Karl Rove is feeling the heat. The face of the historic $1 billion plan to unseat President Barack Obama and turn the Senate Republican, Rove now finds himself the leading scapegoat for its failure. And he’s scrambling to protect his status as a top GOP money man by convincing disappointed donors to his Crossroads groups that he did the best he could with their $300 million…. [S]ome donors have called Crossroads officials to ask how their polling could have been so far off, while others are openly grumbling that the groups should have spent more on the ground game. Rival operatives — long frustrated by Rove’s dominance of big GOP money — are seizing on the discontent, questioning whether he’s hurting the cause and privately urging donors to shut him out.
One of the most satisfying takeaways from last week’s election was that large sums of rich folks’ money doesn’t equal getting the desired result. Despite the millions poured into Right-wing Super PACs by the likes of Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers, their success was minimal at best. In terms of the Presidential election, it was nonexistent. So what happens when you pour millions upon millions into an election without getting the result you want? If you part of the 1%, you’re no doubt used to getting your way. When you don’t get your way AND you lose millions on what turns out to be a bad investment….
It turns out that buying the government you want isn’t as easy and straightforward as it might have looked.
Karl Rove certainly has some ‘splainin’ to do after his spectacular flameout. Some money men on the Far Right understand the nature of politics and recognize that there are no guarantees. Some are a bit less sanguine. And some of Rove’s rivals smell blood in the water and are more than happy to attack.
Richard Viguerie, a pioneering direct-mail consultant, called for Republicans to purge from their ranks Rove and Ed Gillespie — who helped found Crossroads and later moved over to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign — as well as Romney advisers Stuart Stevens and Neil Newhouse. “In any logical universe,” he argued, “no one would give a dime to their ineffective super PACs, such as American Crossroads.”
Rick Tyler, a former strategist for the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC and a top adviser to Todd Akin’s Missouri Senate campaign, called Crossroads’ efforts “a colossal failure,” and asserted, “Rove has too much control over the purse strings.”
Rove “has a lot of explaining to do, mostly to his donors. I don’t think donors are ever going to invest in that level again because it turns out that the architect didn’t know what he was talking about,” Tyler told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
I’m not normally one to kick someone when he’s down, but I’ll happily make an exception in Karl Rove’s case. As a summa cum laude graduate of the Lee Atwater School of Political Dirty Tricks, it would be difficult to convincingly argue that Rove is anything but a miserable excuse for a human being. Watching him squirm on the Fox “News” set when Ohio was called for Obama was priceless. I could run that on an endless loop and never get tired of it. In the aftermath of his spectacular flame-out, Rove’s been casting about for any credible way to escape having to take personal responsibility for his lack of results.
Perhaps Rove’s most ridiculous attempt at an excuse was arguing that President Obama won because he engaged in “voter suppression.”. That this argument is absurd on its face, and that he has absolutely no evidence to prove his accusation, seems to matter not at all to the man Captain Codpiece © christened “Turd Blossom.” Even Megyn Kelly laughed at Rove’s assertion, interrupting him to say, “But he won, Karl, he won!”
Indeed. No matter how hard you work trying to polish a turd, in the end it’s still a turd.
While I’m enjoying my sojourn on the Schadenfreude Express, I’d best remember that this doesn’t mean the end of Turd Blossom, much as I’d like to see that happen. Things may look very different in 2014 and 2016, so complacency isn’t really an option. That said, a reasonable person would still be taking some time to enjoy the demise- however long it may last- of a truly miserable excuse for human being.
Nice work, Turd Blossom….
