Want to know the very definition of failure? Look no further than Karl “Tokyo” Rove. Though many in the Republican Establishment™ love to call this certified loser “The Architect” because President George W Bush won election twice, the fact is, Bush just barely beat Al Gore, an actual lunatic, and John Kerry. That’s right, Bush almost lost to John Freakin’ Kerry! Thanks to Rove’s brand of divide and conquer, alienate everyone, kind of strategery Republicans lost Congress in 2006, and the American economy immediately started to collapse. If one wants to look at someone to point to as the reason we still have a Communist devil in the White House, Karl Rove would be a good place to start!
On the other hand, in 2010, Sarah Palin endorsed upwards of 100 candidates all across the fruited plain.
She endorsed in local, state, and congressional races. Some via Facebook and Twitter, some in person.
Almost every one of her candidates won, including five Governors and two states’ Attorneys General. The momentum built by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party saw the largest political turnover since Reconstruction after the Civil War. In state houses across the country, over 600 democrats lost their seats to Republicans.
With a massively unpopular president, and an ever failing economy, one would have thought it would have been easy, even for morons, to take that momentum from 2010 and build on it for 2012. One would be wrong. One must never underestimate the stupidity of idiots.
The Geniuses of the Republican Elite™ decided they didn’t need or want either Sarah Palin or the Tea Party, and went back to their old losing ways. Once again the Republican Establishment™ proved it hasn’t lost it’s touch for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
According to NBC’s Michael Isikoff:
Karl Rove was the political genius of the George W. Bush era — the architect of the last Republican president’s two electoral victories. But this week, he may have had the worst election night of anybody in American politics.
Not only did Rove insist on Fox News that Ohio was still winnable for Republican challenger Mitt Romney after all the TV networks had called it for President Barack Obama — causing anchor Megyn Kelly to march down to the Fox “decision desk” mavens, who assured her on air that they were “99.9 percent” confident in their call — but his trailblazing “independent” super PAC operation was virtually shut out on election night.
A study Wednesday by the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks political spending, concluded that Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads, had a success rate of just 1 percent on $103 million in attack ads — one of the lowest “returns on investment” (ROIs) of any outside spending group in this year’s elections.
American Crossroads spent heavily, not just on Romney, but on attack ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates in eight states — thanks to mega contributions from conservative donors like metals magnate Harold Simmons ($19.5 million), Texas homebuilder Bob Perry ($7.5 million) and Omni hotel chief Robert Rowling ($5 million.)
The super donors didn’t get much for their money. Six of the eight GOP Senate candidates that American Crossroads spent money to try to elect – Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, George Allen in Virginia, Josh Mandel in Ohio, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Denny Rehberg in Montana and Todd Akin in Missouri – lost their races, along with Romney. The group did, on the other hand, help to elect Deb Fischer in Nebraska and Dean Heller in Nevada.
(The Sunlight Foundation calculation of “return on investment” was based on the percentage of money it spent on individual races– and since Crossroads spent the most on the races it lost on, the group earned its low 1 percent “return on investment” or ROI. A sister group, Crossroads GPS, which operates out of the same offices as American Crossroads but does not disclose its donors, fared little better, netting a return on investment of only 13 percent, according to the Sunlight Foundation report.)
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, dismissed the Sunlight Foundation report.
“GOP super PACs helped keep the race close and winnable, despite Obama’s massive financial advantage,” he wrote in an email to NBC News. “On the Senate races, run the numbers. If you don’t count the long-shot self-funders in CT and PA, Senate Democrats outraised their GOP opponents by $60 (million) this cycle – and that disparity is greater if you factor out GOP primary fundraising. The DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) outraised the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) by another $20 (million). Few have reported on this.“
“You can’t have an accurate view of the role of super PACs without the context of how Democrats leveraged incumbency to outraise their opponents by literally hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added.
The American Crossroads debacle was only the most dramatic example of the limits of big money in this election, according to the Sunlight Foundation report. About $1.3 billion was spent by outside groups overall — about two-thirds on the Republican side — and for the most part their returns were equally low. The Chamber of Commerce, for example, spent $31 million-and had a 5 percent return, according to the Sunlight study. The conservative American Future Fund spent $23.9 million and also realized a 5 percent return. The National Rifle Association spent $11 million, and got shut out.Donald Trump tweeted his “congratulations” to Rove:
Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.
