Posted on 05/02/2013 9:02:25 AM PDT by jimbo123
Former Bush adviser and GOP strategist Karl Rove says Republicans have a good chance of taking the Senate from Democrats in 2014 if they avoid nominating the types of candidates who stumbled badly in once competitive 2012 races.
“Republican success will depend on having quality Senate candidates,” Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. “Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock self-destructed last fall, and other candidates squandered important opportunities.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
1. Self-proclaim philosophy. Too many followers of party establishment used Rove as the gold standard. When he said a state was safe for Obama, all national pulled out of that state - despite denials. I saw that first hand last election. 2. A blind squirrel could see that, but Rove needs to shut his mouth if he wants to be a strategist. You can be a strategist or a commentator. They are different jobs. 3. Rove lost 2/3 of his races or more last time.
Rove got lucky with Bush. He's arguably good on GOTV circa 2004 (and Bush only won due to Kerry being a traitor and swift-boated), although a lot of that was Mehlman and Dowd. His strategy was targetted at soccer mom types after the Clinton elections. He was brutal in primaries and overly nice and weak in generals. Bush didn't fight back. McCain didn't. Romney was brutal in primaries but a pansy in the general. That had Rove's prints and tactics all over it and it bombed.
” I thought Rove’s objective was to win Republican seats. That situation will always be a mystery to me.”
No mystery to me. Rove would rather loose races than win them with people he regards as too Conservative. Bush is gone, Rove should be gone too. The country doesn’t need him trying to define our candidates for us.
To paraphrase Fast Eddie's old slogan. Vote for the weasel. It's important.
Sanford
Exactly. Rove has been evicted by his actions and his failures. People need to stop sending this hippo money.
Current polls have it tight, with the comedian’s sister ahead by 2 points. She’s hardly already won.
Democrats: “Never let any crisis go to waste.”
Rove Republicans: “Never let any opportunity go unsquandered.”
“Sharon Angle did not ‘self-destruct’. She was a good conservative facing an uphill battle. Do you think some mealy mouthed Republican would have defeated Reid? The man has the most effective GOTV network there is with the culinary unions.”
I beg to differ. my wife is from one of the major business families in Las Vegas so although we live in CA, we do know what’s going on in Nevada. I actually contacted Bill Raggio, a then Republican Senator from Reno. According to him, Angle was a disaster as a legislator. She fought with everyone and had no support from the Party in Nevada. Then there was the (Akin issue) with her in that every time she opened her mouth, she stuck her foot all the way down to her a$$. Reid’s son lost the governor’s race by a landslide. You don’t think that the same union cabal that got Reid elected wasn’t working for Rory? The truth is that Rory had a good opponent and Harry didn’t. My guess is that either of Sharron’s opponents would have beaten Reid, but didn’t get the chance thanks to the Tea Party in this instance.
Yes, I think Sanford did win that rather easily. I think Ted Turner’s son, who is conservative, was his opponent in fact.
If my aunt had....
Well to be clear, I do hope Sanford wins - just as I hoped Akin would win, and that Angle would win, and so on. Having said that, I followed all three of these primaries - all were odd for different reasons - and all have lessons to be learned regardless of how the general turns out.
Okay, I’ll concede. The next time Reid is up for re-election, let’s run a Castle-type against him, and see who wins. It should be interesting. Karl Rove will have yet another shot to break his losing streak.
Yeah, so it wasn’t as if Sanford won by default or anything. He sold himself to the district, begging for forgiveness, and they decided he was the guy they wanted.
At the end of the day, this is Tim Scott’s seat. People are pretty conservative there.
“Okay, I’ll concede. The next time Reid is up for re-election, let’s run a Castle-type against him, and see who wins. It should be interesting. Karl Rove will have yet another shot to break his losing streak.”
That’s the last thing i’d want to see. Just how are Angle’s former opponents in that vein? They were definitely more “establishment” but they were not Castles.
I think it's simpler than that. Rove wants to be kingmaker.
So, would you not have backed Castle against O’Donnell? My position is that he was so terrible, no amount of increased victory likelihood would have been enough to gain my support.
That’s correct, which brings up the issue of what “forgiveness” in politics really means. I would not vote for a liberal (and damned near retarded) Dem like Colbert Busch over Sanford’s indescretions - but sheesh - it is too soon IMO for him to appropriately waltz back into the public trust given the very bizarre story he was involved in. This was not just banging the secretary on the side and getting caught.
I wonder if some of the voters were trying to convince themselves they were good and forgiving people by voting Sanford - almost similar to the way voters tried to convince themselves they were not racist by voting Obama.
Just my ramblings. I do hope he wins...and the polling is looking better....
I am rejecting that this crap about choosing people “of quality” is a trap. We want people who will stand with us. Now, you may not be “us.” certainly if you are with Karl, you identify with an elite class that holds itself a cut above the hoi polloi. I agree that even the Dims hold to something like this. We don’t see the likes of Jesse Jackson(sr) in the senate, do we? That even though Jesse has—had— raw talent far in excess of hacks like Durbin.
huh?
Hey, just now, polls have them in a dead heat. With regards to forgiveness, I wouldn’t have ever wanted him back in political life. While I absolutely forgive him personally, because I believe he’s genuinely sorry, that doesn’t mean people who violate codes of ethics belong in public office. It’s why Clinton should have been impeached, despite the lies.
That said, the woman he’s running against is an Elizabeth Warren equivalent. I DO NOT want that cockroach in the federal government. We have enough moonbats.
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