{"id":134,"date":"2013-02-04T15:42:35","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T21:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2013-02-04T15:42:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T21:42:35","slug":"karl-roves-war-on-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"Karl Rove\u2019s War on Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Karl-Rove\"<\/a>The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party has begun. On one side is the Tea Party. On the other side stand Karl Rove and his establishment team, posing as tacticians while quietly undermining conservatism.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the New York Times<\/em> reported that the \u201cbiggest donors in the Republican Party\u201d have joined forces with Karl Rove and Steven J. Law, president of American Crossroads, to create the Conservative Victory Project. The Times reports that this new group will dedicate itself to \u201crecruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party\u2019s effort to win control of the Senate.\u201d The group points to candidates like Christine O\u2019Donnell in Delaware and Richard Mourdock in Indiana as examples of Tea Party primary picks going sideways in major Senatorial battles.<\/p>\n

But it is American Crossroads and its ilk that have run the GOP into the ground. Spending millions of dollars on useless 30,000-ft. advertising campaigns during the last election cycle, training candidates to soften conservatism in order to appeal to \u201cmoderates,\u201d blowing up the federal budget under George W. Bush as a bipartisan tactic \u2013 all of those strategies led the party to a disastrous defeat in 2012. The Tea Party, which may nominate losers from time to time, also brought the Republicans their historic 2010 Congressional victory. If Tea Party candidates lose, it\u2019s because they weren\u2019t good candidates; if GOP establishment candidates lose, it\u2019s because they weren\u2019t good conservatives. The choice for actual conservatives should be easy.<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t. The Bush insider team that helped lead to the rise of Barack Obama insists that they, and only they, know the path to victory. As the Times<\/em> reports, Conservative Victory Project won\u2019t merely protect incumbents \u2013 it will challenge sitting Congresspeople of the Tea Party variety, including six-term Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who may run for Senate. \u201cWe\u2019re concerned about Steve King\u2019s Todd Akin problem,\u201d Law told the Times \u2013 with whom he seems far too friendly. \u201cThis is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he\u2019s said are going to be hung around his neck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Law claims he\u2019s acting under the rubric of William F. Buckley, supporting the most conservative candidate who can win. But Law is no judge of that. Neither is Rove. Their advice led to the epic Romney defeat, in which conservatives were told to vote for Romney in the primary since he was the only candidate who could win.<\/p>\n

Grover Norquist correctly points out that the Rove mission is nonsense. \u201cPeople are imagining a problem that doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d said Norquist. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people challenge the establishment guy and do swimmingly.\u201d In truth, conservatism wins elections so long as the messenger doesn\u2019t implode. Rove\u2019s view, however, is that conservatism takes a back seat to the best quasi-conservative messenger.<\/p>\n

But victory for conservatives isn\u2019t Rove\u2019s goal. He\u2019s a political insider par excellence, and he\u2019s playing for his political life in the aftermath of 2012. If that means declaring war on the Tea Party, so be it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party has begun. On one side is the Tea Party. On the other side stand Karl Rove and his establishment team, posing as tacticians while quietly undermining conservatism. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the \u201cbiggest donors in the Republican Party\u201d have joined forces [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iowarepublicanassembly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}