On the other hand, Sarah Palin simply used Facebook and Twitter to get her message of support out, We The People did the rest.
There’s a reason why Mediaite recently named Sarah the number one TV pundit and influencer in the country, far outpacing Karl Rove in every category.
Part of American Crossroad’s problem was failure to back the right candidates in the Republican primaries, which led to a lot of tired, same-old-same-old candidates who haven’t figured things out.
Rove and Governor Palin did share a couple of candidates though, and remarkably fared the same. Sarah backed both Richard Mourdock and Deb Fischer in the primaries. Both are solid Conservatives. Fischer won her Senate seat easily. Mourdock should have, but misspoke while talking about the evils of abortion, and the corrupt media pounced. The left went crazy attacking him, and it was all over.
On the other hand, Sarah Palin was more selective this year than in 2010. She concentrated on select Senate races from the start. She weighed in on the primaries, and supported dark horse candidates like Ted Cruz, giving them much needed exposure, and through her millions of grass roots supporters, some cold hard cash.
During the primary season, Sarah was batting 1000 until Missouri, when her candidate, Sarah Steelman, who was polling the strongest against democrat Claire McCaskill, and was an almost sure winner, lost to Todd Akin after some shenanigans by democrats. Akin almost immediately lost the election by saying incredibly stupid things, allowing one of the very worst of the worst to be re-elected.
Lesson?
Always listen to Sarah Palin. Chances are you’ll have better results. A couple of other candidates lost their primaries, but for the most part, if Sarah Palin endorsed you in the primary, you won.
That brings us to the general election. Sarah outperformed the Republican Party by a bunch. Out of the eight candidates she endorsed, six of them won:
In Utah, Orin Hatch faced a tough primary from a pretend Tea Party candidate who proclaimed he was “just like Mitt Romney!” Many only heard “Tea Party” though, and it was a battle. Senator Hatch will be going back to Washington
In Texas, Ted Cruz was incredibly popular with Tea Party groups, but not polling well overall. Sarah endorsed him early on, and as he says, the money and recognition came. Cruz’s main competition was Texas Lt Governor David Dewhurst, a corrupt Establishment™ hack. Cruz made the crowded race close enough to force a run-off between he and Dewhurst. Sarah came to Texas before the run-off election and fired Texans up for Cruz. A real superstar, and Reagan Conservative, Ted will be going to Washington.
Deb Fischer, who Sarah endorsed early, will represent Nebraska in the Senate and as will Jeff Flake from Arizona.
Ted Yoho from Florida and Paul Gozar from Arizona will be the newest members of the House.
On the losing side, are the aforementioned Mourdock and sadly, Dan Bongino.
Now it would be easy to let Rove off the hook and blame this all on Mitt Romney and what I’ll call the “reverse coattails effect” meaning he was such a failure, he hurt many down ticket races, but there’s a problem with that. You see we can look to the grassroots organization American Grizzlies United, formally Organize4Palin.
AGU is an independent grass roots organization made up of regular folks who trade the lack of tons of money for lots of sweat and worn shoe leather. Looking at their general election candidates page, they had great success nationwide.
So what’s the take away? For one thing, it’s that We The People are much better at picking, and supporting candidates than the Republican Establishment™! The problem is, the GOP is too stubborn to listen to their own party base. In fact, they will actually blame their failure on the Tea Party every single time.
The Republican Party is broken. It needs new leadership from the top down. To lose against the worst president in our nation’s history, and loose ground in the Senate to boot, is not just humiliating, is dangerous.
Now we have a Communist devil who will have nothing to stop him from continuing his all out assault on Liberty and Freedom.
Many seem to think elections are nothing more than a game, but elections have consequences, and thanks to Karl Rove and the Republican Establishment™ the American people are in for tough times ahead.
Thanks to Sarah Palin, American Grizzlies United, and the Tea Party we at least have a few solid, capable Conservatives headed to Washington to do The People’s business.
Time for Choosing
