CIRCA 2012 Rove’s failure to get election results and public meltdown on Fox News
By Kenneth T. Walsh, Contributor Nov. 8, 2012
ONE OF THE BIGGEST losers in Tuesday’s 2012 election was Karl Rove, the Fox News commentator and Republican strategist, and the man that Democrats love to hate. His repeated predictions of victory for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney were wrong, and he was off base again in his snarky election-night assessment on Fox that Romney would win Ohio (President Obama did).
Today, amid a public spanking by some conservatives, Rove’s luster has faded, and he is trying to recover his reputation as the premier Republican strategist in the country.
On Fox News, where Rove is a paid commentator, Rove said Thursday morning that Romney had persuaded Americans that he was a better leader than Obama. “This thing was won.” Rove said, but it slipped away for various reasons. Rove added in his Wall Street Journal column Thursday that the president was “lucky....Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan.” Rove also indicated that Obama’s get-out-the vote campaign was much better than Romney’s.
Many remained upset by Rove, including GOP donors who opened their wallets for two political groups that Rove co-founded, American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS. The groups’ spending of tens of millions of dollars is now being criticized for being ineffective.
“They gave him millions of dollars and they have nothing to show for it,” a prominent GOP strategist told me. “They’re asking, ‘Where did the money go?’”.......in any logical universe” Rove “would never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again and no one would give a dime to [Rove’s] ineffective super PACS, such as American Crossroads.”
There are ups and down in politics, and Rove is still a prominent voice in the GOP. But his reputation for brilliance as the conservative Svengali has taken a tumble and he is another casualty of Tuesday’s election.
Many Republicans had been sold on Rove as a brilliant strategist who not only led George W. Bush’s two successful presidential campaigns but could also lead the GOP to better days this year and in the future.
“He over-promised and under-delivered,” says a former senior adviser to President Ronald Reagan. “He seems to have just become a spin artist.”
One of Rove’s hallmarks was his success in the 2004 campaign by emphasizing the GOP base and bringing as many Republican voters as possible to the polls rather than expanding the universe of voters available to the GOP. This meant a heavy reliance on white voters, especially white men. But many are arguing that Rove’s strategy has become outmoded because the electorate has changed. The percentage of white voters has declined steadily from 87 per cent in 1992 to 72 per cent today. Meanwhile, the percentage of African American and Hispanic voters has surged, and is voting Democratic, as are women and young people.
CIRCA 2015 Rove’s Crossroads PAC Is No Longer G.O.P.’s ‘Big Dog’
Karl Rove and other leading Republican strategists started American Crossroads, the “super PAC” that has been among the single most powerful forces in national politics. But its pre-eminence is being tested.
By Eric Lichtblau and Maggie Haberman
May 21, 2015
WASHINGTON — For three election cycles, American Crossroads, the brainchild of Karl Rove and other leading Republican strategists, has been among the most powerful forces in national politics, a shadow party that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, data and opposition research to help elect candidates.
But in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Crossroads — among the first outside groups to fully exploit the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashing wealthy donors and corporations — has been buffeted by a rapidly changing political landscape that is testing its pre-eminence, and potentially its survival.
The nonprofit arm of Crossroads is facing an Internal Revenue Service review that could eviscerate its fund-raising. Data projects nurtured by Mr. Rove are being supplanted in Republican circles by a more successful initiative funded by the Koch political network, which has leapfrogged the Crossroads organizations in size and reach.
And the group faces intense competition for donors from a new wave of “super PACs” that are being set up by backers of the leading Republican candidates for president, who are unwilling to defer to Mr. Rove’s authority or cede strategic and fund-raising dominance to the organizations he helped start.If the group’s role seems diminished, Crossroads officials are not complaining publicly. If anything, they are lowering expectations for an organization that raised $300 million in the 2012 cycle.
“Our goal is not to make American Crossroads the big dog of 2016,” Mr. Law said in an interview. “Our goal is to win the White House and hold the Senate and the House.”
He added that in the large field of Republican groups and campaigns, “we’re a first baseman who effectively plays our position.”
“We’re a critical player,” he said, “but part of the team.”
The group still plans to get heavily involved in some Senate primaries and in defending Senate seats in the general elections in 2016, officials involved with Crossroads said.
