a hard-core Marxist, it is truly incredible that Rove is doing all he can to make her lose.
No, all I’m saying is - I don’t agree he did it on purpose. No one would blow up their career like that for one candidate. I watched the interview live (I’m sure you did too), it was a genuine meltdown.
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