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Karl Rove’s idea of electability: GOP elites keep getting it wrong
BIZ PAC Review (West Palm Beach, Florida) ^ | February 8, 2013 | Jonathon Moseley

Posted on 02/08/2013 12:15:48 PM PST by Moseley

Republican insiders want to force Republican voters to choose more “electable” nominees than examples like Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, so Karl Rove launched the American Crossroads super PAC to counteract the tea party.

Undeniably, better candidates are better and worse candidates are worse. Unfortunately, that meaningless platitude illustrates the problem. GOP elites have no idea who is going to win an election, and there are several reasons I say that.

First, the establishment wants fiscal conservatives who downplay social issues. But drunken sailors are more restrained with money than establishment Republicans, the tea party complains. The trouble with fiscal conservatives is they aren’t fiscally conservative. Insiders evade scrutiny of massive over-regulation and soaring debt by scapegoating social issues.

Second, Rove’s type of candidate really isn’t qualified, because trust is the No. 1 qualification. If I trust how a politician will vote, why do I care what he used to do? Congress is not a resume fashion show. Rove’s preferred candidates fail the most important electoral test with Republican voters.

Third, is the Republican establishment any better at identifying “electable” candidates than Republican primary voters? Marco Rubio couldn’t win, the establishment told us. “Some [Florida] insiders whisper that Rubio expects to lose,” Real Clear Politics reported in June 2009, “but is running statewide to establish himself for a future race.”

Rand Paul wasn’t electable, the Karl Roves told us. Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Paul’s 2010 Kentucky race caused “squeamishness” among worried insiders. Now both Rubio and Paul are suggested as possible candidates for president in 2016. In fact, Ronald Reagan was unelectable, according to GOP elites in 1980.

What’s going on here? In 2010, O’Donnell won 40 percent of the vote for Delaware’s U.S. Senate seat. In 2012, Mitt Romney, the most establishment candidate in decades, won the exact same amount of the Delaware vote for president. Romney enjoyed a united party hungry for victory. O’Donnell fought uphill against a harshly divided party. Exit polls show that 16 percent of Republicans voted for O’Donnell’s rival, Democrat Chris Coons, helping him win the election. Yet both Romney and O’Donnell got the same percentage of Delaware’s vote.

So are we focused on the wrong things? Maybe candidates aren’t the biggest problem. Could it be that GOP insiders really stink at running campaigns? Are insiders out of touch with the voters? Insider theories don’t seem to work in real life.

In 2008, GOP moderate, war hero and Senate veteran John McCain got about the same vote in Delaware for president as O’Donnell, who had almost no money. Moderate Delaware GOP Chairman Tom Ross declared O’Donnell unelectable. But Ross lost his own 1998 race by 27.2 percent to 72.8 percent in moderate New Castle County.

The entire establishment enterprise assumes that GOP insiders actually know in advance who is electable and why. That key assumption deserves some closer scrutiny and deeper thought.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Delaware; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: americancrossroads; christineodonnell; karlrove; teaparty
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To: Graewoulf

GOP Football Ass. Coach Rove was just on Hannity defending his GOPe associations and defended it by using the Akin defense where GOPe had decided more or less on another candidate, yet they still gave 40,000 to Todd Akin’s campaign. GOP Football Ass. Coach Rove let everyone know that Harry Reid had paid for and developed an endorcement PACT to bolster Todd Akin on his many Conservative values through the primary campaign in order to be able to set up the most Conservative candidate to run their Demonrat in order to have extreme contrasted opposition against Akin.

After all the case of Todd Akin GOP Football Ass. Coach Rove squeezed out his righteous reasoning, he threw Rep. Steven King and others under his “extreme right wing Conservative” definition without actually saying so, and then GOP Football Ass. Coach Rove told us that his want is to help candidates that can push the true conservative agenda for our country by getting them elected.

I love your football analogy because I can’t do the same. :0)


41 posted on 02/08/2013 2:54:23 PM PST by Herbster
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To: PhilDragoo

I don’t like Newt being portrayed in that same bus.
However, it may just be my personal feelings.


