Posted on 11/15/2006 11:39:25 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Rove Sells Election Spin; Some in GOP Aren't Buying
By Kenneth T. Walsh 25 minutes ago
White House political architect Karl Rove is back on the offensive, offering an aggressively positive spin on last Tuesday's elections.
He is telling GOP operatives and organizers that things weren't as bad as they seemed and that the news media have been exaggerating the extent of GOP losses.
"There was a rush to say there was a huge wave against the Republican Party," says a Republican strategist who is close to Rove. "That was premature."
For example, Rove says many races went down to the wire--there were 35 House contests in which the winner got 51 percent of the vote or less--suggesting that the country is still closely divided between Republicans and Democrats. In the 18 races decided by 8,000 or fewer votes, the GOP won 12 and lost six, Rove says. Rove argues that there was a bad "environment" for the GOP, one marked by stories of scandal and corruption, intensified by the unpopularity of the Iraq war and President Bush.
Rove estimates that 10 House seats were lost to the GOP specifically because of one-time scandals and that those losses weren't due to any flawed strategy on his part. Rove also says the results were not outside the norm in which a president's party generally suffers losses in congressional elections in his sixth year. In addition, Rove tells glum Republicans that the party "saved" eight to 14 GOP candidates because of its vaunted 72-hour plan to get out the GOP vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What was your first clue????
I BROKE THE DAM!
Rove, You Incompetent Bastard.
I'm with you, PKM. Rove played *not-to-lose* in '04, rather than pressing to increase the majority for Bush and Republicans. In this election cycle, he played *don't-lose-too-much* rather than coming up with a positive vision and message. A GOP win in '06 could have driven a final nail into the national Democrat Party, but instead we gave them new life. Maybe the national GOP is somewhat exhausted, and needs new blood. I have found it a bit disturbing, though, that over the past two years I've seen some folks here on FR who were better able to defend the President's policies than the White House has been able to do.
Yeah, yeah...I know...
:-(
If you have noticed under recently, I have done very little posting defending the WH on here except occasionally. You are so right about how they played 2004 and 2006 elections and I would love to know why.
You beat me to it...
Seems clear to me that the reason was because of the constant campaign of lies, misinformation, disinformation waged against the GOP. If the Treason Media was not completely in the service of the Party of Treason elections would be huge GOP victories.
Where did "Secure the Borders First" prove to be a winning position (I mean, a position that actually swung the election)?
I know. My problem is they did know we were going to take a bath because they had the internal polling showing that fact. It could have been worse.
You are blaming Rove for Allen's defeat? Hilarious.
That is his job. What kills me are the people making excuses or telling us not to believe our own eyes. I know people on the hill who have behaved like this since 2004 and now they are updating their resumes for when they have to clean out their offices in 3 months. Ridiculous.
We need to stop playing the blame game and get on with "who is going to be an A candidate for 2008 for congress as well as the Presidency? I see a whole lot of introspection while we need innovation and bright stars to put on the table for the next election. We need a WINNABLE Presidential candidate, we need candidates at the senate and house levels who won't be run out of their seats or have an "october surprise" sent in by democrats who did their homework on us this year. We need to go RECRUITING TOP NAMES and faces who will win in states where we SHOULD be WINNING (like Florida, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, etc). What I really DON'T want to see are x41 and 43 throwbacks - they'ved served already, stay retired!
Karl Rove is a genius. You can't polish a turd, but he came close. With W being in his 6th year, with an approval rating in the 30s, and the pubbies having pedophiles in their ranks, and enablers of pedos in the leadership - topped with Frist's ethical issues, Duke Cunningham, and Tom Delay and the pubbies should be grateful that they didn't lose 100 seats.
My main concern is what all this means to the war on terror and Islamic extremism. Bush folded too easily on the "no-WMDs" conclusion in Iraq, and never even tried to rebut the "Bush Lied!" canard the Democrats have been harping on for almost five years. And the tendency of Republicans not to defend themselves against character assassination on the part of the left and the MSM has been endemic, including the "leaders" in congress. My sense over much of the last two years has been that if the White House isn't willing to strenuously and deftly defend itself, why should I? Take Peach, for instance...she's done a much better job tracking and documenting Saddam's links to terrorist groups, especially al Qaeda. How hard would it have been for someone at DOD or the White House to simply distill all of her links into a coherent rebuttal to the leftist/MSM pap?
Somewhere over the last two years, GWB's White House has slipped into "lame duck" mode. And, again, it concerns me that a White House and national party that is unwilling to defend itself has lost its ability to defend the west from the threat it faces from Islamic fascists.
"It's just a flesh wound."
If Rove didn't tell Dubya this on the day after the 2004 Election then
he's not so magnificent:
"Mr. President, if you haven't either clearly won in Iraq or have
withdrawn successfully from Iraq by the summer of 2006, there will
be nothing I can do to help hold The Senate and/or The House."
Here is one of those illegals who hire only illegals.
FYI, this company was operating right here illegally, and they were handing out these business cards at local Home Depots!
In Texas, with 4 major players running for Governor, most counties still went for The Governor. None of the counties' Governor races went to one of the independents.
Which will be a huge relief over the next 4 years.
In Texas, the elections in each county are run by the party who won the last Governors race.
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