The creation of the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC blessed by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and operated by Crossroads leadership, will be a major vehicle for that. But Crossroads’s involvement in the presidential race is still under discussion.
Mr. Rove, the veteran Republican operative whom President George W. Bush called the architect of his 2004 re-election campaign, declined to comment on the group’s role in the 2016 campaign, referring questions to Mr. Law.
But there is no doubt other groups have emerged that have moved beyond simply flooding the airwaves with television ads — traditionally the major priority of Crossroads. Charles G. and David H. Koch, who began Americans for Prosperity about the same time as Crossroads was founded, have expanded their political network, focusing on grass-roots organizing, developing a sustainable trove of voter data, and starting an initiative called Libre, which is aimed at engaging Hispanic voters.
Republican presidential candidates, using fund-raising techniques that Crossroads itself helped pioneer, are creating their own super PACs that have enabled large donors to make unlimited contributions directly through them rather than through outside groups like Crossroads.
Chief among them is Right to Rise, the super PAC that is supporting Jeb Bush, whose donor network overlaps significantly with that of Crossroads.
The group is facing a long list of other political and financial obstacles as well. Two of the biggest donors to Crossroads — Bob Perry and Harold Simmons — have died since the 2012 campaign. In that election, many of the congressional candidates it backed — along with Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president — took a drubbing, raising questions about whether donors got much bang for their buck.
The group has also lost some of its most visible fund-raisers over time. Ed Gillespie, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, left in 2012 to join Mr. Romney’s campaign, and Haley Barbour, who also once held the chairman title and is a prodigious fund-raiser, departed in early 2013. A fund-raising advisory group formed by Crossroads after Mr. Barbour’s departure failed to accomplish much.
More recently, Carl Forti, the longtime Crossroads political director who simultaneously worked on the pro-Romney super PAC Restore our Future, in 2012, is said by four people with direct knowledge of the discussions to have been in talks with at least one 2016 campaign — that of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who is not yet an official candidate. Mr. Forti did not respond to an email seeking comment.
A history of personal tensions between Mr. Rove and Jeb Bush could further undercut the group’s role in the presidential race, should Mr. Bush emerge as his party’s nominee.
Although Mr. Rove was George W. Bush’s top political adviser, his relationship with Jeb Bush has long been described as strained. Mr. Rove was seen by Jeb Bush’s team as poaching some of their stump speech material when the two brothers were running for governor in Florida and in Texas in 1994, and relationships between him and Mike Murphy, Jeb Bush’s top strategist, have long been tense, although some say there has been a thaw of late.
And while Mr. Rove is beloved by a number of Republican donors, many grass-roots Republicans regard him as too closely tied to a presidency they see as having been insufficiently conservative.
Several donors who had grown familiar with the Crossroads pitches over the last four years said the group had been fairly quiet on the fund-raising circuit since the 2014 midterms. But Crossroads officials say that there is no threat to their fund-raising base, predicting that many donors will be willing to write two large checks — one to them and another to committees tied to a particular candidate. In 2014, Crossroads, despite a slow start, raised more than $100 million by November.
“People are as enthusiastic as ever about what we are trying to accomplish, and we are enjoying significant support from donors, including from those who have also supported specific presidential candidates,” said Ian Prior, a spokesman for Crossroads, who joined the organization this month in one of four new senior-level hirings.
Mr. Law said the group planned to double the number of staff members to about two dozen in the next nine months as it gears up for the election. But he would not say how much it hoped to raise. Donald F. McGhan, a Republican campaign-finance lawyer, said it was not clear how those efforts would play out. “It’s really too early to tell this cycle who is going to be the dominant one and whether Crossroads is going to be more relevant or less relevant,” he said.
But Mel Sembler, a strong backer of Mr. Bush who is also involved with Crossroads, said speculation about the group’s changing role was exaggerated. He said that Crossroads was already drawing large numbers of donors who were also supporting Mr. Bush, and he predicted that would accelerate in the months ahead.“Crossroads has been amazing,” he said, “in raising money and deploying it effectively.”
Anthony Scaramucci, a Republican donor and financier who is currently supporting Governor Walker, said he expected that Mr. Rove — and Crossroads — would find a way to maintain their influence.“I would never underestimate him,” he said.
Eric Lichtblau reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York.