42 posted on 02/08/2013 2:56:30 PM PST by Herbster
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To: Trapped Behind Enemy Lines

Couldn’t have done WORSE!


43 posted on 02/08/2013 3:03:24 PM PST by US Navy Vet (Go Packers! Go Rockies! Go Boston Bruins! See, I'm "Diverse"!)
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To: Herbster

I think Congressman King has some problems with ‘foot in mouth disease’ similar, if not worse, than Aiken. Let’s look at his record of kooky statements

1. Women who have been legitimately raped or victims of incest don’t get pregnant because their reproductive system rejects the sperm.

(Forget about science, does anyone want this as the face of the Party? I don’t care if he can get elected in some corn patch district in Iowa. This ultimately reflects badly on all of us nationwide with all women)

2. Mexicans who come to America are like pet dogs. You want the pick of the litter. And border fences should be electrified, that’s how you control livestock.

(All Mexican-Americans will rightfully infer that he is a full-blown racist. I don’t care if he is but don’t put me or my party behind that Aryan Brotherhood kind of thinking.)

Just because someone is a reliable vote on most conservative issues, we don’t have to support him if he’s an idiot or a bigot.

I see most Tea Party folks as intelligent middle class, patriotic Americans. Surely we can find a better candidate among these folks and our obligation is to find them. If not, then many decent Republicans will defect or simply not vote. King isn’t my idea of the ‘pick of the litter’ to use his own standard.

And it isn’t ignoble or backstabbing or RINO to point this out.


44 posted on 02/08/2013 3:23:00 PM PST by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: Moseley

Lying scum, fake Indians that have robbed the government of millions are much more electable, at least the democrats don’t have any trouble electing them.


45 posted on 02/08/2013 3:30:49 PM PST by itsahoot (MSM and Fox free since Nov 1st. If it doesnÂ’t happen here then it didn't happen.)
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To: oldenuff2no
In American politics ideological considerations are spread out over a bi-modal saddle ~ and involve thousands of factions. The left/right doctrine simply doesn't apply.

There are 90 million adults who have not registered to vote. That's where you need to go looking for the natural Republicans or Conservatives ~ and get them registered and get them to vote.

There's no repository of leftwing voters to be had.

46 posted on 02/08/2013 4:11:37 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: wildbill
You are aware that Mexicans are white folks ~ they actually had the United Nations vote on that way back when.

Only racists think Mexicans are not white people.

47 posted on 02/08/2013 4:15:28 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: wildbill
I think Congressman King has some problems with ‘foot in mouth disease’

Same as President George Bush, right?


48 posted on 02/08/2013 4:49:38 PM PST by Moseley (http://www.curesocialism.com)
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To: Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
then Mourdock put his foot in his mouth handing the seat over to the Democrats.

'SPLAIN this to us: Obama puts his foot in his mouth all the time. Yet he got re-elected.

Obama declared that the Constitution is "twenty centuries" (2,000 years) old.

Obama said he had campaigned in 57 States and was hoping to visit the other 2.

Obama declared war on piracy.

Obama turned into a blithering idiot at one campaign event.

WHY is that not relevant to his election?

ANSWER: Because his Party did not immediately attack him for it. His Party closed ranks behind him. The GOP attacks their own.

It wasn't the slip of the tongue that hurt. It was the GOP establishment attacking and saying he is unelectable that is the problem.


49 posted on 02/08/2013 4:56:56 PM PST by Moseley (http://www.curesocialism.com)
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To: Moseley

Karl Rove is like Todd Akin. He said what he said and it doesn’t matter what he meant. The horse is out of the barn. The war is on.


50 posted on 02/08/2013 5:10:41 PM PST by AdaGray (squi)
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To: Trapped Behind Enemy Lines

Initially I thought Mourdock was vastly preferable to the decrepit Lugar.....then Mourdock put his foot in his mouth handing the seat over to the Democrats. Missouri is even more inexplicable. Sarah Palin and many conservatives supported an attractive candidate, the former state treasurer Sarah Stedman, but it looks like the Dems played games in the primary crossing over to vote for the weakest of GOP candidates assuring the re-election of the highly vulnerable Claire McCaskill.


