Posted on 11/09/2012 8:43:26 AM PST by dirtboy
The Republican super-strategist was feeling the heat after his shadowy political committees burned through $100 million on anti-Obama attack ads — to little effect.
Republican super-strategist Karl Rove tried to shift blame Thursday for his failed spending spree to defeat President Obama, claiming Obama won reelection by “suppressing the vote.”
Rove was feeling the heat after his shadowy political committees burned through $100 million on anti-Obama attack ads — to little effect.
Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, joined the piling on Thursday, chortling that if he were one of the Republican benefactors who bankrolled Rove, he’d be “asking where my refund is.”
[snip]
Rove was the brains behind several Super PACs — private groups that can spend unlimited money on political ads — that spent heavily to defeat Democrats, including more than $100 million on ads bashing Obama.
Appearing Thursday on Fox News, Rove insisted that Obama won because he “succeeded in suppressing the vote” with negative ads “that turned off” voters, keeping them from the polls.
Fox News host Megyn Kelly didn’t buy it, interrupting Rove by saying, “But he won, Karl, he won!”
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
GOP and the P ain’t for Party.
No backbone. No principal. No fight.
NO fight.
shrinking because too many fool Republicans sat on the sidelines rather than go out and vote...
Rove is spot on regarding this issue. I’ve worked a couple of campaigns and the general rule is when you go negative your are sacrificing voters who may sway your way because you “went negative,” but you are banking more voters being turned away from your opponent.
Generally most campaigns use models where you largely go positive but use limited negative ads for effect against your opponent. Some analysis of past campaigns revealed that even in the down and dirty 2004 election, John Kerry’s campaign ads were 56% positive, 44% negative, and President Bush went with a similar model. Both candidate largely relied on PACs to put out the majority of negative campaign ads.
In the end President Bush finished with 62 million votes and Senator Kerry with 59 million. So basically between 2004s election and today 5 million fewer voters participated, and to make matters worse there are 20 million more eligible voters than in 2004. So in reality 25 million voters were out there to be mined, but where were they?
Obama and his minders did something unheard of, they ramped up the negativity to outrageous proportions... 86% (yes you read that right) of Obama’s ads were negative and largely ran uncontested. No campaign has ever run a campaign in this manner, and it’s clear what the goal was... to disgust voters with the whole process, and it worked. People were turned off by the negative tenor of the election and simply did not vote. I talked to dozens of Republicans and Independents who said politicians were all the same and they had no intention of voting. Some of my Repub friends drifted over to Gary Johnson.
It’s pretty sad what this administration did to the election process and it’s pretty sad we had a candidate unwilling to fight tooth and nail.
Yancy
Since he is so good at suppressing votes maybe the GOPe should put him in charge of all the inner city precincts.
As witnessed by the fact that Obama's totals from 2008 to 2012 dropped while Romney was unable to match McCain's totals in 2008. Those disaffected Obama voters largely didn't vote.
The GOP still has their head stuck in 2000 as to running an election. People get sick of phone calls and TV attack ads. You have to come up with new ways to reach potential voters, engage them and sway them to your side. Rove is a direct mail guy. And it shows.
You know what, you are full of crap. Romney ran a conservative campaign, it fell short, and of course Rove’s ads helped a lot, just not enough.
The nonsense about Palin who DID NOT RUN, is fantasy land.
Did you vote for Romney? That’s all I want to know. Because those who didn’t are a lot lower on my list than Karl Rove who put hundreds of milliopns into ads, and yeah he scrambled to the last second looking for a win.
Others just ran their mouths and sold out the USA.
Yeah Karl Rove, who made ads attacking Barack Obama, is the problem. Like hell.
That’s appalling!
They also changed the convention rules to prevent future insurgencies from the grass roots. Screw them.
I didn't vote for Romney - I voted my Libertarian conscience.
How any conservative can have anything whatever to do with the GOP is really beyond me.
Be prepared to hear all about lots of “voters staying home”...the Bipartisan Oligarchy would rather we all stew in that mess..than having us all bothered, and deciding to investigate, about all the voters voting who never voted...
Listening to descriptions of how “Democrats got out their ground game” with “superior ability to bring those to the polls who normally would never go” by the commentators on Fox election night..made me realize..what they actually have done is track names that HAVE NOT VOTED IN MANY, MANY elections cycles....and vote them.
A well-funded project, county-by-county..to examine the names signed in at at the polls..and going out to find those individuals..you’ll find they were never physically at he polls..or they themselves never filled out the absentee ballot....or their names in the death registers.
I have to agree with Axelrod on this one. Rove is a bad investment. He simply does not understand: 1) who the hell the enemy is; 2)who the hell his friends are; and 3) what the nature of his enemy is and what the hell their tactics are.
Karl lives in this world where everything is about capturing the mushy middle. Earth to Karl, the game is about converting the other side and, if not possible, keeping their base at home.
Conservative voters who stayed home are at least one step lower on the evolutionary scale than any Obama voter. So if they like being stupider than Obama’s voters they deserve extinction, and they are going to get it.
Maybe even real extinction. Yes people are DYING right now under Obama care, “conservatives” who didn’t vote and are going on about Sarah Palin WHO DIDNT RUN, are dirt off my shoe.
Further to that, his failure to have Bush on Prime Time TV on election eve 2000, was a terrible miscalculation that could easily have cost them the election won by a very slender thread.
Because of the last minute ancient DUI gambit of the Dem media, Bush would have had a huge audience, and an outstanding opportunity--similar to that which Nixon used to tremendous advantage in 1952, with his Little Dog speech.
Romney could have won, for that matter, with an election eve address, by winning back at least those women who drifted back to Obama after his "Sandy" photo-ops. This is all so obvious, it is almost criminal that it was not employed.
William Flax
Well another person PROUD to be stupider than Obama’s voters, how does it feel to be so stupid, while you mockl people that put ads against Obama all over.
Funny how it’s OK for the left to talk about voter suppression, but not when the right does. Maybe next time, Rove will take voter fraud into his calculations - then he might get it right.....
Sorry, but Romney winning would not have saved us. He would have "reached across the aisle" like he promised and when that at best simply slowed the decline, he and the Republicans would have been blamed for decades.
The Republicans will probably lose the House in 2016, since they will be blamed for what is to come, regardless of who won the election. Only then will there be a chance to get people to see who is responsible. And even then it is only a chance. It could take more to get people to see the truth.
As long as the GOP allows Dems in Drag to “moderate” the debates, we have no chance of winning.
The most sickening part of this story is “Crooked Nose”.. “Barbie Doll”..”I’m so georgeous”..”Look at me! Look at me!”..Megan Kelly being so giddy. I think she talks fast so she can hear herself talk more.
It is typical of the left to accuse others of what they are doing. To wit: it is more than coincidence that two African-American FB ‘friends’ who had not posted in the past three years each posted on Election Day that they were out to prevent voter suppression. And now we learn of the improbable statistics masking fraud, white vote repression, and the consequent disenfranchisement.
As such, I believe that FR posters advising against fraud investigations are part of the opposition.
We are so screwed, and they know it.
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