Wow...some political myths to debunk.

Sarah Steelman finished THIRD in the Missouri GOP primary. She lost by double digits to Akin.....and lost to Bruner...who had little support. Contrary to the Akin bashing Myths....Steelman was the “insider” as she had most of the Missouri GOP insiders supporting her. Steelman sounds more like a female Marco Rubio

Sarah Palin made a poor pick for the primary...a candidate that could not win. Steelman would not have beaten McCaskill, Steelman could not even get 1/3 of the GOP vote in the primary

Had PhonyCon Liberals not gotten so whiny-assed liberal over a comment that Akin repeatedly apologized for...he would be Senator today


51 posted on 02/08/2013 5:47:11 PM PST by SeminoleCounty (GOP = Greenlighting Obama's Programs)
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To: Herbster
Newt earned his seat on the bus with his attack on Right-Wing Social Engineering to of all people David Gregory.

Currently listening to Mark Levin take Rove apart as a poseur, feigning Reaganism when Rove opposed Reagan in 1976 and 1980.


52 posted on 02/08/2013 5:54:08 PM PST by PhilDragoo (Hussein: Islamo-Commie from Fakistan)
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To: Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
Why do I imagine that candidates who stand for IMPORTANT GOP issues such as:

1. Ending abortion by whatever means necessary;

2. Naming to SCOTUS and every decision-making court or bureaucracy ONLY those who support the basic TRADITIONAL values of Western Civilization;

3. Preserving marriage as an institution involving one man and one woman per marriage (no space aliens, no twelvesomes, no household pets, no farm animals and no perverts of any sort);

4. Preserving and advancing the 2nd Amendment constitutional rights of Americans to keep and bear arms and not just for target practice or hunting. This means CRUSHING state attempts to INFRINGE on 2nd Amendment rights of individual persons to keep and bear arms since this issue is federal only and not a state issue;

5. Preserving and advancing the actual US Constitution generally, and resisting the fanciful hallucinations of so many incumbent judges;

6. Instead of platitudes about "fiscal conservatism" whatever that may be, and which can NEVER exist on its own in a moral issue vacuum, NOT incurring excessive government bills in the first place which means NOT having to pay off those bills not incurred and NOT having to tax folks to pay for the ridiculous luxuries of government run amok;

7. NOT reserving "fiscal conservatism" to a platitude that seems to mean special favoritism for the very successful and a jackboot on the neck of the rest of us;

8. Not thrilling the J. P. Moneypackers by yackety yakking mindlessly about "class warfare," but not practicing "class warfare" like Obozo does or like all too many GOP "leaders" do in the opposite direction;

9. Cleaning out the accumulated abuses in the public school systems both financial and ideological and in higher education as well. Encourage home schooling, private schooling and other alternative education methods. Enact National Right to Work (modeled on Wisconsin) for all public education and other governmental employees. End tenure. End the expensive and non-educational frills in public school systems that give them such advantages among low information voters;

10. Addressing the hideous level of expense associated with "higher education." Apply antitrust laws to higher education to end expensive bundling such as mandating purchase of fast food plans, purchase of texts at college bookstore at prices like $250 per volume for quite ordinary texts, health insurance policies (usually including abortion), mandatory residence in dormitories, and a wild cornucopia of other non-necessities. Put the 10-12 hour per week spoiled faculty on a severe economic diet to better reflect the value of their respective courses. Math and hard science teachers are scarce and can command high compensation in the free market. That is no excuse for paying anything other than minimal salaries much less equal salaries to Lit teachers to tell you what various authors "meant to write" when they wrote the precise opposite. End the mindless stranglehold on entry into various jobs and professions currently abused by higher educational institutions. Encourage a return to employers responsibly making decisions on potential employees and not relying on the often ideological judgment of the unknown but remarkably uniform near Marxist professors. If Johnny got a C from Hillsdale and Bobby got a B at Antioch, what does that really mean and how can an employer tell???

11. Eliminating altogether many departments or other nuisances of the fedgov: EPA, Labor, Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, much of HHS, all of Obozocare, the Consumer (anything), Education, OSHA, HUD, and fill in a couple of hundred blanks of YOUR choice.

12. Get the government COMPLETELY out of the way of the development of the ocean of oil and gas underlying this country from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, to Texas, California, North Dakota, New York and who knows where else. Well-paid jobs for a tremendous number of Americans in the private sector, lower energy prices by far, an end to subsidizing Mohammed el Kaboomski, an end to having to give a damn what happens in the "Arab crescent."

There are twelve necessary elements in the conservative issue tapestry to inspire a generational conquest of the non-performing, incompetent, immoral, vampirish Demonrats.

If you are concerned that we have no more gaffes about rape, so am I. Create a candidate school. Any candidate who wants to receive party money (encourage major PACS to take the same attitude) MUST attend for a week. The school does not tell them what to think but rather how to express themselves and how NOT to express themselves as a matter of common sense.

What normal voter gives a damn about the profit picture of Amalgamated Veeblefritzer, Inc., and especially so when the Veeblefritzer magnates move the jobs to Bangladesh, spitting on American workers to pay some ten-year old 10 cents an hour to serve the old bottom line. Likewise no ordinary voter cares one bit whether Muffy's trust fund may prosper or not o whether she will have to stop hanging out at the polo club and get a job. Such concerns as these motivate NO ONE but a tiny slice of Mitt Romney GOP-E think alikes. The 47% does not care. The 68% does not care. Indeed the 90+% does hot care. Nor should they. Muffy is depending on YOU to help build her trust fund inspires no one but a few Muffies.

If you REALLY want to know who alienates people and turns them off, it is the GOP-E obsession with the idea of a political party consisting of and serving only the interests of he GOP-E who soooooo resemble the worst of Obozodom without the humble origins or overt Marxism.

If you want to "start winning elections again," then nominate people with the common touch and appeal of Reagan who used bold colors and no pale pastels to actually LEAD the party, the movement and the nation unlike the scared little rabbits of the GOP-E like Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bush the Elder, Robert Taxman Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney. We need red meat candidates. We need candidates, as George Wallace once said, who put the hay down where the goats can get it.

No more spineless doormats and politically correct "gentlemen" who haven't a political bone in their bodies. Warriors not diplomats. People who bring a Bushmaster to a knife fight. Better to apologize half-heartedly afterwards than to grovel and beg permission to politically slay the Demonrats, "spill their entrails upon the ground and listen (joyfully) to the lamentations of their women."

53 posted on 02/08/2013 6:10:22 PM PST by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline, Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em, Danno)
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To: muawiyah

I think that was the point of my remark about the Aryan Brotherhood that you apparently didn’t get. King’s remarks about Mexican’s have the same racist smell to me.

And a Texas court settled the issue about Mexican-American being white in a civil rights suit about desegregation back in the 40s, long before Brown V Board of Education in 1953.

I hope you aren’t calling me a racist whitey. My grandson, Alejandro Perez and his father, Manuel, simply wouldn’t understand what you are talking about.


54 posted on 02/08/2013 6:44:49 PM PST by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: Moseley

Not at all. Bush may have had his tongue twisted around his eyeteeth so he couldn’t see what he was saying occasionally and the result was a “spoonerism.” (misunderestimated?). I don’t think he has a mean streak or opinions about women, Mexicans, or gays that are out of the mainstream.

King, Akin and the rest are simply Yahoos with kooky ideas that offend people. When they reveal themselves with their comments, they shouldn’t be the face of the Republican Party as they can drive decent people away.

Democrats have their kooks too—but they don’t let them out in public as candidates for the most part. (Sharpton?) Or they are limited to districts where their radical statements are overlooked because they can play to their constituents without fear of offending a wider audience. (Sheila Jackson Lee. Antonio Villagarosa.)

Moral decency is important in a candidate. You can find bright young conservatives everywhere. There is no need to act like these antidiluvian morons are necessary to our party.


55 posted on 02/08/2013 10:47:35 PM PST by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: wildbill
Judge Leander Perez of Plaquamines Parish Louisiana was a prominant racist way back in the 1960s!

Then there was my Sergeant Major in Basic Training ~ Sergeant Leander Perez ~ from Panama ~ and he had a stake in every camp.

I think they'd understood everything

56 posted on 02/09/2013 5:38:56 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: wildbill

Democrats have a certified madman down in Florida, and then there’s Nancy Pelosi ~ she’s a lunatic if there ever was one. The inmates run that party


57 posted on 02/09/2013 5:40:36 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: wildbill
The borders separating different interests were drawn by the Spanish ~ many of those places turned into independent nation states.

At the time they drew the borders there were no claims of racism by anybody.

Many of those lines are still in place ~ a good number of them inside the United States ~ and even some of them continue to be accepted as delineations of property rights (each and every Spanish land grant had a survey).

The Spanish had a concept of local, regional and national borders ~ which would be respected. Guess they tricked those of us living on our side of some of those lines.

In the long run almost any historian of the Spanish experience in the Americas could tell you it is always a bad idea to make lines between yourself and the USA fuzzy ~ 'cause we have a very long tradition of taking advantage of fuzzy borders.

The Louisiana Territory originally was supposed to end at a line the Spanish hadn't drawn yet ~ at roughly the Northern border of what is now Arkansas ~ well, things were fuzzy so they ran the line from Morgan City all the way to Western Montana to delineate what Napoleon had sold them.

That's just for starts!

Quite frankly, Mexico risks its continued national existence in making the current border fuzzy ~

58 posted on 02/09/2013 5:50:28 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: wildbill
Democrats have their kooks too—but they don’t let them out in public as candidates for the most part

That's absolutely false. Democrats DEFEND their kooks and circle the wagons. When the very public kooks in teh Democrat Party manifest their kookiness, the Demcorats DEFEND him or her, so it is not emphasized.

By contrast, Republicans fall all over themselves attacking each other. Republicans want to be the very first at the head of the line attacking their own nominee, to prove their compliance -- a la the Stockholm Syndrome -- with the liberal powers that be.

Republicans are motivated by avoiding criticism themselves.

Democrats are motivated by winning.

So massive gaffes and kookiness among Democrats is barely noticed because they do not draw attention to it.

The tiniest, most insignificant gaffe by a Republican is blown out of proportion, because Republicans pile on their own.
59 posted on 02/09/2013 6:11:41 AM PST by Moseley (http://www.curesocialism.com)
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To: wildbill
King, Akin and the rest are simply Yahoos with kooky ideas that offend people.

WHAT ideas? They themselves say they misspoke. How can you say they have ideas they themselves disavow as not being what they meant?

1) When tragedy strikes, like rape, people struggle with "How could God let this happen?" Some people (most people, not me, but most people) say that God had a reason for allowing this tragedy.

So eplain exactly what is wrong with what Mourdock said?

Isn't it absolutely mainstream to say that God allowed tragedy to occur? (Theologically wrong in my opinoin, but mainstream in our culture.)

How is what Mourdock said different from what most people believe about tragedy being allowed by God?

2) What is wrong with pointing out that there are legitimate cases of rape -- the rape actually happened -- and FAKE cases of rape, in which the rape never happened?

Do you know about the Duke Lacross case? The prosecutor was disbarred because there never was any rape at all.

What is wrong with talking about whether the rape is real or not real?

3) Akin offered a medically CORRECT -- though badly phrased and exaggerated -- statement of fertility.

But the main point is that Todd Akin said:

"DOCTORS TELL ME THAT...."

It wasn't Akin' opinion. It is what some doctor(s) told Akin.

Akin did not say "I believe that." Akin said "DOCTORS TOLD ME...."

So you see how Democrats defending their kooks compares with Republicans abandoning and savaging the slips of Republicans?


60 posted on 02/09/2013 7:02:44 AM PST by Moseley (http://www.curesocialism.com)
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